Desktop widgets

[Ex-calibur]

I've written some useful (?) desktop widgets for City of Heroes/Villains players.  They currently run in the Yahoo! Widget Engine, which is free and spiffy.

I'm porting them to Apple's Dashboard and Google Desktop as time permits.

Check them out at: http://www.pobox.com/~chrish/widgets/

CIT Avatars displays a City Information Terminal icon (either the normal one or the signature one) of your choice:


CoH All Servers displays the current server status for all of the City servers in North America and Europe.  You can shut off the ones you're not interested in:


CoH Servers displays the current server status for your favourite City server (pick it in the preferences). You can pick any of several icons (hero, villain, origins, archetypes) to represent the "Up", "Down" and "Unknown" server states:


Suggestions, complaints, etc. are welcome. 

[werewriter]

Is this so you know when you're online or is it for your friends?

Having access to the server status makes sense, but if it's gonna show you your own avatar when you're active/inactive, what would be the point? If you could add some sort of friends list to display when other people were on, that'd be great! It'd be like a Co* iChat without the chat windows.

I'll definitely check this out when it's ready for Dashboard.

[Voltaic Shock]

We have been in contact and are going to work on a way to display your friends.

[werewriter]

Sweet!

[Shades29A]

i'd like to see it in my Vista SideBar

[Voltaic Shock]

i'd like to see it in my Vista SideBar

That would be nice!

[Ex-calibur]

Is this so you know when you're online or is it for your friends?

It's more so you can see how many badges you have; if you right-click the widget, you can pick any of your characters from the menu, or you can scroll through them using the next/previous icons.

Like Voltaic Shock said, I'm going to make another one that displays your friends CGT status so you can see when they're online, what server, etc.

[Ex-calibur]

i'd like to see it in my Vista SideBar

I don't have a Vista system handy for development or testing; is there an adapter to pull Google Desktop widgets into the Vista sidebar?  That's how Google Desktop widgets work on Mac OS X... they're actually run in the Dashboard via some sort of trickery.

[Shades29A]

googled for 30 seconds:

Amnesty Generator

[werewriter]

It's more so you can see how many badges you have; if you right-click the widget, you can pick any of your characters from the menu, or you can scroll through them using the next/previous icons.

Well, that sounds handy. Will it tell you specifically what badges you have, like if I need to check real quick if i have any of the prereqs for an accolade?

[Ex-calibur]

Well, that sounds handy. Will it tell you specifically what badges you have, like if I need to check real quick if i have any of the prereqs for an accolade?

No, although I should let you click it to pop up your City Information Terminal details page for that character... next version, I suppose.

[hellaid]

I've been using a couple of your wigets since i saw this post the other day. when i first downloaded them they both woked fine, untill i Did a reboot, now the one that shows my cit sigs and avatars is fine but the other one that shows a single servers status and shows your char avatar in the dock is now looking like this
,
 I've tried removing and reinstalling it to no avail.


Edit:
Just fiddled with it and by changing the icons and server it seemed to have fixed it, just hope i don't have to do this each time

[Ex-calibur]

I've been using a couple of your wigets since i saw this post the other day. when i first downloaded them they both woked fine, untill i Did a reboot, now the one that shows my cit sigs and avatars is fine but the other one that shows a single servers status and shows your char avatar in the dock is now looking like this
,
 I've tried removing and reinstalling it to no avail.


Edit:
Just fiddled with it and by changing the icons and server it seemed to have fixed it, just hope i don't have to do this each time

You shouldn't have to, obviously.

The little icon in the top-left of the widget in your screen shot is the "trying to communicate with the server" icon.  It's possible that the status couldn't be read from the server (server was down, network problem, whatever).

If this happens again, try clicking on the icon; whenever you do that, it refreshes (that is, it will try to contact the server status web page again).

What sort of system do you have, and what kind of Internet connection?  The widgets assume you're already connected, but I could imagine a scenario where you've got DSL or a VPN or something and the connection isn't active yet when the widget loads and tries to find out the server status...

[hellaid]

Ok this has happened 2 days on the trot now, reset it again by changing server (went from union to training room back to union),

If this helps i'm running latest yahoo widgets, windows xp sp2, ADSL via Router which is on before I turn my computer on

[Ex-calibur]

Ok this has happened 2 days on the trot now, reset it again by changing server (went from union to training room back to union),

If this helps i'm running latest yahoo widgets, windows xp sp2, ADSL via Router which is on before I turn my computer on

Hmm, I really don't have a clue what's going on.   Does clicking the status icon make it refresh or do you absolutely need to change servers?  Which server are you using?