September 9, 2017 at 13:1210 years with a hummingbird: how it was
A review in honor of my 10th anniversary of participation in the project of creating the Kolibri operating system .
What I just did not work and what just did not do in this project. It was the knowledge gained during the work on Hummingbirds that gave me the opportunity to radically change my life - to find a dream job, make new friends and get an incredible amount of fan!
So, let's begin.
From the very beginning to the victorious end I saw icons for Hummingbirds. On the left are the icons before mine in joining the project, in the middle is my first edition in 2007 and in the right column is the current version from nightly builds.
Engaged in advertising Hummingbirds on other resources.
My first and currently largest program for a Hummingbird. We started to develop it together with Veliant , then Punk_Joker joined the development .
Two-pane mode.
In the game, you need to find the same pairs of icons from memory, desktop icons are used to reduce the size of the program. Be a designer, playwith icon fonts ! The idea and redesign of Memory Blocks: me. Programming: Kostya Veliant .
A simple Russian-English and English-Russian dictionary of 15 thousand word meanings. Search occurs as you type.
Rewritten from C-- ClickoMania. Normal design, bug fixes, level system. Favorite time killer in a hummingbird.
Choosing the design of windows and wallpapers.
Launch of my Hummingbird website on free hosting by the people: http://kolibri-os.narod.ru . Now not available.
My most famous and most poorly written program. At one time, Veliant threw me all his projects for Hummingbirds. Among them was one rather interesting one - "HTML Viewer in C--". I adapted the program code for the new version of the library and the work went.
The browser itself is a TWB component that can be integrated into other C-- programs, for example, it was later integrated into the Liza email client.
An article about KolibriOS was published in the March issue of CHIP magazine. Of all the hummingbird screenshots on the Internet, they chose exactly my authorship. On it is a version of Hummingbird 0.7.3.0, which has never officially been released - it was assembled by me according to the type of night assembly. Wallpaper, logo, icons, file manager - all of my authorship.
Met with the developer of the Hummingbird - Bones Veliant in Moscow. With him we wrote a lot of good programs: Eolite, Memory Blocks, browser. It was he who explained to me many things in programming, in particular about working with memory, registers, and pointers. We chatted in ICQ for days on end, scoring at the university. Oh, it was a good time! Now Kostya works at Dr.Web.
The game begins with the upper left cell. Select a color by clicking on one of the squares on the left, and the cells will be stained with this color - this way you will connect adjacent cells of the same color. You need to capture the field in a limited number of moves.
Kolibri 0.8.0.0 - IMG image that I collect on the basis of night assemblies, the predecessor of KolibriN.
KolibriN 8.1 is an Upgrade Pack that installs on top of a nightly build.
KolibriN 8.2 is an ISO distribution. The nightly assembly loads and KolibriN immediately rolls over it.
KolibriN8 at the time of its release was condemned for its emphasis on whistle-blowing, not realizing that it was an unrealistic breakthrough for the hummingbird of that time, because it marked the transition from IMG assemblies to a full ISO.
But first things first.
When the OS starts, it completely copies all the data from the kolibri.img image to the / rd / 1 virtual disk. Some programs do not fit in 1.44 MB and therefore they lie directly on the CD-ROM. Collecting the distribution, we want to add a link to the DOOM in the menu and register associations with the zSea viewer. Both of them are on the CD.
The catch is that we cannot do this! Because the CD can be / cd / 1, / cd / 2, / cd / 3, etc. Guessing is not an option. At that time there were no tools to solve this problem.
While developing KolibriN8, I made an installer that found the files on the ISO and copied them to the / tmp0 / 1 virtual disk.
Now their path was always the same and it was possible to add shortcuts to additional programs to the desktop, in the menu, and most importantly, register associations.
The second thing that was done was important: I gathered all the programs for Hummingbirds in one place, climbing a forum, personal websites of developers and far corners of the Internet.
List of KolibriN changes compared to the nightly builds of the time:
A virtual disk management program that uses the tmpdisk.sys driver API written by CleverMouse . Management - command line and GUI.
All mailboxes working under the POP protocol without encryption should be supported - this is yandex.ru, i.ua, mail.ru ... gmail.com does not work, because uses encryption.
Login and password are saved after closing the program in a text file. You can set your own connection settings.
After a successful login, we enter the mailbox. Email headers are downloaded automatically. The body of the letter is loaded when you click on it, the process of downloading the letter is also displayed by a progress bar. The sizes of the panels displaying the list of letters and the letter itself can be changed by dragging the mouse with "= = =".
Understanding the need to penetrate social networks, on January 28, 2013 I created a VKontakte group “KolibriOS - an official group” , which has been successfully existing to this day.
On the same day, yogev_ezra created a Facebook group , which, unfortunately, has long been abandoned.
