Be prepared: get the Christmas Lights
· 2008-11-05 22:06 by Thijs Kroesbergen for Brokenwire.NET
A long, long time ago I wrote about that cool christmas lights application, written by an unknown author in ancient times.
Recently I took up the plan to re-write this application using the .NET framework (check out the new logo).
I used Scott Hanselman's "BabySmash" as an inspiration to get started, and I was able to write this in a matter of hours.
So as we are getting closer to the holiday season, this is the time to grab your copy of the cool new Christmas Lights for you desktop from the download page. Christmas will never be the same again once you've experienced this!
The application "works" as of right now (tray-icon, blinking lights around the borders) but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Here is a (non complete) list of features that I wish for:
- Get better artwork for the bulbs
- Be able to mix several types and colors of bulbs
- Let the user choose different blinking patterns (plugins?)
- Prevent the application from starting more than once :-)
- Make the number of lights configurable
- Make the blinking speed configurable
- Tune the frame rate to the amount of CPU power available
- Make a cool page with statistics about the number of blinks produced by this app...
Help me extend this list (and motivate me to work on this) by leaving a comment!
In the meanwhile, have fun! Oh and btw, did I mention you can download the Christmas Lights?
(More about the experiences with ClickOnce, Framework 3.5 and WPF in upcoming blog posts. And once I've tidied the sources I'll put it them here too.)
Tip: Batch files with over 9 parameters WPF Christmas Lights: see the source!