Firstly the past six months I have been relatively inactive development wise due to a variety of reasons, some good, some bad. Fortunately due the overwhelming support we have been receiving, we now have more developers to help improve the shell, and we have not suffered too much :P The project continues stronger than ever...

• We welcomed HomerSp to the team last month, as for the last few months he has committed several worthy additions to the shell, and continues to do so

• The next release already has bags of bug fixes and improvements TD6R5 Changelog

• The move back to SourceForge has been most succesfull, with us even in the top 100 for a few days Remember to use the trackers to submit bug and feature requests!

• The site replacement is actively being worked on...

Took a little longer than we had hoped for. Here it finally is, the next release - TD6R4.

Besides several bug fixes of some major bugs (like the link launcher not working when SharpE was unpacked in a directory which contained spaces) there is also a lot of new stuff included. For example there is a "new" skin, "Number 8" which basically is a very much improved version of "Number 7". But this new skin makes use of two new features in the application bar. The hover and highlight blending effects are now using the colors of the icon which is assigned to the application bar item. And the multiple window overlay is now displayed as a number instead of the new white squares. Both features are skin specific and currently only supported by the new Number 8 skin. Besides this there are some nice new features in the cursor service (thanks to our user HomerSp).

Another change compared to the previous releases is that the download is now again hosted on sf.net. Bug and feature trackers will follow in a few days.

Please post feedback into this forum thread
Download

click "Read the rest... " for the complete changelog.

[ Read the rest ... ]

It took (as usual) longer than expected. But here it is! The next release of SharpE! TD6R3!

The changelog is freaking huge and as usual incomplete. But it should cover most changes.
One important change is the optional usage of NET 3.5. In order to provide better support for 64bit operating systems we developed two new small SharpE applications in C#. Those two applications are the shell service object launcher which is responsible for the system icons in the tray and a link launcher which will fix issues with .lnk files on 64bit operating systems. Both applications will automatically be used by the shell if the NET 3.5 Framework is installed, if not then the old methods will be used (which will cause minor issues on 64bit systems). If you do not wish to use those NET components although you have the NET 3.5 framework installed then just delete or rename SharpLinkLauncherNET.exe and SharpShellServicesNET.exe and everything will work just as before. But we highly recommend to use the NET components.

As mentioned before the new taskbar and applicationbar feature of showing task previews are only available on Vista and Windows 7 with the Home Premium versions or above. Basically all versions featuring Aero. Operating systems not supporting Aero (such as XP or Home Basic) will use the popup menu from the previous version of SharpE.

We hope you like this new release. Looking forward for feedback of any kind.

Changelog
Please post feedback into this forum thread
Download

The release of TD6R3 (or maybe TD7) is coming closer, so here is a quick update on what's going on.

Development has lately concentrated on getting the shell to be able to compete against windows 7. With Win7 many very powerfull features are added to the explorer shell and we feel that users switching to SharpE from windows 7 will miss some of those features. With the application bar module we already have one of the most important Win7 taskbar features integrated into SharpE, but it was time to add more new stuff.

With the next release the two most important new features are
1) Support for larger Skins
A lot of work has been done on the skin system to allow the creation of larger skins. All our current skins are pretty small and limited in height and icon sizes. With the latest changes it's no problem to have skins with icon sizes up to 32x32 and bar heights over 40 pixels. To demonstrate this a new skin has been created.
2) Task Previews
For users using Vista and Win7 versions which are supporting Aero Effects (Home Premium++) the taskbar and application bar modules will now show preview windows when hovering over the items with the mouse. These preview windows are using the DWM api, meaning that they are very fast and updated live. Of course we are taking this further than just implementing what windows7 taskbar does. New features for the application bar include stacking of multiple preview windows and the possibility to interact with several previews (restore or close several windows at the same time by left/middle clicking their preview while holding down the shift key).

Those new features are demonstrated best in a little screenshot


In addition we are working on fixing the remaining tray problems on Vista and on making it ready for Win7. The annoying crashing bug when closing SharpCenter on XP should also be fixed in the next release.

It took a while, but now it's done.
I finally managed to find some time to put together the long awaited bug fix release of TD6.
A lot of stuff got fixed and improved, but we aren't done yet! Development on R3 will begin right now

So please post feedback and bug reports to the new forum thread over here
Download as usual on the trac page: Download (yes the trac is online again)
Complete Changelog

I also want to say "thank you" to all the people supporting us, the feedback we got for TD6 was just amazing.
Keep up using and testing SharpE! Keep the feedback coming!

Time for some real news

As you might have guessed, the last news was an april fools joke.
But there was at least some truth to it. The development of the shell really has slowed down again. The reason for this is that for Pixol and me some stuff came up in real live which limits our time to work on the shell a lot. Things will get better in a few weeks, but until then not much is going to happen.

Besides this we are having big problems with the server. Our hosting company decided to move the site to a new server. While moving a lot of stuff got broken resulting in mc having to completely reinstall and reconfigure the trac system.

TD6R2 related things look pretty good, a lot of stuff has already been fixed and improved and we are trying to release it as soon as possible.
There are still a lot of things which aren't running as smooth as they should - so we are now focusing on fixing those issues.