Overview report on Hummingbirds at the IT Club Global Logic conference in Nikolaev.
Materials of the report : speech and slides
Report on the site
Video from the conference (poor recording quality)
Redesign of the calendar.
For some time now, the official Hummingbird website has been a single page without much design.
As always, I decided to update the icons.
Since there are new icons, I’ll have to update the whole site :) At that time I did not know HTML / CSS / JS and I asked to make an Akyltist site based on a free template. I helped him and later ruled bugs, so much so that after a couple of months I got a job as a layout designer.
The new site became multilingual, received a gallery of screenshots, a banner was added to the main page, which was supposed to be changed in accordance with significant events.
After a year and a half of development, a new version of KolibriN9 was released! KolibriN9 is based on KolibriOS and provides a more beautiful and user-friendly environment - this is not only beautiful desktop wallpapers, but also a much larger number of software supplied.
From the changes that came from KolibriOS:
And now about the changes to KolibriN9 itself:
Written specifically for KolibriN:
A more detailed review on the offsets .
Resentment, pain, holivari left in the past and we again began to build Hummingbirds all together.
At the moment, almost all the developments from KolibriN have migrated to the main distribution.
The story page turned upside down.
universal widget with which it was created:
- System panel
- Game center
- App + (KolibriOS Additional Software)
Completion of the port, expansion of functionality, bug fixes, major interface improvements. All development was carried out in Linux in a virtual machine.
In short, Pixie is an MP3 player, front-end for miniMP3. When you open a file from a folder, the player will start the selected song and all MP3s from this folder will also be added to the playlist.
The window can be of three modes: normal, collapsed into the title and compact. Of the topics to choose from, two are available: light and dark. All program settings are saved after a restart. When you start the player without parameters, the last opened folder will start playing.
When you move the window in compact mode, it is not the frame that moves, but the window itself, for the first time in Hummingbird!
GUI for two .ini files.
Updated GUI of TextEdit text editor.
The name speaks for itself. Gathered everything in one place and combed his hair.
A text reader, supports different font sizes and different encodings, uses an ini file to save settings, supports hot keys and opens a file in Tinypad.
Translated many programs into large fonts.
A program for viewing the contents of the clipboard. Unlike Windows, where the buffer can store only one slot at a time, it is multilevel in Hummingbird. The data on the slots is presented in the form of a table, you can delete the last slot or all, make emergency unlock. A preview of the slot data as text and HEX is also available.
http://bugs.kolibri-n.org . The hellish hatred of Mantis reached its peak and I filmed a simple and usable bugtracker. Based on Tit .
Driver installer, takes all the information from /kolibrios/drivers/drvinf.ini
Updated shutdown window, port from KolibriN10 to KolibriOS. A screenshot for comparison: the old on top, the new on the bottom.
Code by IgorA. GUI by me.
A simpler and more convenient process manager. It was developed as part of KolibriN10.
Port http://c--sphinx.narod.ru/FILES/vc.zip
Eyedropper for the desktop.
To be continued ...
All source codes are open, anyone can read them.
The article came out long, thanks for reading.
What I just did not work and what just did not do in this project. It was the knowledge gained during the work on Hummingbirds that gave me the opportunity to radically change my life - to find a dream job, make new friends and get an incredible amount of fan!
So, let's begin.
Icons
(2007..2017)From the very beginning to the victorious end I saw icons for Hummingbirds. On the left are the icons before mine in joining the project, in the middle is my first edition in 2007 and in the right column is the current version from nightly builds.
An old article on this subject "Hummingbird Icons: Forgetting the Minuet"
PR
(2007)Engaged in advertising Hummingbirds on other resources.
Eolite File Manager
(2008..2017)My first and currently largest program for a Hummingbird. We started to develop it together with Veliant , then Punk_Joker joined the development .
An article on the development of Eolite. Memoirs of an Amateur
Two-pane mode.
Memory blocks
(2008)In the game, you need to find the same pairs of icons from memory, desktop icons are used to reduce the size of the program. Be a designer, play
Dicty
(2008)A simple Russian-English and English-Russian dictionary of 15 thousand word meanings. Search occurs as you type.
Just clicks
(2008..2013)Rewritten from C-- ClickoMania. Normal design, bug fixes, level system. Favorite time killer in a hummingbird.
Appearance
(2008)Choosing the design of windows and wallpapers.
kolibri-os.narod.ru
(2008)Launch of my Hummingbird website on free hosting by the people: http://kolibri-os.narod.ru . Now not available.
WebView: Text Browser (Ex. HTMLv)
(2008..2017)My most famous and most poorly written program. At one time, Veliant threw me all his projects for Hummingbirds. Among them was one rather interesting one - "HTML Viewer in C--". I adapted the program code for the new version of the library and the work went.
