Hello everybody,

if you know Samurize soft, you perhaps know i've made a bunch of useless plugins for it, and i've decided to translate them to BlackBox...

Winter is comming fast, so here is the first useless plugin for BlackBox... the BBSnow plugin : a simple plugin that simulates snowfall... as i said : useless...



Defaults: 75 snowflakes updated every 75ms on a 200x200px box...
See the autogenerated 'BBSnow.rc' file to change settings...

[/!\ I WILL ALWAYS POST MY LAST VERSION ON THIS FIRST POST /!\]

Lol... Not useless at all... Nothing is useless, if it tickles our fancy... And I wish u would e-mail me (pitkon@mland.gr), since u probably don't read personal messages...

if you could make it have a transparent background, then we could have it fill the whole screen and snow over the desktop behind the windows

...uploaded to the xoblite plugins page at http://xoblite.net/plugins.html - I like "useless" plugins too!

BR//Karl -> qwilk

Errr... Can't see it there, qwilk...

Tis at the top of the list for me..

It is for me now, too... Maybe I clicked away too quickly...

hm
i can't seem to change the size of it

Ok, here is the new release... v0.2

I have corrected all references to "BBTextClock" (where my source is inspired)...

I added 2 new broams that can be used to connect BBSnow to a weather plugin...

@BBSnow.interval 75 //Defines the update interval (falling speed)
@BBSnow.count 75 //Defines the number of snowflakes

If someone can script a thing for this plugin to represent real weather returned by a weather plugin, please post it here.... il win make my plugin a bit usefull....

bilmas > Actualy, there is still no menu... position, size, style... can only be defined using corresponding broams or RC file.

qwilk > This time i included a BBSnow.rc example file and a readme HTML file, please update the plugin page. Thx

[FILE REMOVED, PLEASE SEE MY FIRST POST FOR UPDATED VERSION]

Done! (...I disabled alwaysontop in the .rc though, assuming that most people will find a 200x200 pixel snowfall covering all other apps slightly obtrusive, hope you don't mind... )

BR//Karl -> qwilk

even editting the rc file i can't adjust the size

Bilmas: Do u unload the plugin while editing?

Hello!

Due to the high interest you give to my BBSnow plugin, i've decided a major update...

- Added "Desktop Background" option
- Added "Deviation" option : each flake deviates (realistic)
- Added "Wind" options (force & orientation) : all flakes are submited to wind.
- Added corresponding broams

So, now BBSnow is v0.3, help and example RC files updated... enjoy!

[FILE REMOVED, PLEASE SEE MY FIRST POST FOR UPDATED VERSION]

This is really neat. Just one problem with it, though...

The desktop background option isn't really a desktop background; it's more like a window with no borders and a quasi-transparent background.

Let me start off by saying that I have set it to be a desktop background that covers pretty much the whole desktop except for the toolbar area. When I activate the plugin with a bro@m, all windows on my desktop disappear. The snow "window" shows the wallpaper, yes, but the window won't show the other programs I have running—so it's not really transparent in that sense.

By the same token, I had to cut it off where the toolbar began because after initially setting it to cover the entire screen, the "window" covered the toolbar as well! Since you can't right click on the desktop background snow to bring up the Blackbox menu, I had to use the three-finger salute to open Task Manager and edit the bbsnow.rc to be less than the whole screen, then kill Blackbox and restart it.

Looking back at what I wrote, it seems like a big deal, but it's really not. I still dig the plugin the way it is (I made two BBInterface buttons with bro@ms to turn it on and off), but it could (or maybe it can't—I don't know if true transparency is possible) be better.

It sounds like what you really need is a Glue-To-Desktop option. Also possibly known as Always-On-Bottom.