tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-249306282008-06-15T01:53:51.302-04:00Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-4222418061029047822008-02-14T19:33:00.002-05:002008-02-14T19:35:52.384-05:00

Thanks to all the comment folks who have pointed out all the bugs in the latest version of rssssaver. Right now I'm hovering in between the next beta release and a complete re-write to a 1.0 release. I'll do my best to hit the critical bugs ASAP.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-39850381190007580682007-08-09T17:22:00.000-04:002007-08-09T17:27:13.383-04:00

Okay people. rsssaver is somewhat working in Vista. Take a look... We're still a little way away from a release, so hang tight. Also you can see screen shots of accented characters being displayed in the flicker set above.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-80046654170741129542007-06-21T13:34:00.000-04:002007-06-21T13:42:32.326-04:00

After many days of work, I'm starting to realize that OpenGL just won't work in Vista the way I want it to. Options are pretty limited, but it looks like I may explore using Flash to render the text to screen and "warp" the text to get the pseudo 3D look. Since my plan was to start building other visualizations, this would be a huge blow to the visual effect of the project. The other option is

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-75392152163270048322007-02-18T21:10:00.000-05:002007-02-18T21:22:37.899-05:00

Well, Vista does not support OpenGL in the way I've been using it to display the preview and the full-up screen saver. I don't think all hope is lost just yet, I just need to get my developent environment setup and working in Vista. Wanna see a Vista error? The good news is some of my older software (like this mingolf game designed originally for Windows 98) is appearing to work without

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-50449902862545936012007-02-08T11:19:00.000-05:002007-02-08T09:18:53.518-05:00

I plan on picking up a copy of Vista for my home computer next week, so I should be able to troubleshoot the issues Windows Vista users have been reporting. Stay tuned.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-46390007338784716262007-01-15T14:46:00.000-05:002007-01-16T13:48:45.157-05:00

That's right, I skipped a whole version number... This version tackles the big interactivity problem and sets the stage (finally) for foreign characters. Here's what's new now... Hold down the SHIFT key to speed up the current story (fast forward)Hold down the CTRL key to snap the current story to full frameHold them both to quickly view storiesSome additional color palettes added to configComing

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-34942813194600164902007-01-02T02:30:00.000-05:002007-01-15T14:59:28.132-05:00

Update: 1.1 is waiting on Yahoo! approval... [Note: No more Quick Dock news on this site, everything will be at stopwilson.com] I had some down time over the holidays, so I worked on an upgrade to rsssaver and started a new project called Quick Dock. Quick doc is a Yahoo! Widget Engine widget to replace your Quick Launch Toolbar with something that looks more like the Apple iDock in OSX. I'm

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1166298752849335222006-12-16T14:51:00.000-05:002006-12-16T14:52:32.860-05:00

Happy Holidays! I have some "down time" after the holidays this year, so be looking for a new version of rsssaver before 2007!

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1161455998395015062006-10-21T14:32:00.000-04:002006-10-21T14:39:58.410-04:00

Try as I might I'm having trouble implementing a "universal" character set into rsssaver that would allow accents, umlauts and the like appear correctly in news items. Also, interactivity has been quite the challenge--keeping the screen saver from disappearing when a key is pressed. I've been experimenting with using only Shift, Ctrl and Alt for navigation and that seems to be the way to go.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1157843099295216672006-09-09T18:56:00.000-04:002006-09-09T19:06:08.230-04:00

This has been a very busy summer. No excuses, but my free time to devote to all my pet projects has been very limited. That said, I do have an update to rsssaver in the works. I've been playing with the shift/alt/crtl keys as modifiers for the animation and as input for the saver. If you notice while rsssaver is running pressing a shift key does not cause it to end. I was thinking that left

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1150397842944184102006-06-15T00:46:00.000-04:002006-06-15T14:57:22.946-04:00

A quick bug fix is available that fixes a popup box that could occur when a feed URL retuns a 404 error. Now rsssaver will display the offending URL and report the error. Download the new version here.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1149258214837648202006-06-02T02:02:00.000-04:002006-06-02T10:24:58.290-04:00

Okay, it was really my issue. So here's a quicky 0.0.3 release to fix the "Index out of bounds (0)" issue. Grab the fresh download here.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1149191525071969192006-06-01T15:50:00.000-04:002006-06-01T15:52:05.086-04:00

Blogger has some kind of issue with RSS feeds that is causing an "Index out of bounds(0)" error with rsssaver. I'm checking into it, but for right now Blogger feeds (including this one) are broken. Anybody heard of this?

