Time/Date & more - PART 1: I have been asked about a dozen times how to get this or that date info into an object. So I will try and cover that here. This is not my typical tutorial, this will be a STEP-BY-STEP Creation of a widget, not just some code.
DekstopX can use JavaScript or VBScript as its language, I am a LOT more familiar with VBScript then JS so that is what I use. As always, I'm sure there are other, if not better ways to do this, but this is my way.
The Players:
Here are the objects we will be setting up: (forgive me Danniloc as some of this was from our conversation - the graphics are mind but look like the one your working on):
BASE Object: This will have the text objects a children as well as run the script.
MonthName
Month object will show the current month
Date
Date object will show today's date
Year
Year object will show the current year
DayOfWeek
Day Of Week object will show the current day of the week in text form "Monday" "Tuesday" etc.
Time
Time object will show the current time.
Creating the Objects:
For those of you that have never used DX this is not hard, I will walk you through creating the above object.
LOAD DekstopX and go into the CREATE mode: * if you do not have DekstopX (builder) you will need to download it.
BASE OBJECT:
Create the BASE object by
RIGHT-CLICK on the DekstopX Icon in the system tray.
Select "New object"
<-- See this for more info
The Object Properties Dialog will show up.
Click the "States" Tab
Click the "Browse" Button.
Select the "Frame-Green.png" File from the 6-DateWidget.zip file here.
Select "Open"
Click "OK" in the "Object Properties" Dialog box.
You should now see your FRAME or BASE object.
RIGHT CLICK on this object and select "Properties".
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
In here we will change the following:
Object ID: BASE
Group: DateWidget
Widget: DateWidget
If you want you can add your name to the "Author" Section.
When done editing these, click the "OK" Button.
OTHER OBJECTS:
We will follow the same above steps to create the TEXT objects but there will be a few minor change. I'm not going to re-post all the same images, see above if you get lost.
DayOfWeek Object
RIGHT-CLICK on the DekstopX Icon in the system tray.
Select "New object"
Select the "States" Tab
In there select "TEXT" not "IMAGE" from the Appearance Tab.
Type in "Monday" in the provided text area
Select Alignment: CENTER
Click on Font and select a font you like, I like Tahoma, you can pick whatever you want, be advised the size, and font will make some of the next screen shots look strange, for now pick Tahoma and 12 and bold, you can come back later and change it.
Select OK on the Font Dialog.
Select the Color Button, select a dark color something that will look good on the white background (or gray), I'm picking a dark gray. Select OK in the Color dialog box
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
In here we will change the following:
Left: 0
Top: 20
Width: 150
Height: (image default)
Object ID: DayOfWeek
Parent/Owner: BASE
Child: YES
Group: DateWidget
Widget: DateWidget
When done editing these, click the "OK" Button.
This should be your new widget
Congrats, its beginning to look like something.
MonthName Object
Follow the exact same steps from above except this time you will put in:
"August" in the text area, and the following in the Summary Tab:
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
In here we will change the following:
Left: 0
Top: 44
Width: 150
Height: (image default)
Object ID: MonthName
Parent/Owner: BASE
Child: YES
Group: DateWidget
Widget: DateWidget
When done editing these, click the "OK" Button.
Your new object should look like this now.
Date Object
Follow the exact same steps from above except this time you will put in:
"16" in the text area Make the font 14 not 12 and change the following in the Summary Tab:
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
In here we will change the following:
Left: 0
Top: 66
Width: 150
Height: (image default)
Object ID: Date
Parent/Owner: BASE
Child: YES
Group: DateWidget
Widget: DateWidget
When done editing these, click the "OK" Button.
Your new object should look like this now.
Year Object
Follow the exact same steps from above except this time you will put in:
"2006" in the text area Make the font 12 not 14 and change the following in the Summary Tab:
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
In here we will change the following:
Left: 0
Top: 92
Width: 150
Height: (image default)
Object ID: Year
Parent/Owner: BASE
Child: YES
Group: DateWidget
Widget: DateWidget
When done editing these, click the "OK" Button.
Your new object should look like this now.
See we are getting there.
IF you have done everything correct up to this point, you should be able to "DRAG" this around, and everything should move as 1.
If something moves that shouldn't you will need to RIGHT-CLICK on that object, hit Properties, then make sure that the Group and Widget are both "DateWidget". then check it again.
