Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 305 posts

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#121

Post by praseodym »

hnlmorg wrote: post #117
pomian wrote: post #107

This reminds me of a Lara Croft desktop(?) Screensaver? She climbed onto the window's edges -that were open on your windows screen, rolled, jumped, etc. Sometimes made a comment about you not having cleaned up your desktop. It was a small executable, than ran with or without sound. It wasn't very random, but it made for an interactive mind distraction on a rough day. She also walked across the bottom of the screen, o…

There was a few programs like this. The earliest one I recall was Neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) But I think there were sheep, dancing babies (ugh!!), something like Bonzi Buddy rings a bell (I once had to clean something named that off a colleague’s workstation when he reported it thinking it was malware). There was also toys like this on Linux and Unix too. Most famously xeyes. I miss the play…

Bonzi Buddy was widely classified as spyware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy

But if you read the description of its spyware behaviour from a current perspective, it's not that different from the telemetry that’s implemented everywhere and Windows bugging you to use Bing as a search engine.

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#123

Post by albert_e »

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well.

I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one.

Instead what I have is ads.

And copilot everywhere.

With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive UX ideas if Windows customization and widgets ecosystem was alive and thriving.

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#125

Post by matsemann »

albert_e wrote: post #123

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well. I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one. Instead what I have is ads. And copilot everywhere. With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive U…

Widgets has existed natively on Windows since Vista. Unless you have disabled it from your taskbar settings, it's the icon next to your start menu.

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#126

Post by shrikant »

samcgraw wrote: post #67
aresant wrote: post #42

This is awesomely reminiscent of the old school 68k macintosh era - dogcow, oscar the grouch in the trash can, etc I miss that simplicity / playfulness / aesthic of that era (yes I am old, please get off my lawn)

One of my first memories is of my dad showing me how Oscar the Grouch was in his Mac trash can, and sang, “I love trash!” when he put something in there. Haven’t thought of that in many years, but it was the first thing I thought of when I saw this.

I vaguely recall a LiteStep theme for Windows back in the day that did something like this -- hadn't heard of it as a Mac feature before!

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#127

Post by Bluestein »

Bluestein wrote: post #13
pavel_lishin wrote: post #9

I remember having these kinds of desktop toys in Windows, way back when, probably 95 or 98? Just a little joyful thing you could play with. This rules.

I was fond (I know, I know ...) of those dancing er ... dancers you could have cavorting around your taskbar and Star Menu. The days ... PS. They would use up an obscene amount of memory and wholesale freeze your entire computer every 20 minutes. Didn't matter :)

Someone upthread is right: VirtualGirl it was called. Borderline spyware, but really well done.-

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#129

Post by ikari_pl »

pomian wrote: post #107

This reminds me of a Lara Croft desktop(?) Screensaver? She climbed onto the window's edges -that were open on your windows screen, rolled, jumped, etc. Sometimes made a comment about you not having cleaned up your desktop. It was a small executable, than ran with or without sound. It wasn't very random, but it made for an interactive mind distraction on a rough day. She also walked across the bottom of the screen, o…

You will love and hate Desktop Goose

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#130

Post by skrebbel »

matsemann wrote: post #125
albert_e wrote: post #123

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well. I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one. Instead what I have is ads. And copilot everywhere. With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive U…

Widgets has existed natively on Windows since Vista. Unless you have disabled it from your taskbar settings, it's the icon next to your start menu.

You mean the tabloid news panel? I know it’s called widgets but it’s actually a tabloid news panel. I have no idea why MS thinks people need tabloid news inside their OS but alas. You can’t turn off the tabloid news without turning off the entire panel, ergo effectively Windows doesn’t have widgets.
Post reply on HN