[HN Gopher] Octos - HTML live wallpaper engine
___________________________________________________________________
Octos - HTML live wallpaper engine
Author : underpig1
Score : 133 points
Date : 2023-07-22 08:56 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| wnayes wrote:
| I have been working on a project with some similarities, an X
| window manager written in Electron. It uses browser windows for
| wallpapers as well as frame windows. Haven't gotten the API where
| I want it to be yet, but I use it daily.
|
| https://github.com/wnayes/electron-wm
| midasuni wrote:
| It's like it's 1997 with IE4 and DHTML again!
|
| Wallpaper choice was a big thing 25 years ago. You could run 2 or
| 3 programs at the same time, but 16M of ram didn't go that far,
| so I guess I returned to the desktop quite a lot.
|
| Some habits persist, I still have xplanet on mine. I go weeks
| without seeing it.
| superkuh wrote:
| Win95's ActiveDesktop was pretty cool. But only for a while.
| Same here I'd bet.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Thanks for reminding me: you could actually set a webpage as
| the desktop wallpaper in old versions of Windows (XP and
| before). I used to have a cool animated wallpaper before it was
| cool.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I made an html page that used frames to load whatsup and
| other monitoring tools as my background
| entityDev wrote:
| Best of times DHTML was fun, doing Flash things without Flash
| :D
| enigmarc wrote:
| Very nice!
|
| Since I saw one of the Ascii Art styled ones:
|
| If anyone is interested in more Animated Ascii Art, I created an
| interactive tool to generate it recently: https://www.gifcii.fun
| znpy wrote:
| I remember having activedesktop in windows 98... everything old
| is new again lol
| fimdomeio wrote:
| How often do most people see the desktop during a session? To me
| is when turning on the computer, just before before mail chat and
| browser open. After that I just switch between apps.
|
| What I'm currently doing instead of a live wallpaper, is that I
| have a firefox plugin that on opening a new tab without url,
| shows me a site with status on things that matter to me.
| hedgehog wrote:
| I do, often. I keep my new tab page in all browsers blank for
| speed and minimal distraction, regularly hide all background
| apps (cmd-opt-H on Mac), close windows I'm not going to use for
| a while (especially anything that could have unsaved state),
| and use the set of items on my desktop as shortcuts into my key
| workflows.
| powersnail wrote:
| My workflow is always closing everything when I'm done with one
| segment of work (a bug is fixed, a commit polished, an email
| replied, the day has come to an end, etc.), and take a big
| stretch after getting out of the chair.
|
| So, I see my wallpaper quite a bit; though I don't notice it
| much any more.
| kristofferg wrote:
| Awesome <3. Takes me back to running compiz on slackware in the
| early 2000s. Era of the blinged out desktop.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Compiz still rocks it
| nickstinemates wrote:
| I find that the larger the monitor I have the more I appreciate
| windowed apps (vs. fullscreen) and as a result wallpaper choice
| makes more of a difference.
|
| I currently use Wallpaper Engine, will have to give Octos a try.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| Active desktop, but with 100x the cpu and memory requirements.
| Nurbek-F wrote:
| Amazing! What is the system usage of this?
| k4rli wrote:
| Negligent since this is made for Windows which already wastes
| most of resources
| odc wrote:
| It's an electron app, so I guess at least 1GB of RAM.
| pph wrote:
| I'm using Lively Wallpaper[0] to show an audio visualizer (trough
| CefSharp). The CPU load as shown in Task Manager is around 1.5-2%
| on my Ryzen 5800X. Therefore I tend to activate it only when I
| actually play some music and have it show.
|
| [0] https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively
| operator-name wrote:
| My experience running Google trends[0] is similar, but I had
| occasional spikes. I wonder if this is better.
|
| [0]: https://trends.google.com/trends/hottrends/visualize
| dtgriscom wrote:
| OK: I want an animated wallpaper of desktop windows, with the
| windows moving from time to time. It's good to be distracted from
| the useful parts of your computer.
| Gys wrote:
| Interestingly, this reminds me I have not seen the Desktop of my
| Mac in several years I think. I use spotlight, the dock and
| favorite places to move around. Plus a tabbed full screen view of
| several current folders. The Desktop should be behind all that, I
| assume ;)
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| I see my desktop at least weekly, but only because I shut down
| my computer on the weekends I'm not on call. I can't remember
| the last time I used it to open anything, regardless of the OS.
| I use the taskbar/dock, and the start menu/search function to
| open via the GUI. Otherwise, everything opens from the CLI.
| yreg wrote:
| I'm the exact opposite. Unless I'm watching a video, I'm
| usually not full screen. I keep my windows either side by side
| or centered with the desktop being visible on both sides. I
| absolutely hate it when apps like browsers, VS-Code-without-
| split-view-active or Slack are stretched the full width of
| 5120.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Right. I have mission control set up to one hot corner for when
| I want to switch between windows lazily with just one hand
| (mouse) and making out parts of my wallpaper underneath the
| scattered windows is the extent I see it.
| creesch wrote:
| This looks pretty neat! Reminds me of the early 2000s when
| everyone around me was messing around with rainmeter (Which I
| believe is still around) but this seems like it might be much
| more accessible.
| Avlin67 wrote:
| looks interesting but i spend so little time watching my desktop
| actually...
| feldrim wrote:
| Active Desktop resurrected. Nice.
| robinwassen wrote:
| I had an idea for a similar project (1) a few years back, but
| abandoned it after reaching the state where I had a node module
| to attach an Electron window to the wallpaper in Windows.
|
| Fun to see a project that has reached further, remember how cool
| I used to think dashboards/widgets for the PC stats were when I
| was younger.
|
| (1): https://github.com/robinwassen/electron-wallpaper
| smarkov wrote:
| This is cool though it contributes to the saturated "let's ship
| our own browser" space. I need a separate browser to play music,
| to play games, to communicate with people, to browse the web, and
| now to run a wallpaper. If only we had a way to use a single
| browser instance that is utilized by all of these. That's kind of
| been the selling point of the web all this time - write once and
| run _almost_ everywhere. You shouldn 't need to ship your own
| browser, though I understand we don't have that kind of
| capability standardized yet.
| Philpax wrote:
| Check out https://tauri.app/ - specifically,
| https://github.com/tauri-apps/wry, which provides a cross-
| platform interface to the system's WebView.
| rezonant wrote:
| What is the start bar / shell mod in these examples? Or is this
| part of Octos? Looks really nice.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Nice.
|
| Relatedly, I always found it deeply odd that there wasn't a
| widely popular "Conky" alternative that just used HTML/CSS/JS?
|
| Never figured out why not? Overhead?
| tiku wrote:
| My Avast virus scanner doesn't like it..
| me-vs-cat wrote:
| A more important question is why do you like Avast?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22159385
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36728825
| the_sleaze9 wrote:
| That second link seems to have some issues with credibility.
|
| And if you think Antivirus Software selling users' browser
| data is a poopy thing to do, you should take a look at what
| Cell Phone Carriers do with your phone's data.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-07-22 23:01 UTC)