#thealonic

That’s right. More updates from the pit of hell called my coding. It’s now a month into 2021 and I’m still working on this thing. Tons of new things since the last update so I thought I’d give a quick few lists of progress I’ve made.

So the elephant in the room is the entirety of the Display Properties window with all of it’s glorious, glorious functionality. I’ve been working pretty hard having to redo most of the backend to get the thing to be fully functionable, but at last, here it is.

I’ve fully added functioning schemes alongside previews of said scheme, wallpapers, colours and desktop icons. I’ll be adding more specific customisation at a later date, but for the time being I’d rather keep it to the essentials while I work on other overhauls I need to progress on.

There’s a few premade schemes you can pick from and choose, and the code is really expandable as messy as it is. I literally haven’t touched HTML with JS prior to decemember so there’s probably 100 better ways to do the same thing, but I’d rather just figure out as I go along and I’ve figured I really hate Jquery. 

Schemes was the “big one” I’ve been trying hard to get out of the way for the past couple of weeks, so I’m just gonna do some quick fire features that have been added including a more indepth idea on schemes that have been added;

I added tasks and tabbing between tasks only to replace it with dynamic tasks as of yesterday, and will adjust their position according to other windows that are opened and closed instead of being predetermined.

A total of 7 schemes added, 5 themes including 2 high contrast options, 16 desktop colour options and 10 wallpapers to choose from.

Tons and tons of post formatting such as better video scaling and padding on images to be removed depending on the post type.

Posts are minimizable and maximizable alongside formatting adjustments such as scrollbars alongside tons of formatting for patch notes, permalink posts and additional well needed backend stuff for the future.

More efficent post handling and start menu handling.

I have two additional windows also currently being worked on such as Time and Date and Windows Media Player, which revolves around youtube embedding for the sake of easy implimentation.

I’ve been enjoying the process of writing HTML, but development has been taking a long time regardless of the 4-8 hours I invest daily in this thing. Who would have guessed website development took so long, huh?

Regardless, I took the past couple of days to take a break and hopefully I can get around to developing more windows now that I basically redesigned the entire logistics of the entire taskbar for a second time.

Christ, 2 months since the last development update here.

Alright! I've made tons of progress over the course of the past 3 months, from some sleepless nights working on this damn thing to random spurratic development updates. So, I'm just gonna list a few big ones.

Rebranding

One of the major ones to me personally - I'm renaming the project from Win98 to Vher98.

I have ideas for the project and after some general realisation on how long this project may take if I was to entirely recreate Windows 98. I think a better way to go about the project is to turn the project into something more practical for my own personal uses and to add my own "ease of access" features that Windows 98 didn't originally have.

This doesn't really change the project at all, but it's a bit of piece and mind for myself.

Finalised Embedded Media Player!

One of the earlier updates since the last update was the media player having some massive overhauls, with the addition to the interface, URL bar and general logic and visual overhaul. There's even a fullscreen mode! Cute!

I'm glad this was on my bucket list because I feel like this was the nail in the coffin for my struggles with javascript after developing this and being so heavily js focused. There's a lot of ease of use features and accessability options included that needs to be done. So hopefully, you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

(There's also tons of fun playlists and features in the start menu and command prompt.)

Command Prompt!

Speaking of command prompt, I added a command prompt! It's been a while since I've properly updated it and I've realised a few problems with some OG commands I managed to develop, but most small feature set still work fine.

The main point is for debug information such as current status of animation sequences or current active tasks on the taskbar. But one of the functionality peices I have right now is to be a placeholder is being able to enforce custom varables or spritesheets! Which will hopefully be expanded apon within the next few days.

Taskbar Overhaul!

A small little addition I did is taskbar logic! No longer the days of static tasks, welcome to law and order! (Yes, I added open order)

I'm yet to add task draggability to be able to change the positioning of where it is on the taskbar, but other than that, that is the jist of it. A lot of math later and tons of backend well needed adjustments and optimisations.

Ending notes;

Regardless, there's been tons of update. Too many to list. So if you're enthusiastic about updates and developments I'm working on I've added patchnotes inwhich you can read and get updated live on what i'm working on. (Another feature I've managed to add within the past couple months)