Bubbles! v0.1
link: Bubbles! v0.1
Earlier this week, I was showing some guys here a little demo app that I had put together at home. This demo was nothing more than balls that could be grabbed and thrown around the screen, but the response was really positive. In fact there were several ideas of things that could be done with this bouncing ball simulator. One of the ideas (among many!) was to take Proxi’s existing Screen Message task and place the message in a bubble with perhaps a title hinting at the contents inside. Not only would this sort of notification save some screen real estate, but these balls were just a lot of fun to casually toss around the screen while reading email or puzzling over a problem.
Armed with a practical (to some) use for this creation, I carved out a chunk of time this week to see if I could put something together for use in Proxi before the end of the week and my trip to WWDC. The result is the Bubbles! task. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but for the most part seems to work pretty well. I’ve already moved most of my RSS Monitoring and Digg Monitoring into Bubbles and have been able to add a few more feeds, since the really small bubbles are pretty unobtrusive.
Anyway, try it out. Let me know what you think. If it proves to be a popular task, we’ll work on refining it and moving it into the core Proxi components perhaps.
One other thing: I made a demonstration movie showing how I’m using Bubbles. I apologize for the sound. It’s a bit low, but it gets the point across I think. J fixed the sound for me and it’s much better now. Thanks!
August 4th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Having trouble installing bubbles, followed instructions after downloading, and will not work. Is this just me or is anyone else having this problem?
August 5th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Andy: It’s entirely possible that there are some problems yet, though we tested it on a half dozen varieties of machines. Could you provide a few more details about your setup? Mac OS X version, Proxi version, type of machine etc etc.
August 6th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Sure, Proxi v 1.2.1, Mac OS X v 10.4.7, and im using a 15” PB G4. I don’t know exactly what else would factor into the installation.
February 8th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Wow, Bubbles is lovely. I’ve run into one glitch whereby all of the bubbles froze and I had to restart Proxi, but that was during a hardcore session of playing with ‘em. One feature request, if you don’t mind - could an “auto dismiss” option be implemented for the double-click screen message?
Bubbles should be included with the Proxi distro. It’s loads of fun, and useful - “yes, boss, those are my meeting reminders”
February 9th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Bubbles was the result of goofing around and as such isn’t 100% stable when there are lots and lots of them (as you’ve seen). If I have a chance to address the problems with it and add a few more niceties such as the ability to dismiss a group of them at once, then perhaps it will make it’s way into the main distribution.
It’s also my favorite task too. A great way to get RSS feed updates