As we have not updated you in a while, here are some of the latest change highlights submitted into the SharpE SVN over the last couple of months.

1. Exec Service
First I should mention the mega improvements that I added to Exec this weekend. Exec has never worked completely 100%, as some command line arguments failed to work completely. So I went through it, and managed to fix pretty much every known bug, so much that every command line I tested, now works without issues. Shortcuts are now also resolved correctly, and more debugging has been added. I have also added support for loading Vista control panel applets,

2. SharpBar
BB has been hard at work over the last couple of months to improve the visual refresh of the bar, and I’m happy to say that there is very little flicker now (the only flicker can be found when sometimes moving a bar). As a result the bars now seem even faster, and visually appealing than ever before. There have been many fixes and improvements that improve memory usage enormously, such as improvements to plug-in handling, optimisation of the skin render code, and much more. Positioning has also been improved, and plug-in overlapping should now hopefully be a thing to the past. Even preview dragging has been added, and the ability to drag another module to another bar. Glass effects have been added too, and are definable fully by the skin author, with effects such as blur, lighten, blend, opacity to control the glass. Many changes since TD1

3. Vista System Tray
BB and with support from Ironhead of http://emergedesktop.org , have been working together in supporting the Vista tray. I am happy to say that the tray works very well with SharpE, there are still a few popup issues, and a network issue but everything is responsive and works pretty much flawlessly. This was no easy task, and involved lots of monitoring of the start-up of Vista, Explorer and other shells to work out how it was done. Gratitude for Ironhead in helping us, when another commercial shell, decided not to.

4. Configurations
BB and I have been hard at work with SharpCenter and Configurations. There was a need for a few extra components to help with the consistent design and ease of use required for configuration. One such component I have been working on is a colour editor, where a global palette is stored and can be used throughout SharpE, the editor makes it much easier to define and mix different colours to get the effect you want. Consistency is important, we want each configuration to work like the next, so that it's easy and enjoyable to use. SharpCenter is something major that has took a lot longer to spec and implement, but we already have lots of early configurations developed for it, such as some major theme, service and management configurations. This will be a work in progress for the next three months, but in TD2 we should have a taste of things to come.

5. Desktop Improvements
There has been much enhancement to the desktop wallpaper code. One such enhancement is the ability to use the Set as Desktop Wallpaper option found in other apps, such as Firefox, as we now handle this message. A configuration has also been developed, and there will be screenshots at the end of this news article, but it shows what is possible with SharpCenter for ease of use and productivity.

6. SharpCompile!
Finally a compile application, that will compile the entire source with simply one click That is unless I have broken something, and fixed it, or not committed the fix :P Such a useful tool that makes it easier for other developers to compile a working release of SharpE.

7. Website!
Many changes to come, community site nearly live; add-ons site is nearly ready for a demo, overall all coming together.

These are only a highlight of how much work has been completed in the months since TD1. We hope you will all make it to our next Test Day, when TD2 will be unveiled for you all, likely before the end of this month!

Screenshots!