Desktop Alert

I was quite bored last night looking at the messages receiver implemented in Q that I decided to do something about it.

Having the exact-moment experience, I really liked the way Outlook (2003) displays alerts once new email is received using non-distracting notification window near the system tray. There is also other bunch of apps showing the similar functionality (IMs, GMail alert, etc) so I thought of doing something similar to that.

The result was a plain, borderless form that mimics animation using combination of Timers and Opacity property, auto-hides after the specific number of seconds. The window is not sizable at run-time and since the message body could be longer than the space provided, I left the "clickable" label that will call good, old MessageBox.Show() method - displaying whole message body.

Even though the Alert window adds a bit of spice to the boring "battleship gray" structure, messaging in Q will have to be enriched with other functionalities in the future. For the time being, I just keep writing notes about it.

SpiderSilk receives a product name

Yes, that's right: our flagship product got a public name - InfoScreen Quorum.

After bunch of ideas, including some mythological names from Greek history, we settled down on Quorum.

It's a word from Latin language and it is primarily used in Corporate/Legal sector that SpiderSilk is going to cover: Annual General Meetings (AGMs) and other meetings as well - where quorum of present members is important to make the taken decisions valid.

As the development process has been re-scheduled, we are in final phase of polishing both client and server and our QA dept. have started the extensive testing process.