Roadmap for ObjectBar 2.0?

Stay tuned. New ObjectBar build went up tonight.

At this point, we need feedback desperately.  We think we're pretty close to being there. At this point we're looking more for bugs to squash to get 2.0 out the door.

You want feedback? Oh, the feedback I have.

Bars that I have autohidden will pop open for no reason. When this occurs (frequently!) I'll have to put my mouse over to the far left side & "really open it" for the bar to open again and close correctly.

Having widgets embedded (clocks so far) in a bar will result in the widget "floating" above the bar -- it will stay visible even when the dock is autohidden. When this happens, I have to unload ObjectDock and restart it to solve the problem.

There seems to be a lot of bad interactions with objectbar and objectdock. Here's one: I have a start menu for xp on the far left side of the bottom (mimicking the normal windows start button placement). Clicking this -- even when the mouse is well away from the edge -- will bring up the sidebar. occasionally, it will bring up one of the popup menus within the sidebar. Additionally, when I have ObjBar and ObjDock running, sometimes ObjDock will simply stop responding -- my autohidden docks will not open at all. this doesn't seem to happen when ObjBar is not running.

I really love these products, but their behavior baffles me utterly. If you need this feedback in a more formalize method, let me know and I'll provide you with whatever you need.

I've seen many of the issues that Scott identified in his long post on another thread. Here's another that nobody has mentioned (maybe it's just me?).

I have my OB set to use the current WB skin. Sometimes it works fine right off, sometimes after logging out and back in. Most often when I change the WB, OB background is a black and white striped affair. The section titles and menus are fine but the bar itself shows no relation to the skin. While this doesn't happen every time, it does more often than not. I haven't been able to nail down anything specific as to which skins.

Garry: I've had the same problem. Sometimes, the bar doesn't appear at all, but the text for the menu items does, floating ghostly above my desktop.

ObjectBar has lost much of the functionality that I used most from 1.65. I have it loaded now and can give you feedback, but where is the right place for that? Here? I'd like to give you some screenshots to show you what it is doing.

It is not ready for prime-time yet.

CmputrAce

This seems to be the new place for feedback, I'd start a new thread like my Version 1.99b[b] feedback thread and post your comments there.

Gotcha. I can do that. I'll post my feedback then downgrade to 1.65. I can't work with the beta for any length of time without getting very frustrated. I should probably send my custom bar to Stardock so they can see what I mean.

Ive got a bug to add to the OD 2.0 list: after opening a full screen graphics application (namely games), the OD dock on one of my secondary monitors ends up with a little bit of funky extra background.

I have attached a before and after shots to illustrate the problem.

Before:


After:



This is 100% repeatable.

I get a ghost bar showing up at odd moments. What I mean is the auto-hidden bar will suddenly appear without any reason I can figure. This bar isn't clickable - if I hover the cursor over the bar and click elsewhere, the bar will hide then the real bar shows up.

I'm not entirely sure the problem is related but it's happening on 2 computers now. I've hidden the Windows taskbar but open windows refuse to expand into that space. Removing Windows auto-hide, then re-hiding will fix the problem for a couple of minutes but that's all. Using OB hide Windows Taskbar has no effect either way.

sigh

1) Is there an easier way to get to the Advanced Editor than having a dedicated "Various Function Item" on my bar? When I'm in the Basic Editor I see a File menu choice called Basic Theme Editor, which is completely redundant. Maybe this menu item should read "Advanced"?

2) When I make layout change in the Advanced Editor and save the theme, it is not persisted through a reboot. I'm trying to set the bar height to be Exactly 54 pixels.

3) The skinning problem everybody else has described seems to be slightly better with the last code drop, but this morning it surprised me by reverting to the white/black skin once again after a reboot.

4) I love Stardock!

-Garrett Clark

update on the taskbar issue - this is caused by the latest update to weather pulse and has nothing to do with Stardock. The "ghost" issue persists though.

Hi, folks. It's time for me to give
some feedback of my own

I've been using this neat product for a while now, and tried the betas
until the most recent one. I've had to go back to 1.65 due to bugs,
though.

The main irritation is the well-known
system tray problem. None of the fixes help.

The other problem I have is that the behaviour changed randomly on
the bars. I was using a Mac Classic theme, with bars hidden.
Sometimes the bars got stuck in full view.

When in games, or other fullscreen DirectX programs, these bars will
at least obscure the view of the game's screen when moving the mouse
to the hotspots, orsometimes push the Windows desktop to the front.
This is *annoying* in online games,
especially when you're trying to
get away from other players

I found that docking the bars was what caused them to interfere with
games. After switching off docking, I had some tiny, cute
panels that behaved normally.

But then another problem occurred: I couldn't see the clock properly.
The clock was at the rightmost edge of my top bar, but only the
middle two digits were visible, because the bar shrunk to just a
tad too narrow. Resizing worked,
but this bar also had the window list, so the problem kept reappearing
every time the bar changed width.

I'm using the Dream theme with 1.65 now, and it looks OK, except that
all the icons/shortcuts have white backgrounds when I expected the
theme's orange. I don't care if it's a bug or the theme's behaviour -
just give us the next beta version soon

I'm happy to give my $0.02 to this effort as I too love OB and want to see it continue to evolve.

Skinning is not my primary concern and others seem to have it pretty well covered from the sound of it.

Docking appears to be a known trouble maker.

One problem I have found that I haven't seen anyone mention is that elements created and added to a bar are not fully accessible until you unload/reload object bar. For example, I created a Folder Menu. It showed on the bar but I could not move it up or down, nor could I remove it. It was rather frustrating until I thought to restart OB.


Other small things - Cancel buttons? The basic theme editor has a menu option to get to the Basic Theme editor? There needs to be a menu option to get to the Advanced Theme editor. I'm sure this is what was intended but not what was implemented.

As I use it I will provide updates. Unfortunately I have never been one to create themes much - I use those provided by others. But I'll give it a shot.