Blog: Bloated IE, AveDesk, & Docks

Thursday, July 29, 2004 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News

Microsoft really needs to do something about Internet Explorer. I doubt most people are even aware but it has slowly evolved into being a huge bloated pig over the years. Hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up your task manager and see for yourself.

It's always a little ironic when I read someone complaining about the meg or two of memory WindowBlinds uses or some other desktop enhancement when they're probably using IE.  Mozilla, Opera, etc. are all much less resource intensive.  And yet, I always find myself back with IE. I'm not sure why. Microsoft must send out hypnotizing rays or something forcing me to use it and declare that it is "better than Cats".

The Spider-Man 2 desktop came out this week. Clearly it's all a matter of taste but I have to say, this is one of the coolest skins I've used in a long time. Even if it weren't related to Spider-Man (and I'm a huge Spider-Man fan, I have every issue of "Ultimate Spider-Man" which is the reformatted version of the comic book) I would still like this skin.  I just love the Start bar and I don't think I've seen the explorer view panes skinned this well before.

For long time members of our community, the Spider-Man skin represents a milestone of gaining mainstream respectability.  I saw some comments on Neowin where they were thinking the skin was too dramatic. But that's kind of the whole point. There's more to skinning than Luna recolorizations and Mac-like gray skins. It's skins like the Spider-Man skin that I got into this sort of thing in the first place. Bold, different, and creative.

I'll resist talking about Dashboard or Konfabulator this week since some people seem to treat their mention like kryptonite. So instead I'll plug a new program that I think is pretty cool, AveDesk. Written by AndreasV. AndreasV is a well known ObjectDock docklet developer. When we designed the ObjectDock docklet specification, one of the design requirements was to make it generic. It was our hope to create a standard docklet specification so that other programs could share the same docklets.  That way the handful of docklet developers wouldn't have to split their work amongst competing docklet types.  AveDesk uses ObjectDock docklets like stand alone "widgets".  I think this has a lot of potential and benefit for the community. The more docklets, the better and the more programs that support a single specification, the better.

Speaking of docks, for those who think Apple's zoom dock is the end all, be all, here's an article that has some areas it could use some improvement. ObjectDock Plus, btw, addresses most of them.

For instance, one common Mac complaint about their zoom dock is that there's no labels.  By contrast, ObjectDock lets you have labels. I find this useful for my system tray and taskbar since it's easy to lose track of what all those icons are. But I would like to be able to set this on a per tab basis. Not sure that'll get into the "final" build but it's definitely on my wish list along with a "To-Do" plugin.

Has anyone else thought of making a To-Do docklet? I'd imagine it working as follows: You double click on the to-do docklet and it pops up a simple dialog where I name it and describe it and can assign an image for it. It then creates a new dock item of it. When I've finished it, I just drag it off the dock and see it poof. Seeing work finish would be very satisfying.

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SelfExiled
Reply #1 Thursday, July 29, 2004 1:25 PM
This looks interesting. Glad to see that you didn't stop doing it. Lots to read here though. Well, see ya, got a little reading to do.

Benjamin
Reply #2 Thursday, July 29, 2004 2:08 PM
The To-Do docklet sounds cool. It would be ultra-cool if it could tie into Outlook as well and pick up your tasks from there. It's annoying to have to go into Outlook every time I want to check my todo list.

AndreasV
Reply #3 Thursday, July 29, 2004 2:35 PM
me is being mentioned in SkinningGods....ehrm..Frogboys blog YAY!

Anyhoo, the To-do-Docklet is not possible to do for Object Dock. Object Dock lacks the possibility to create dock items from an API Hope it will be added/fixed

c242
Reply #4 Thursday, July 29, 2004 3:20 PM
Brad, You should really start to use something like SlimBrowser. Although it is an addon for IE it uses "only" 20 Megs here with 14 sites open as tabs. -)

nocool
Reply #5 Thursday, July 29, 2004 3:44 PM
If there was some viable alternative to explorer, or Linux supported modern games, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Big Doug
Reply #6 Thursday, July 29, 2004 3:47 PM
AveDesk is one of the coolest programs I've ever had the pleasure of using. And it owes it's existance to DesktopX and ObjectDock, with both programs being the inspiration for it. AveDesk is tops in my book and has the benefit of a LOT of people supporting it's development. Like IconX on steroids (which, of course, IS cool), but does what OD and DX does too.

AndreasV should work for Stardock, making a program of this calibur.

flipdoubt
Reply #7 Thursday, July 29, 2004 3:58 PM
I am soooo into the idea of the TODO list that it hurts, but my forte is .NET development and I'm waiting on pins and needles to see the SDK opened up to .NET developers.

