RR Development

**RoyN** · 03-11-2005, 07:27 PM

Hi Guino,

I have just re-installed VB (after several years of being away from VB programming) and downloaded the RR source...

I have a few questions however about how I should go about developing it... I wonder if you have some time to guide fellow contributors...

I realize that it would only be intelligent to write stuff as extra .BAS modules, but I'm a bit in the dark about the skin implementation... I also dont know where I would tap into skin commands to load my module, and how I would go about adding a browser control and make it skinnable...

I saw that frmSkin had a bunch of controls like images and such, should I add the webbrowser element to that? Then how would I define a skin "control" for that?

I'm sorry if this is obvious to all VB programmers but I just never had skinning apps experience in VB, but once I get the jist I'm usually a quick-to-understand guy... if you can just provide an example or a small tutorial on writing extensions.

**guino** · 03-11-2005, 09:41 PM

I'm trying to understand what you want to do with a browser control.. if all you want is to make a way to check specific web pages (for weather, news, traffic etc) , then you should probably just make a stand alone application that you'd call from within RR (by pressing a button etc -- Dynamic commands can do that even without changing RR's code). You also have the option to simply use your app in the Launch menu.

How it works: Basically anything a user does in RR gets channelled through this "EXEC" function in RR. all screens are copies of frmSkin with added objects as needed, they are updated at a rate of 10 times per second (labels once a second) and that's it. I would strongly recommend not to add anything heavy like a browser control into frmSkin.. you can most definitely create a separate form for that (if needed) and then just control it from the other forms (that's what I did with the form that controls Speech, Media Player Classic and the one that holds MonkeyTalk to integrate with MM).

The least amount of stuff on frmSkin the better, the only things that should go there are things that might be used enough to appear on EVERY screen.

You can most definitely copy portions of RR's code to make your "browser" control app skinnable. And you could most definitely have normal controls in RR skins while running your separate application embbeded..

**BeaverWise** · 03-14-2005, 10:01 AM

Nice write up guino. How are you wanting people to submit changes/upgrades to the code at this time?

For example, if RoyN/anyone creates something that is really usefull and functional and wants to submitt it to you how do you want it?

**guino** · 03-14-2005, 12:18 PM

well... really, just send me the code -- hopefully with marked changes, I'll merge it in the latest source.. the only real requirement I impose is that it won't bring in any absurd memory/install requirements and won't be performance intensive when not used..

This doesn't mean you can't add whatever you want (even beyond my specs) to the code.. if you make it separate enough you can always get the latest source and add it to your own use.. I believe that mostly everything that is memory or performance intensive should be used as a separate app embbeded, that way who doesn't use it, won't suffer from any performance losses...

**RoyN** · 03-14-2005, 03:35 PM

Okay, I whipped up a really simple browser app in between classes today...

Features:
- Should be fully embeddable (window title is "BrowserForRoadRunner" (no ""), browser area resizes automatically)
- Configurable startpage through browser.ini file in same directory as EXE
- Unlimited favorites (+ favorites management, add/remove)
- Regular browsing (back, fwd, stop, reload)

Missing features
- Skinning (yeah this is actually kinda complex from what I've seen... havent had much time to fool around though)
- Improving naming of favorites with a more OSK friendly field instead of that ugly inputbox...
- surely there will be other slight improvements that I cant think about now...

I'm posting the source here so if someone has some time to make this compatible with Guino's skin structure that might help me to see more clearly and understand how to do that more easily... I could then go into developing more ciomplex plugins/companions to RR...

I actually just threw this together to get back into VB programming...

EDIT: I just updated the file to Browser1b.zip, which now allows the executable to be called with a command line argument. This should be a number, indicating a favorite link to be loaded on startup. This would (at least in theory) allow you to have a "weather" button, or "traffic" button, and so on...

call the exe "BrowserForRoadRunner.exe 1" would load up the first fav, argument 2, would be for the second and so forth...

HERE IS THE LATEST FILE: RR Development

**RoyN** · 03-14-2005, 03:46 PM

I used to be pretty good at VB but now I just suck! hehehe

Here is a screen shot, I know its ugly...

**RoyN** · 03-14-2005, 04:42 PM

Now embedded.....

Showing traffic around Sao Paulo highways in Brazil!

**guino** · 03-14-2005, 05:23 PM

If you provide the Empty/On/Off/Down images for the browser, I can make your app skinnable with RR's skins styles.. You probably should add a Up/Down, PgUp/PgDown button in your images though.

**RoyN** · 03-14-2005, 05:35 PM

ok!

I'm going to work on it!

I have been trying to get the scrolling to have larger style, but it isnt that easy... so far I havent found a way of directly ccontrolling the webbrowser's scrolling...

I am also planning to be able to store the scroll point of a favorite, so we can go back to weather/traffic images scrolled to a particular point (Like you see on my screenshot, the browser was scrolled down a bit to adjust the image for best fit...

**RoyN** · 03-14-2005, 06:25 PM

Guino, I'm downloading the PSDs from febs site, to try and modify some screens to use as my browser (since I suck at graphics)... however I only get the _ON and _DOWN images in every zip I get.... These are the PSDs...

do you knwo where I can get the _OFF?