Currently we are investigating a little new feature, code named, crossbar.
If you have ever used a PS3 you will be very familiar with the crossbar interface and its functionality. SkyOS tries to bring this feature right into a desktop OS.
Basically, crossbar is always running and even ready before the desktop has been loaded. With a shortcut or mouse gesture you can quickly get crossbar into the foreground. Inside crossbar you have the option to quickly navigate through your images, music and videos using SkyFS queries. (the background index feeder service will automatically index your images, songs and videos and tries to extract meta data like ID3 tags from it).
So whenever you want to quickly listen to music you don't have to open a dedicated music player. Simply enter crossbar, select your song and return to the desktop. Crossbar has been designed to make this as fast and as straight forward as possible.
Such an interface also doesn't clutter up the panel, desktop or systray and offers a nice place to display additional information you fequently check but don't want to waste space for like rss feeds, weather data, free disk space, network configuration, etc..
The look, feel, integration and feature coverage is still up for discussion. Feel free to join the discussion about it in the forum.
(Proof of concept, running on an old P4 2.0 Ghz, no hw acceleration (VESA only), interface ready in 10msec after pressing the shortcut, currently supports images, music, videos and web streams)
This version now includes the brand new Mail Client as well as the new IDE used to develop applications for SkyOS. The SkyOS API has been extended with a lot of new classes and various reported bugs have been fixed.
For screenshots see the post below, to download this build just visit the beta center.
We are proud to announce that the next version of SkyOS will ship with a new Mail client.
In contrast to the already available Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Client the new Mail application completely integrates with SkyOS. For instance, all mails are stored as separate files with various attributes attach to it. So you can easily and quickly find every mail using the SkyOS Viewer and its query system.
Furthermore, by using the Desktop Communication Interface you can easily hook your applications to events sent by SkyOS Mail when an email arrives (a Panel plugin notifies you with a little icon whenever mails arrive).
Other applications can also use SkyOS Mail Services like sending mails from foreign applications, etc.
IDE has been updated too, showing a SkyOS Mail Layout in this screenshot:
Screenshot of SkyOS viewer showing a directory of the mailbox storage:
A new IDE is coming to SkyOS and will be available in the next build.
The IDE features various editors (source, datacollection, layouts, etc.) and allows GUI design using the SkyOS Layout system to design size, resolution and font independent layouts.
Check out this video to see an early version of the IDE in action.
In later versions the IDE will also supported an integrated debugging and an image editor to design your icons and images right in the project.
In other news, Darkness created the first user designed Theme for the new Themeing Engine:
This build features the complete new software store as well as the new viewer supporting location favorites and a query panel. Additionally the new C++ API got a lot of new features like Job support, HTTP download , etc...
Just take a loot at this video to see the new features in action.
