My Dot Net Page

Satellite

This is my first attempt at a dot net windows forms application. The program allows you to monitor a picture on a web page and synchronize it with you Windows wallpaper when it changes. Some of the goals I had were:

To produce a small application that performs a possibly useful task

To use as few resources as possible.

To find out if Windows Forms are a worthy successor to MFC and VB

How to use

When you run Satellite it displays the following dialog:

Satellite form

The URL to down load text box specifies the location of the file you want to synchronize your wallpaper with. The default is the UK Met Office infrared satellite picture of the UK and Europe; this is updated every four hours at 12,6 o'clock. Non UK users should change this URL to something more topical.

You can change the check update interval; the program only performs a full download and synchronization if the time stamp on the HTTP header is different.

The status bar reveals the current status of the download or the time of the last successful synchronization.

The Update Now button starts a synchronization attempt

Start starts the automatic update process

Stop stops the automatic update process

Download

The Satellite program is a Windows Forms GUI application written in CSharp. Click here to download the source code.

Random thoughts on Visual Studio 7

Windows Forms take a bit of getting used to, but once your used to them I believe you will approach VB like development efficiency.

There is a; rather evil bug that you'll only notice when you start putting your own icons and other resources into the form. If you obey the rule; that your form class must be the first class you can safely avoid it though.

The Code comment report is quite cute.

When minimize the application takes up approximately 500K a similar MFC program has the same memory foot print. When on display 5MB is used while the MFC program uses only 700K (Note the MFC program did not have a tool bar or status bar) so it's not an absolutely fair comparison.

I guess I'm just resistant to change but I found Visual studio 7 a bit daunting at first, but after getting used to it I prefer it to version 6, the editors are very slick, the project settings for VC++ are much easier to manage. My only complaint is I find it difficult getting the docking views to obey me. I only achieved victory after I decided I preferred the Auto hide all option, I hope this will work better in the final release.