joustlog

I’m working on a project which uses JShortcut along with JDIC IconService, JDIC FileTypes, and Glazed Lists to allow you to quickly search through the programs in your Start Menu.

Here’s a screenshot:

There are lots of programs that do this, but they are all shareware, or for other operating systems, so I’m writing my own.

This is a brand new project but the basic search functionality is there, as you can see in the screenshot. Some icons don’t show up because of some JDIC bugs, which will hopefully be fixed soon.

I have a bunch of plans for this project, including:

• Create JDIC subproject out of JShortcut, or integrate it into JDIC FileTypes
• Add Linux and OSX support

It looks like I’m going to have to write my own library with JNI for setting global (desktop-wide) hotkeys, as well as to watch a folder for changes.

I can’t think of a name for this project; any suggestions would be great, just post a comment.

I will create a java.net page for this project as soon as I find a name I like.

Recently Joshua Marinacci announced that he was developing a new JDIC sub-project called “JDIC Misc.,” which provides some cross-platform functionality which does not fit in any of the other JDIC projects.

JDIC Misc. allows you to:

• alert the user that an important event has occurred in your application (like AIM or iChat does when you receive a message).
• show a custom menu on the taskbar/dock item(s) for your application
• manipulate the computer’s master sound volume
• set the desktop wallpaper

I looked at the Javadoc for these new API’s and saw lots of design, implementation, and code style problems. I will discuss them here.

Design problems

(more…)