Time Object
Follow the exact same steps from above except this time you will put in:
"10:16 am" in the text area Make the font 12 and change the following in the Summary Tab:
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
In here we will change the following:
Left: 0
Top: 140
Width: 150
Height: (image default)
Object ID: Time
Parent/Owner: BASE
Child: YES
Group: DateWidget
Widget: DateWidget
When done editing these, click the "OK" Button.
We are now done creating objects.
Your widget does nothing at this point except show the text we put into it.
Its time to start making this thing WORK.
Time/Date & more - PART 2:
I continue the Time/Date widget here, if you have not seen part one, please read it first.. This is not my typical tutorial, this will be a STEP-BY-STEP Creation of a widget, not just some code.
DekstopX can use JavaScript or VBScript as its language, I am a LOT more familiar with VBScript then JS so that is what I use. As always, I'm sure there are other, if not better ways to do this, but this is my way.
The Script:
Right click on the Base object (somewhere where the TEXT objects are not, like the top green part, or bottom green part), and select Properties
From the General Tab in the BASE-Properties dialog select NEW next to Script.
You will see a dialog like the one below
This is the DekstopX Script Editor.
From here we will create our script to change the Text objects to show the CORRECT date/time/etc.
We will also setup a "Timer" that will update the time and the date ever 30 seconds.
We are going to modify the script above to look like this: (only the text in WHITE is important the YELLOW is to show you what is going on)
'-- The OnScriptEnter is executed when the object is loaded, so we want to use it to put the initial values in for that text objects, as well as setup a timer to upload these every 30 seconds.
In order to save us from writing the same code multiple times we are going to setup a single Sub that will make the changes to the text objects, then we will call that on startup and in the timer. This way we make changes in 1 place, not 2 or 3.
Sub Object_OnScriptEnter
Object.SetTimer 1000, 30000 '-- This turns on a timer called 1000 and runs whats in there every 30,000 milliseconds or 30 seconds Call setinfo '-- this calls the SUB item below (its just calling another part of the code to do whats in it)
End Sub
Sub Object_OnTimer1000 '-- This is the Timer we started above, notice the 1000 is the same as the 1000, in our SetTimer call?
Call setinfo '-- this calls the SUB item below (its just calling another part of the code to do whats in it)
End Sub
Sub setinfo '-- we use this to create a function or sub-routine that is used to do work we don't want to have to code in multiple places.
'--- DesktopX.Object("objectname").text is used to assign or retrieve the text inside another object. '--- objectname would be the names we assigned to the objects above: DayOfWeek,Date,Time,MonthName,Year
'--- Sets the TEXT part of the object "DayOfWeek" to the Weekname '--- now = current date/time '--- Weekday(now) returns the current day of the week in a # format 0-sunday, 1-monday, etc. '--- WeekDayName returns the current day of the week in a NAME based on the # for the day: 0=Sunday, 1=Monday, etc. So combining the above will give us the day of the week as a name desktopx.Object("DayOfWeek").text = WeekDayName(Weekday(now), False)
'--- Month(now) returns the current month as a number 1-12 '--- MonthName converts that to its name. desktopx.Object("MonthName").text = MonthName(Month(now))
'--- Year(now) returns the current year in 4 digits 2006/2007/etc. desktopx.Object("Year").text = Year(now)
'--- Day(now) returns the current date 1-31 in the current month. desktopx.Object("Date").text = Day(now)
'--- FormatDateTime(now,3) returns the complete time in the format: hh:mm:ss am/pm '--- we only want the hh:mm and am/pm so we need to remove the :ss part. '--- to do this we assign TimeHold to the long time string. TimeHold = formatdatetime(now,3)
'--- left pulls the LEFT X characters out of a string '--- Ex: left("RomanDA",2) would pull out "Ro" '--- in our case we only want the hh:mm part (but since the hours can be 1-12 it could be multiple digits so we get the current '--- LENgth of TimeHold ie: 10:12:35 am = 11, we then remove the last 6 characters: :35 am '--- In order to keep the am/pm we pull the RIGHT 3 characters of TimeHold ( am) the space is 1 character. '--- all of this leaves us with "10:12 am" removing the seconds, since this script only updates every 30 seconds. TimeHold = left(TimeHold,len(TimeHold)-6) & right(TimeHold,3)
'-- We now assign the TEXT part of the Time object to TimeHold's text. desktopx.Object("Time").text = TimeHold
End Sub
'Called when the script is terminated Sub Object_OnScriptExit
object.KillTimer 1000 '-- Turns off the timer when we close this widget (its good coding to clean up after ourselves)
End Sub
Click the "File" menu item, then "Save and Close editor", then click "OK" in the properties dialog box.