The browser itself is a TWB component that can be integrated into other C-- programs, for example, it was later integrated into the Liza email client.
Also read the article “WebView or the story of how the browser was written in KolibriOS”
My developments in the CHIP magazine
(2011)An article about KolibriOS was published in the March issue of CHIP magazine. Of all the hummingbird screenshots on the Internet, they chose exactly my authorship. On it is a version of Hummingbird 0.7.3.0, which has never officially been released - it was assembled by me according to the type of night assembly. Wallpaper, logo, icons, file manager - all of my authorship.
Developer meeting
(2011)Met with the developer of the Hummingbird - Bones Veliant in Moscow. With him we wrote a lot of good programs: Eolite, Memory Blocks, browser. It was he who explained to me many things in programming, in particular about working with memory, registers, and pointers. We chatted in ICQ for days on end, scoring at the university. Oh, it was a good time! Now Kostya works at Dr.Web.
Flood-it!
(2011)The game begins with the upper left cell. Select a color by clicking on one of the squares on the left, and the cells will be stained with this color - this way you will connect adjacent cells of the same color. You need to capture the field in a limited number of moves.
KolibriN 8.X release
(2012)Kolibri 0.8.0.0 - IMG image that I collect on the basis of night assemblies, the predecessor of KolibriN.
KolibriN 8.1 is an Upgrade Pack that installs on top of a nightly build.
KolibriN 8.2 is an ISO distribution. The nightly assembly loads and KolibriN immediately rolls over it.
KolibriN8 at the time of its release was condemned for its emphasis on whistle-blowing, not realizing that it was an unrealistic breakthrough for the hummingbird of that time, because it marked the transition from IMG assemblies to a full ISO.
But first things first.
When the OS starts, it completely copies all the data from the kolibri.img image to the / rd / 1 virtual disk. Some programs do not fit in 1.44 MB and therefore they lie directly on the CD-ROM. Collecting the distribution, we want to add a link to the DOOM in the menu and register associations with the zSea viewer. Both of them are on the CD.
The catch is that we cannot do this! Because the CD can be / cd / 1, / cd / 2, / cd / 3, etc. Guessing is not an option. At that time there were no tools to solve this problem.
While developing KolibriN8, I made an installer that found the files on the ISO and copied them to the / tmp0 / 1 virtual disk.
Now their path was always the same and it was possible to add shortcuts to additional programs to the desktop, in the menu, and most importantly, register associations.
The second thing that was done was important: I gathered all the programs for Hummingbirds in one place, climbing a forum, personal websites of developers and far corners of the Internet.
List of KolibriN changes compared to the nightly builds of the time:
- The delivery includes the Liza email client that has not been published before;
- Now anyone can run and try Grafx 2, before that this was a non-trivial task due to tight binding to the paths;
- Added the shadow of the desktop menu and the translucency of the notification widget;
- The delivery includes games, including Doom, Loderunner, Pig, Jumpbump and emulators of game consoles NES, SNES, Gameboy;
- DosBox and ZX Spectrum emulators will launch hundreds of old applications and games;
- Application delivery: zSea image viewer, PDF viewer, FPlay video player and many other programs.
- All associations are registered, boring wallpapers and skins that can be easily changed through the desktop context menu;
Tmpdisk
(2012.2016)A virtual disk management program that uses the tmpdisk.sys driver API written by CleverMouse . Management - command line and GUI.
Liza Email Client
(2012..2013)All mailboxes working under the POP protocol without encryption should be supported - this is yandex.ru, i.ua, mail.ru ... gmail.com does not work, because uses encryption.
Login and password are saved after closing the program in a text file. You can set your own connection settings.
After a successful login, we enter the mailbox. Email headers are downloaded automatically. The body of the letter is loaded when you click on it, the process of downloading the letter is also displayed by a progress bar. The sizes of the panels displaying the list of letters and the letter itself can be changed by dragging the mouse with "= = =".
Social network
(2013..2017)Understanding the need to penetrate social networks, on January 28, 2013 I created a VKontakte group “KolibriOS - an official group” , which has been successfully existing to this day.
Why are these social networks? Now there are a very large number of people registered and visiting them, it is foolish to ignore them if we want to carry KolibriOS to the masses. Previously, this was not the task, and Mario spoke openly about it. I want the system to be famous, for people to use it, which means they write code and improve it, because quantity always grows into quality. Also there you can configure the publication of news. Well, there may be some coordination in the future.
I explain why you need to go to the masses; forum post, 2013
On the same day, yogev_ezra created a Facebook group , which, unfortunately, has long been abandoned.
Hummingbird Report at IT Club Conference
(2013)Overview report on Hummingbirds at the IT Club Global Logic conference in Nikolaev.
