I downloaded DeskTask 0.3 today and I really like the idea, but I've had a few problems.

It defaults to somewhere in the middle of the screen and I've had some trouble moving it. When I do, it doesn't stay transparent, and instead gets a blue background which is quite annoying as it covers up part of the desktop. I also think it would be a good idea to have some way of locking its position, like you can lock most toolbars.

I appreciate the function for a custom colour text as the 16 defaults don't fit my desktop. I think that there are better options for the icon as well, possibly something like the Outlook Today icon would be suitable. Or, a relevant continuation of the Office "square" format, similar to your MemInfo icon. There are many Outlook icons in the outicon.exe file found in your \WINDOWS\Installer directory that you could use for inspiration.

After moving the DeskTask window it looses it's transparency?
What is the windows version you are using?

DeskTask should be quite fixed on the Desktop, in fact it should be more difficult moving it, than having it stay fixed. So I don't really see a need for a "lock" feature.


When choosing the color for the font, in the dropdown box, the last item is "custom..." when clicking it you can choose whatever color you want.


I can change the Icon if more people don't like it, if you are using Windows XP you can always hide it anyway.
As for using the Outlook today icon, which is very good looking, I don't really know if it's something I'm allowed to use. Since it's very specific icon from a feature of Outlook. It's almost like using the Outlook icon itself.

Regarding the square icon to match the MS Office applications, that might be a good ideia. I will look into this.

Thanks,

André Santos
Carthago Software Support
http://www.carthagosoft.net

Thanks for your comprehensive and prompt response!



Yeah it gets a blue background. I am running XP SP2 with full updates.



OK, after having looked at it more I agree.



Yeah I know! I was just saying thats a good feature I like, thanks for adding it! It would be good if you could also change the colour of the task date due text from that fluoro green.



It's not that I don't like your icon, just that I think it could be more relevant to the purpose of DeskTask. An idea I had (don't have a lot of time at the moment to do it for you:( ) was the XP desktop logo (available in shell32.dll) with the pencil removed and a task pad in the bottom right. If you had more time to create original content, the square icon idea would fit really well I think.

Cheers
Lloyd

Can you give me steps to reproduced it?

When you start DeskTask the window is transparent, as soon as you move it it gets a blue background? it happens every time you move the Window?


That will be available on the next version, the option of showing (or not) colors on tasks dates and choose the colors for past and future tasks.


I have thought of that, but was not something which I wanted to loose a lot of time on, some people don't even notice the icon, but I will see If I get a more nice looking icon

Thanks,

André Santos
Carthago Software Support
http://www.carthagosoft.net

OK, after a little investigation, I have found the cause of the blue background (loss of transparency) on dragging.

It only happens when I am running the ATi Hydravision software that makes windows go 50% transparent when dragged by their title bar. After I killed the HydraDM.exe process, DeskTask acted fine.

I have never really had much problem with Hydravision in this way beforehand. Perhaps you are using a non-standard form layout or something that Hydravision doesn't know how to correctly implement.

Anyway, DeskTask remembers its last location, so if I locate it, close it, launch Hydravision and then open DeskTask, everything's peachy!

Not really, I just say the window background is transparent. This sort of things can happen. I can't explore more the problem as I don't have that Hydravision program (Not even a ATI card to test, as I suspect should be part of a ATI drivers package)

But as you say you found a workaround for this problem, it's not a serious issue.

Thanks,

André Santos
Carthago Software Support
http://www.carthagosoft.net