Thread: CarShell : touch-screen friendly shell and password application

Originally Posted by BoyNextDoor

you know what Alti? This is the beginning of the comertializxation of Carpc's. If you think of it, any car manufacturer could costumize a shell, and have it exactly how they want it. and boom off you go. You have the skills man. Invest in this field. Believe me if you get this going... so i'd really like to see this in ction. you gonna have this in your car by next sunday?

thanks, most of the front ends here function quite well as a shell and a more functional for a car, I wanted to make windows easier to use for us geeks who still want to be able to use our capc as a computer.

And you dont have to wait for the meet, go ahead and try it out

Originally Posted by alti

I am going to work on the start times when booting as the shell, It seems anything other then explorer causes lag, so i am going to spend more time on it.

I vaguely remember seeing on an alternate shell forum how this problem
was noticed and solved, but I can't quite remember. I will search

I really like this idea, you could add features to this "shell" that some front ends don't have. For example, brightness control.

Nice program. Looks like you have put alot of work into it. May I make a suggestion; Instead of replacing the windows shell, (which if something goes wrong, it could prove to be disastrous), Hide and block the windows desktop, startmenu, and desktop menu's. This can be done using API, and it wont lag the system bootup. You could make an option in your program to make everything accessible again in case the user needs to get into the windows shell for some reason.

Here is a good example of this:

http://www.Planet-Source-Code.com/vb...42894&lngWId=1

Here is the code to stop the lag at bootup. The culprit is the windows welcome screen.
Just tested and works like a charm, before, I got a 30 second delay, now, none.


Run this at the start.
VB6 Code, but it is all Win32 API, original was C++

Code:

'Original code credited to Nicolas Eschuder

'Declarations
Private Declare Function OpenEvent Lib "kernel32.dll" Alias "OpenEventA" (ByVal dwDesiredAccess As Long, ByVal bInheritHandle As Long, ByVal lpName As String) As Long
Private Declare Function SetEvent Lib "kernel32.dll" (ByVal hEvent As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function CloseHandle Lib "kernel32.dll" (ByVal hObject As Long) As Long
Private Const EVENT_MODIFY_STATE As Long = &H2

'Put this part in the load event/start event

    Dim H As Long
    H = OpenEvent(EVENT_MODIFY_STATE, False, "msgina: ShellReadyEvent")
    If H <> 0 Then
        SetEvent H
        CloseHandle H
    End If

Originally Posted by frodobaggins

Here is the code to stop the lag at bootup. The culprit is the windows welcome screen.
Just tested and works like a charm, before, I got a 30 second delay, now, none.


Run this at the start.
VB6 Code, but it is all Win32 API, original was C++

Code:

'Original code credited to Nicolas Eschuder

'Declarations
Private Declare Function OpenEvent Lib "kernel32.dll" Alias "OpenEventA" (ByVal dwDesiredAccess As Long, ByVal bInheritHandle As Long, ByVal lpName As String) As Long
Private Declare Function SetEvent Lib "kernel32.dll" (ByVal hEvent As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function CloseHandle Lib "kernel32.dll" (ByVal hObject As Long) As Long
Private Const EVENT_MODIFY_STATE As Long = &H2

'Put this part in the load event/start event

    Dim H As Long
    H = OpenEvent(EVENT_MODIFY_STATE, False, "msgina: ShellReadyEvent")
    If H <> 0 Then
        SetEvent H
        CloseHandle H
    End If

Man you are one step ahead of me, I worte an email to the owner of one the websites for an alternitive shell software and 1 minute before i read your post got this reply (more info for anyone else interested):

Originally Posted by Email

I noticed on your website that you have found and fixed the needless delay when loading an alternative shell in place of explorer.

Close, but no cigar. I only echoed news about alternative
shells where it was finally fixed. I know for certain
that it was fixed in recent LiteStep and bb4win builds.

The fix is credited to a certain Nicolas Escuder and if
you run a search on that, you'll find this little snippet
in the Xoblite (bb4win clone) source:

----
// Tell the WinXP Welcome screen to close...
// (fix courtesy of Nicolas Escuder / LiteStep 0.24.7 RC3)
HANDLE hShellReadyEvent = OpenEvent(EVENT_MODIFY_STATE, false, "msgina: ShellReadyEvent");

if (hShellReadyEvent != NULL)
{
SetEvent(hShellReadyEvent);
CloseHandle(hShellReadyEvent);
}

----
source: http://xoblite.net/source/Blackbox.cpp.html

The LiteStep source it refers to can be found here:
http://lsdev.org/download.php?view.2


That's about all I can help you with, as my coding
skills are non-existant. If you need further help with
this, perhaps it is wise to ask this on the LiteStep
Mailing List, where some of their devs hang out:
http://wuzzle.org/list/litestep.php

...or via their gmane mirror (so you don't have to
sign up first):
http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.windows.shells.litestep

The code is in C and looks like it starts what your code finishes, I was just about to google that guys name but decided to check the thread first. Great job Frodo, implementing now

Originally Posted by reddeath30

Nice program. Looks like you have put alot of work into it. May I make a suggestion; Instead of replacing the windows shell, (which if something goes wrong, it could prove to be disastrous), Hide and block the windows desktop, startmenu, and desktop menu's. This can be done using API, and it wont lag the system bootup. You could make an option in your program to make everything accessible again in case the user needs to get into the windows shell for some reason.

Here is a good example of this:

http://www.Planet-Source-Code.com/vb...42894&lngWId=1

I am going to continue working on it primarily as a shell replacment, however, it can be used right now by putting it in the startup folder at boot, and will cover the whole screen (the MiniShell will just hang out where-ever you leave it) the start menu and desktop are effectively covered as they are with a frontend.

I am going to work on cleaning this up more after i get it working as a shell properly. I reallize many people are tentitive to use it as a shell, so i will work to make it functional both ways.

Originally Posted by IntellaWorks

I really like this idea, you could add features to this "shell" that some front ends don't have. For example, brightness control.

Will look into, the next thing on my list after the boot up delay issue is get a startup tab (or some place to put programs to load @ startup, currently the program only provides a way to load one software on boot. I am also going to play with the UI and maybe a task tray of some sort. I am open to suggestions on ideas

BTW, your thread on systems shells is one kickers that got this program started, thanks!

Originally Posted by DRWeside

Keep up the good work Alti

Thanks for the motivation and ideas

Originally Posted by alti

The code is in C and looks like it starts what your code finishes, I was just about to google that guys name but decided to check the thread first. Great job Frodo, implementing now

It's actually the EXACT same code, just in VB
In C, the API declarations are in the includes for Win32.

Frodo