Materials of the report : speech and slides
Report on the site
Video from the conference (poor recording quality)
Calendar
(2013)Redesign of the calendar.
Offsite Update
(2013)For some time now, the official Hummingbird website has been a single page without much design.
As always, I decided to update the icons.
Since there are new icons, I’ll have to update the whole site :) At that time I did not know HTML / CSS / JS and I asked to make an Akyltist site based on a free template. I helped him and later ruled bugs, so much so that after a couple of months I got a job as a layout designer.
The new site became multilingual, received a gallery of screenshots, a banner was added to the main page, which was supposed to be changed in accordance with significant events.
KolibriN9 Edition
(2014)After a year and a half of development, a new version of KolibriN9 was released! KolibriN9 is based on KolibriOS and provides a more beautiful and user-friendly environment - this is not only beautiful desktop wallpapers, but also a much larger number of software supplied.
From the changes that came from KolibriOS:
- connecting an additional directory / kolibrios /; (a consequence of the creation of KolibriN8)
- USB support (flash drives, mice, keyboards, hubs) and their “hot” connection;
- support for reading FS XFS and for reading / writing ext2 / 3/4;
- improved time allocation in the process scheduler;
- Added native support for SATA IDE mode for hard drives and ATAPI devices;
- system-wide clipboard support;
- inclusion of a vidintel driver in the system, including support for native permissions on laptops with an integrated Intel graphics card;
- Intel HD Audio Audio Driver Update;
- driver updates for Intel and ATI Radeon graphics cards;
- acceleration of loading on some configurations.
And now about the changes to KolibriN9 itself:
- redesigned system design, the design has become much more beautiful and more enjoyable;
- improved usability through the use of Docky (dock bar);
- instant launch of KolibriN due to support for connecting an additional directory / kolibrios /.
Written specifically for KolibriN:
- Game Center - a game center from which it is possible to launch games supplied as part of KolibriN;
- appearance - a program for quickly and conveniently changing the system theme and desktop background.
A more detailed review on the offsets .
The merger of KolibriN and KolibriOS
(2015)Resentment, pain, holivari left in the past and we again began to build Hummingbirds all together.
At the moment, almost all the developments from KolibriN have migrated to the main distribution.
The story page turned upside down.
Software widget
(2015..2016) Theuniversal widget with which it was created:
- System panel
- Game center
- App + (KolibriOS Additional Software)
uPDF
(2015)Completion of the port, expansion of functionality, bug fixes, major interface improvements. All development was carried out in Linux in a virtual machine.
Pixie Player v1.X
(2015)An article about the development of “Music in KolibriOS: a complete review and the latest news”
In short, Pixie is an MP3 player, front-end for miniMP3. When you open a file from a folder, the player will start the selected song and all MP3s from this folder will also be added to the playlist.
The window can be of three modes: normal, collapsed into the title and compact. Of the topics to choose from, two are available: light and dark. All program settings are saved after a restart. When you start the player without parameters, the last opened folder will start playing.
When you move the window in compact mode, it is not the frame that moves, but the window itself, for the first time in Hummingbird!
System panels configuration utility
(2015)GUI for two .ini files.
TextEdit GUI update
(2015)Updated GUI of TextEdit text editor.
Mouse testing and configuration utility
(2015..2016)The name speaks for itself. Gathered everything in one place and combed his hair.
Textreader
(2015..2016)A text reader, supports different font sizes and different encodings, uses an ini file to save settings, supports hot keys and opens a file in Tinypad.
Large fonts
(2016)Translated many programs into large fonts.
Details in the article “Fonts in Hummingbirds”
Clipboard viewer
(2016)A program for viewing the contents of the clipboard. Unlike Windows, where the buffer can store only one slot at a time, it is multilevel in Hummingbird. The data on the slots is presented in the form of a table, you can delete the last slot or all, make emergency unlock. A preview of the slot data as text and HEX is also available.
KolibriOS - Issue Tracker
(2016)http://bugs.kolibri-n.org . The hellish hatred of Mantis reached its peak and I filmed a simple and usable bugtracker. Based on Tit .
Drvinst
(2016)Driver installer, takes all the information from /kolibrios/drivers/drvinf.ini
End
(2016)Updated shutdown window, port from KolibriN10 to KolibriOS. A screenshot for comparison: the old on top, the new on the bottom.
Animage redesign
(2016)Code by IgorA. GUI by me.
Process manager
(2016)A simpler and more convenient process manager. It was developed as part of KolibriN10.
Visual Text Comparer / Diff tool
(2016)Port http://c--sphinx.narod.ru/FILES/vc.zip
Pipet
(2017)Eyedropper for the desktop.
To be continued ...
All source codes are open, anyone can read them.
The article came out long, thanks for reading.