Sorry for the delay.

Development has slowed down again (as you might have noticed).
The reason for this is that with TD6 we have gone one step too far. Many users where rather unhappy with how TD6 turned out. Especially the clumsy configs and the instable core of the shell where heavily criticized. It has also turned out that the new "features" like the application bar module caused mostly confusion and trouble.

Over the past 5 weeks (in our attempt to fix those problems) we realized that we have been going too far too quickly with the development of the whole shell. Too many changes have been made in a short period of time. The result is that the source code got so complex and bloated that it's imposible for us to work with.

At the same time we had some long discussions among the development team and some old hardcore users of the shell. It came to our realization that actually since the good old cvs6 release not much has changed. We have all been focused too much on the shiny and want to be pretty aspects of the shell. And under the hood, nothing really changed. Functionality is still the same - everything just got a lot more complex - resulting in the shell getting more instable and impossible to work with.

Due to this we decided to go back to the roots of SharpE. From now on the source code base of cvs6 will be used for the future development of the shell. Cvs6 was the most successful and stable release of SharpE ever. And we are going back to it. From now on we won't focus on useless stuff like skins and schemes anymore. Our whole effort will now go into the development of new functionality - brining a minimalistic, but powerfull shell to your desktop.

Stay tuned for the release of CVS7 in a few weeks.


If you haven't been around in the glorious days of SharpE cvs6,
here is what will soon come back to your desktop!

We had a few issues with a server move, and as such it has broken our wiki system. Until we have a fix for it, here is a alternative link for the main testing day wiki page. We also look forward in releasing TD6 R2 any day now.

Download and Setup

Today on 22 February 2009 we are having testing day 6!
Our Developers will be providing live feedback and help in IRC for the next 12 hours. We need your opinion about the shell and all crazy ideas you have how to make it better!
Join us in #SharpE on irc.freenode.net and help to improve SharpE!

Everything you need to know how to get started:
(Make sure to read the the information pages below before getting started!)
Testing Day 6 Main Page
Download and Setup
Changelog
Frequently Asked Questions and Known Problems

Nearly everything is done and so it's time to announce the next SharpE Testing Day! Due to all the changes which have been done it is necessary to do TD6 as a full 12 hour testing day with live IRC support.

For the whole time developers will be present in IRC to answer your questions and solve possible problems. Detailed informations where to get the release will be posted when the testing day begins.

Date: Sunday - 22 February, 2009
Time: 12:00 to 24:00 (GMT)
Place: #SharpE on irc.freenode.net

So what are the changes that make this release so big and important?

SharpCenter and Configs
The plugin system of SharpCenter along with all configs has been completely rewritten. Everything is a lot more stable now and the overall design of the configs has improved a lot. Besides this all the remaining configs which where still missing in TD5 are finished now!


SharpBar and Modules
Similar to SharpCenter the complete plugin system has been rewritten. The result of this is less memory usage and improved performance and stability. As a result of the rewrite the amount of flickering in the bar has been reduced furthermore. In addition to this many small and rare bugs are fixed now. This includes those annoying access violations one could get when attaching an additional monitor to the system or when just changing the screen resolution.

Skin System
Getting left behind during the last releases the whole skin system received some improvements for TD6. Besides just fixing some bugs several improvements have been made. It's now possible for a skin developer to dynamically adjust the lightness of any color directly in the xml file. With this a skin author can use different variations of the same color directly without having to define new colors or using differently blended images. Another big improvement is the possibility for a skin to color blend and lighten icons similar to the icon blending of SharpDesk. To demonstrate and test those new features a new Skin ("Minimal 2") is included in TD6.


Notes Module
The for many people most important and loved module of SharpE is going to be improved a lot for TD6. Not much to say here, except: check out the screenshot below!


Application Bar Module
TD6 will include the new "AppBar" module. This module is a combination of the "Button Bar" and "Taskbar" modules which makes it possible to monitor and manage your most used and favorite tasks. Similar to the Button Bar you can add applications to the AppBar module. Those applications are then monitored, which means that their running state will be indicated at the button associated with the application. If you click an applications button while the application is running it will simply switch to this application (like in the Taskbar), but if the application is not running yet - then a click on the button will start it (like in the Button Bar). If the application is started several times or if it's using several windows then a popup menu showing all windows associated to the application will be shown when the applications button is pressed. Of course this new module is fully integrated into the shell, which means that you can hide all the applications which are part of the AppBar module from your taskbar. This makes it possible to easily manage often used applications and to stop them from filling up your taskbar.


Everything Else
These where only the big changes which you might instantly notice. Besides this a lot of fixed and improvements have been done all over the shell. The dll file behind the theme system was rewritten completely and a lot of other crucial bugs are gone. This includes the login screen on Vista not staying visible for too long anymore and SharpE no longer crashing when used from a directory with a very long path. In fact so many changes have been made that at some point we failed to keep a complete changelog.

Some screenshots of the whole shell in action:


As you can see a lot of stuff has changed and improved since TD5.
And to test all these cool new things we need your help!
Join us on Testing Day 6!