That's it, it should be working.
If you get a DX Scripting Error box, note the LINE Number its complaining about, and click the "Disable and Edit" button to go back into the script and see what is wrong.
Tell me what the problem is with this????? anyone???
oh... its the Dayofweek - its not right, it needs to be DayOfWeek (CAP W!) the CApS are IMPORTANT in DX, if you have an object named DaViD, you cannot call it by David or david, it has to match EXACTLY.
Some other problems are missed spaces, or added spaced.
if you click on "Disable and Edit" your script is now turned OFF.
To turn if back on RIGHT click (in the green) on the BASE object and select "SCRIPT ENABLE" (see the checkmark that tells you its running, no check, not running).
And see if you get any more errors.
Widget/Gadget Export:
The last step in the process is to create a WIDGET from the above items. (a widget takes the objects and makes them into an EXE file that requires DX to run). If you have DX Pro you could make this into a GADGET (a gadget does the same creation of an EXE file, but this one does NOT require DX to run).
Right click on the BASE object and select "EXPORT".
the Export Objects Dialog note the following items:
(x) Selected and related, this will take every object that is has the SAME "widget" name as the one you selected.
This is good if some items are not visible or if they might be off the screen. The other way to select the objects is from the RIGHT CLICK on the DX Icon in the system tray and select "LIST OBJECTS", from there you can "Highlight" all the objects and export them together.
Export as a Widget: Select this if you want to export this as a widget that uses DX to run.
Export as a Gadget (PRO Version Only): Select this if you want to export this as a stand alone gadget.
Select "NEXT"
Widget name: the name you want to call the widget, I picked "DateWidget" you could call it whatever you want.
Author: Duh - your name
Version: 1.xxx? Whatever you want, I usually start at 1.000 and every time I export it I add .001 to it.
Website: your website
[x] Application Icon: (ico file location). If you made an icon for this widget you can select one, if not use mine!! hehehe
( ) Taskbar / Systray / None
Pick where you want this program to show up, most people use the systray so you can right-click it and close it from there, I have never used the Taskbar, as its not designed to be a program like word, or IE, or whatever, its a widget/gadget. But its your call. None means it will not have an icon, this is risky (no way to right-click and close it)
Select "Next"
Include...: You can include information about you or your widget here, functions, etc. It shows up in the about/more info dialog when the widget is running.
Save Widget As: Where do you want the widget to be saved and what do you want it to be called. As you can see I keep all my widgets on my D drive under DekstopX/widgets, its your call here.
Allow Multiple ...: This would allow you to run multiple copies of this widget, not something I have messed with, I would assume this is more for something like martin's notepad, but I'm not 100% sure.
Select "Finish"
That should about do it. You have now made a new widget that can be run on any machine with DX. I hope this has helped you to get into DXing. It is a simple application of how DX works, and showed you how to create an object from an image, as well as text based objects. It also should give you some insight into how to create a basic script and a timer.
PDF available
The Object Properties Dialog will show up.
Click the "Browse" Button.
Select the "Frame-Green.png" File from the 
You should now see your FRAME or BASE object.
RIGHT CLICK on this object and select "Properties".
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
Select the "States" Tab
This should be your new widget
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
Your new object should look like this now.
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
Your new object should look like this now.
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
Your new object should look like this now.
In the Object Properties dialog, select the "Summary" tab
We are now done creating objects.
This is the DekstopX Script Editor.
If you get a DX Scripting Error box, note the LINE Number its complaining about, and click the "Disable and Edit" button to go back into the script and see what is wrong.
if you click on "Disable and Edit" your script is now turned OFF.
Right click on the BASE object and select "EXPORT".
the Export Objects Dialog note the following items:
Widget name: the name you want to call the widget, I picked "DateWidget" you could call it whatever you want.
Include...: You can include information about you or your widget here, functions, etc.