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1148564470157414202006-05-25T09:41:00.000-04:002006-05-25T09:41:10.200-04:00

I submitted rsssaver to digg (after preparing myself for the infamous "digg effect" that takes down most servers after hitting the front page) but only received 13 "diggs" all day yesterday. Kinda disappointing, but the process added 100+ page views to the site, so it wasn't all for naught. http://digg.com/software/Make_digg_your_Screen_Saver_with_rsssaver

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1148476469963633532006-05-23T21:13:00.000-04:002006-05-24T09:14:29.976-04:00

Some minor bug fixes in this release. We're well on our way to a 1.0 Release Canidate.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1146244983133188222006-04-28T01:19:00.000-04:002006-04-28T13:23:03.133-04:00

Various issues fixed in this latest release and a few addtional features added. The rendering of the RSS feeds is more accurate (but still not perfect) and some setup issues have been addressed. Also, you can choose background colors and scaling style for the screensaver animation. If your system is running slow or stuttering try turning off the MimMap option in the configuration screen. Special

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1145938319356076902006-04-28T00:08:00.000-04:002007-01-15T14:45:58.295-05:00

Download rsssaver beta version 0.0.6 System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP, Hardware Accelerated OpenGL of some sort, the fonts Tahoma and Wingdings still installed, and a few good feeds.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1145939737296575732006-04-25T00:32:00.000-04:002006-04-25T00:36:58.146-04:00

Okay, we now have a working open beta available for the few people who know about this project. Scroll down or click this download link to get your copy. Please use the comments thread at the bottom of this post to report issues.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1145756718416269612006-04-22T21:38:00.000-04:002006-04-22T21:45:18.436-04:00

I'd say my current build on this Saturday night is pretty much as close as I will get to a "release candidate." I just need to build the installer and add a few web pages to the site for downloading. All in all, I think the presentation is still a bit boring and could use some images or textures or SOMETHING to jazz it up a bit. I have a workmate that runs the Apple Hot News Screensaver, and it

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1145478031967282372006-04-18T23:10:00.000-04:002006-04-19T16:20:31.990-04:00

I managed to do many RSS reading updates in this last pass. I scraped my hand-coded XML parsing and moved to TXmlParser a lightweight Object Pascal XML parser. I don't quite know how this will affect my FreePascal port, but it certainly made extracting the headlines out of an RSS feed much easier. I'm also struggling a bit with the ATOM 0.3 format for site feeds. That's what Blogger uses, so

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1144765829223941592006-04-11T22:23:00.000-04:002006-04-19T16:10:02.350-04:00

I took a stab at a rsssaver logo by building on the adopted "RSS feed icon" design that FireFox uses. It's an "open source" design so I should be able to use it in a free project like this. You can find an excelent vector version of this feed logo at www.feedicons.com. Until I can get around to doing something better, this will be it.

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1143642353577525192006-04-10T23:22:00.000-04:002006-04-11T10:01:48.216-04:00

The latest screenshots for the rsssaver project are now hosted at flickr, freeing up this space for news and such. Check them out!

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24930628.post-1143580779417832482006-03-28T23:19:00.000-05:002006-04-25T00:32:15.720-04:00

This site is the future home of rsssaver -- the rss screen saver for windows. Currently in closed beta, rsssaver will preview RSS feeds from the net and visualize them during your computer's "inactive" time. Current Features Grabs Channel, Title, Description and Publish Date from any valid RSS URLOpenGL text rendering engine to provide clean and smooth scrolling fontsSupports Windows 2000 and XP

Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18009810448663067000noreply@blogger.com