was just speaking of emulating that Terminator site. not much scaling/rotating there. most effects could be done with moving an alphatransparent layercut shortcut with lsdynamic while blending it in at the same time (that´s possible, i have already done that when i was playing on emulating the Slicker program for KDE).

The biggest problem is that Flash is very very very very resource hungry. So, unless you got memory and processor speed to spare, it would just slow you down extremely. Definately not something I'd recommend.  If you want to try it out, try it for yourself. Place the Matrix web page as a component, full screen, on your desktop.

Then, try to work. See how long it takes to open Photoshop, Word or Outlook. Try to get some work done. You'll see, you'll be turning off that Flash object on your desktop really quick.

it´s a little more than a simple zoomer (DesktopX) or layercut (LiteStep) as this object also gets moved and blended on the fly. it´s possible in LS and probably in DesktopX as well using something as the bouncing ball object.

one disadvantage of Flash is that it all one rectangle window, so either you have to set it to always on bottom or the whole window will get on top of other windows when focused. that means problems if you want it to be more than an animated wallpaper with some shortcuts and objects. think of a menu for example. the only way to work around this i can imagine would be a single instance for each submenu. as i said above: resource monster ...

I don't know about a flash based windows, although that would be awesome but I have heard about a flash based GUI BIOS. Apparentlly intel and microsoft want to get rid of the BIOS chip and replace it with a self learning GUI that is flash based.

Probably a different kind of Flash, kona. More the "flash your BIOS" kind of Flash.

No, I was sure about what I was talking about... Here is the link:

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-985600.html

Intresting, huh?

what´s next? telling us about Flash Gordon?

WOW what a topic!!! Good stuff Bid Doug.

I think Micromedia (the makers of Flash and other products like Shockwave) is working on Flash doing something outside of the explorer window.

So look out for that.

Alos Explorer has this no frames (IE no border frome) so maybe if you want you can try to have Flash look lik its is not in Explorer.

With DX you can use the website explorer thingy and place flash in it. With DX scripts you can interact with the explorer window but not sure about the flash...

I'm woring on something like this becase Flash has more animations an I wanted a really animated DX background without having super huge png files or large png files that turn black when it is animating.

anyway, this is a great topic. News worthy. I;'m going to check out shell city.

also check out what 3DNA is doing. Needs work but not bad stuff.

I think DX is the closest thing to what T3 website can do.

You guys check out that link I gave? Can someone explain what they are doing in lamens terms for me?

thanks for the link kona. I'll have to read it later, already late for class...

joetheblow thinks this will make a nice news story article

kona, there is no mention of Flash in that article. The closest thing I found was "splash screen", but that's totally different.

What the article says basically is that they are planning on getting rid of the BIOS and replace it with a hardware-level tiny operating system, with a graphical user interface to configure it, etc.

OK I was a little of base but on the flipside, That would still be a step forward wouldn't it for a flash based windows?

The only really big-time hang up I see with this so far is just needing enough Video Memory to handle the output, having enough RAM to facilitate, and having a processor capable enough. I run WinXP, a GeForce 4 MX series, 512 Meg DDR, and an AthlonXP 1800. That should be enough to make this run decent AND keep the system from running in a lag. I can get my GF4 to crank out 120 frames a second on games like Mechwarrior 4 (albeit I've tweaked my system and my stuff is a bit overclocked), so there isnt much that I've run into that will bog things down. I've run ALL Object Desktop and StarDock components all at once and never had a crash or or anything more than a slight( VERY slight) hiccup. And we all know how resource hungry ObjectDock and Desktop X can be.

I'm going to do the above example and see what it does.

Well I did the test. I set the entire Matrix Reloaded site as an Active Desktop item, expaned it to cover my etire desktop, navigated to some of the more resource-juicy areas (like the quicktime VR tours), and then fired up the following programs:

Desktop X
Object Dock (with about 33 different icons at 24 pix size and the magnification set to 64)
Fruity Loops 3.5 (and I turned on the demo song and let it play)
SmartBar XP with the resource pane turned on
AND
Paint Shop Pro

SO far, my system didnt do anything more than the expected hiccup. My CPU held more or less at 40% with all that going, with the occasional peak out for maybe half a second every 20 seconds.

I began to navigate the Matrix site VR tours thing, and my cpu was happy as could be.

In fact, I opened a new browser window to come back to the msg board to type this, with all that stuff running. My machine is as happy as a clam. Not to mention all the background stuff like Cursor XP , MSN messenger and Norton AV going. And my equipment is your standard MSI and Lite-On stuff.

So I'm not sure that a Flash-based GUI will run anything but like its supposed to, after a load test like that. But of course, not all comps are equal.

I'm going to play with that Project Flash and see what it does, after I turn all this other stuff off