Septimus
Reply #8 Thursday, July 29, 2004 4:19 PM
Yeah is agree with Doug, AveDesk 1.1 is a fantastic app.

DesktopX is great and very powerful in what it can do, but for me it does way more than I need and I must admit I have switched to using AveDesk.

I'm sure its possible to run both if the need arises though.

GoodBytes
Reply #9 Thursday, July 29, 2004 4:45 PM
Oh to bad for Internet exploer.. it had it's chance!
More and more programs are using mozilla Active X control.
And more and more user are swich with 1000X better web browser then IE, like Opera, Mozilla, and Mozilla Firefox!
If you still live in a cave and use IE, it's time to get out of that cave.

Frogboy
Reply #10 Thursday, July 29, 2004 5:04 PM
Sept: Why not just use DesktopX widgets then? You don't even have to have DesktopX loaded then.

UpsideDownGC
Reply #11 Friday, July 30, 2004 12:05 AM
Personally I find that AIRLOCK is a much more creative skin than Spider Man and that it should be considered a milestone for creativity. I see a lot of skins that are like the the Spiderman skin. I think that without the license it would not be a skin capabale of being sold, based on waht I see from the screenshots. I do not want to spend 9 dollars to find out if I am right becasue If I am not I have spent 9 dollars incorrectly. I feel that the Spider Man Skin is just a advertising tool and it might be good for the proffesional skinners but it only hurts the amatuers that makes skins better than it and do not get recognized as much. That is just my opinion.

imtoomuch
Reply #12 Friday, July 30, 2004 1:17 AM
Come on, 144,368k for IE? How man windows do you have open? I use Firefox as my default browser, but I still use IE on occasion.

Anyway, AveDesk rocks. It's the second best desktop widget app after Samurize.

c242
Reply #13 Friday, July 30, 2004 3:02 AM
Could You please make Object Dock keep its settings when updating from SDC ? Good luck for me that I made a backup of my settings. -)

TheD2JBug
Reply #14 Friday, July 30, 2004 11:41 AM
I have maxthon(MyIE2) running and even with multiple tabs it's nowhere near that bad. It uses IE

what gives?

Septimus
Reply #15 Friday, July 30, 2004 12:16 PM
Frogboy: Yeah good idea, I forgot about that.

Attila
Reply #16 Friday, July 30, 2004 3:10 PM
You're running a lot of instances of IE. But naturally, IE is load heavy, which is ashame because people mistakenly think it's their system causing things to run sluggish, when it's just a poorly designed program. Firefox with its tabbed interface allows the extensibility of viewing multiple websites in one instance of the program, as opposed to three or four instances of IE to view as many different websites. I've taken a screenshot of my Firefox browser with three tabs open:

http://junk.vincentbrown.com/screenshots/firefox-process.jpg

As you can also see, WBLoad isn't load heavy at all, in comparison.

Attila
Reply #17 Friday, July 30, 2004 6:42 PM
I know it's not as big a deal as I made it to be, and I'm fairly certain no one else is going to check this article, but I was curious and went ahead and opened IE and Firefox at the same page. For whatever reason, Firefox has a sizable amount more load than IE. The page I loaded was: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/critical/ie6sp1/default.mspx Try it yourself, load it in IE and Firefox then CTRL+SHIFT+ESC and see what it tells you. I don't know how scientific this is, but it's telling. It could be the number of plugins I have installed in Firefox.. or its themes support, who knows.

Here's that screenshot: http://junk.vincentbrown.com/screenshots/firefox_ie-process.jpg

bp_ronjon
Reply #18 Friday, July 30, 2004 9:36 PM
I'm seeing the same thing attila. I believe if you choose to view/keep open more than a few web pages in IE, you will soon see the advantage that firefox or Opera have over IE.

Kyhlwch
Reply #19 Saturday, July 31, 2004 1:05 AM
I have no interest in Object Dock and no plans to buy it but I would pay real money for a To-Do docklet like you describe!

Mukul Varma
Reply #20 Saturday, July 31, 2004 4:49 AM
Frogboy, can you let me know the name of the WB skin used in that topmost screenshot of Windows Task Manager in this post? It's slick and so is the one linked to by JourneyMan Attila . What's the name of that skin? Here is the link-

http://junk.vincentbrown.com/screenshots/firefox_ie-process.jpg

These seem to me as really usable skins much like the default themes Windows comes with.

Can we have a new category of slick and subtle WB skins? Or else, would you guys suggest some skins i can put on my shell and forget.

I prefer stuff that do not inspire awe, i prefer unobtrusive skins which look elegant and are usable.

Do suggest me such skins.

God bless ya all

Regards

Mukul

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