Darn thing won't let me edit my previous post to add this. Blah... anyhow...
I agree that there's an overabundance of clocks, weather thingys, etc. that aren't anything but different colored versions of the same thing. I think the problem there is that's the most many of us can do. Those are easy to make for someone who can't script or who's not very experienced, since they are all set up. I have a couple more unique ideas, but don't have the skill at the moment to implement them... so yeah... you'll prolly see a RedRaven clock or something.
But, I agree the categories could be divided a bit better. I've been trying to find some old objects I remembered seeing and have had to go thru a page at a time back to 2003 to get them. Unless you know the exact name of something it's often pretty difficult to get by category.
I would love to see more highlighting of truly unique stuff - like "Truly unusual thing of the week." Hehe. Again, however, those things are hard for a lot of us to manage. I was going nuts all day yesterday trying to figure out how to make my weather object. I know I have to make all new graphics (which shouldn't be a problem), but even that was giving me trouble. I took apart an object I liked, to study it, and ran into stuff like.. "What the heck kind of weather is that supposed to be", and "Why are there two of these that look identical?", etc. So, really making stuff from scratch can be tough even if you are motivated to do so and are willing to spend the time.
How do y'all feel about mmm... not sure how to put it. Someone posts a theme called Zebras... then they post the "Clock for Zebras theme" in clocks. And "Zebra weather" in weather. Etc. Do you think it would make more sense to restrict theme-specific items to being part of the theme package itself - i.e. if you want the clock, you'll just have to DL the whole theme and grab the clock? I imagine that would certainly cut down on a lot of the clutter. However it might be a problem for people who are posting their theme and additions a bit at a time.
If any programmer types want to help me out with my wacky ideas, lemme know. I've got a couple interesting ones, but I have to teach myself code before I can do anything with them. And BTW, RomanDA, your tutorials are wonderful - Really, really helpful.
Thanks Zubaz. That will help a bit with seeing where options are and so forth. It's surprising with everyone going on about resolution independence that there aren't 50 tutorials on the subject! Big problem for me is that my current project has a bunch of Celtic knotwork and I don't think it's going to want to tile very well.
RR
P.S. (I'm a writer.. I babble.. sorry). For you tutorial-writing types... There seems to be a bit of a gap in the area of mid-level tutorials. There are a lot of basics - how to load stuff, how to make a text object. And then some scripting ones. But not much in the way of ... how to make a weather dealy from scratch, how to make slider drawers behave nicely, etc. I tracked down Brad's(?) video demo of making an MP3 player yesterday and was like.. "Ooooh, this is perfect!" Don't care if it's video or written with pics, but more stuff showing the mid-level stuff would be great. I think that's probably where a lot of us are stuck. I know how to make graphics and such, but knowing how to get them into DX in the right places and make them behave the way I want is where I tend to bog down.
