Towel - Sc2 Fan App

Tiax;mous

669 Posts

March 07 2012 12:43 GMT

Hello everyone!

I've written a looong post but closed the browser tab by mistake before posting it ;_; I'll keep it shorter this time.

I guess most people won't remember it but I'm the developer of ScCalendar. It was a desktop application that pop up notifications for events, streams, rss, twitter etc and had a desktop stream player which was much easier/flexible to use compared to browser.

ScCalendar was released almost 1.5 years ago but discontinued for various serious reasons after 6 months or so. I've been working on a new and better version since then and now finally we have a beta candidate in our hands!

We're almost ready for beta release but before that I thought it would be better "beta the beta release" ( almost like alpha version )

Now I'm looking for help for final touches, I need some people to check it out give us feedbacks , bug reports etc. Not anything detailed really, we'll ask for that in beta. I just want to know if it runs properly for you, you like the general outline etc.

A few things about Towel,

- It has 2 main modules at the moment. Calendar & Stream.
-Calendar keeps traks of events in TL calendar and pops up notifications when an event is starting. You can also add custom events ( like birthdays or meetings etc )
-Streams widget keeps tracks of streams on TL, notifies you whenever your favorite one ( or any ) starts. You can also add custom streams and Towel will check them all one by one.

- It also has a stand alone stream player which, I believe, is much more flexible than browser. It's not %100 done yet, quality changes in twitch doesnt work at the moment but we're working on that.

- It'll be open source. It's on a private repository at the moment ( on bitbucket ) and it'll be all public after beta release. Still if you want to check it out just PM me your mails and I'll send you an invite.

- It's modular. The initial exe is like 10kb. Everything else is modular, which means easier update and improvement management in the future. Also since it's open source, everyone can write their own modules using .Net & WPF.

- It'll be all skinnable and customizable. It's almost there at the moment except a few windows. All main modules and windows are skinnable and customizable via notepad!

You can read more about Towel here.

If you're interested and want to check it out, you can download the beta of beta ( alpha? ) here;
http://bit.ly/zsu6yZ

-It requires .Net 4 Client Profile, which you should already have if you're using Windows7

We used to had a great feedback/bug report group back in ScCalendar days ( usurper, julian where art thou? ) so I hope you guys would help me a little again, this time with Towel!

For any report/feedback; you can post here, PM me, mail ( brnkahyaoglu@gmail.com ) or check my blog

IMPORTANT
-Please do not use the Feedback form inside Towel ( at top right menu ) It doesn't work at the moment and I just noticed I forgot to remove it from there. I just don't want any feedback posts lost like that,my apologies.

Thanks in advance, I hope you guys like it!

A few screenshots;
TowelPlayer

TowelPlayer

Streams Widget

Calendar Widget

Main Menu

Notifications

FranzP

France270 Posts

March 07 2012 14:03 GMT

Wow looks great. I'll try it out tonight.

Great job !

Tiax;mous

669 Posts

March 07 2012 14:50 GMT

Thanks! I sure hope you'll think the same after you try it out too

Please let me know what do you think about it afterwards too!

tw!tch

United States563 Posts

March 07 2012 14:57 GMT

This is pretty awesome, I'm looking forward to messing around with it. One thing I've noticed right off the bat after downloading it, is that the top-left overlay on an open stream (at default size) prevents some advertisements from being closed.

+ Show Spoiler +

Don't know if that is something that can be moved or not :p Rest of the app looks sick!

Tiax;mous

669 Posts

March 07 2012 15:10 GMT

tw!tch - Hey there, glad you liked it! Unfortunately Player part isn't completely done yet.

There is an invisible layer on top of stream area which let's user to click&drag window anywhere ( also if/when you click ON twitch streams, it redirects to twitch website, which obviously breaks everything )

But that invisible layer also prevents users to close ads ( and change quality ). I must admit though I have never seen ads like that on my player so it wasn't a big issue for me but ı guess those are country based ads so I didn't get any.

Normally we're planing to get a custom flash player as soon as possible and use that instead of default flash player. Which should solve all our problems without needing that invisible layer. I found a newbie flash dev for that but he's kinda busy so I'm open to any volunteers in that matter. ( standard twitch player is problematic and twitch javascript player is so totally broken )

If that doesn't work, I'll have to find another way, maybe remove that invisible layer but I'm hoping to have a nice custom flash player until beta release.

Edit:

Sadly, this is what happens without that layer;
+ Show Spoiler +

ETisME

12891 Posts

March 07 2012 15:49 GMT

this looks amazing. gonna try that now and give you feedback after using it for a few days!

Tiax;mous

669 Posts

March 07 2012 15:51 GMT

ETisME - Hey, Thanks! I'll be waiting

Oh and one more thing, please do not use the feedback form inside the application, the window is there but there is nothing behind so it doesn't work. I forgot to remove it for this release >< I'll also put a note on first post for that.

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