DesktopX 2.4 Developer’s Guide
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Page 16
Remember that if you create a normal “.dxpack” you can upload your work to the WinCustomize
website. By doing this others can benefit from your creations and you may get feedback from
users that helps you develop in the future.
DesktopX Pro users have a third export option. This is also for the creation of a widget, but this
widget will run as a standard program on any machine without requiring that DesktopX be
installed.
Selecting this gives you a range of options to complete which are related to the object or are
displayed in the ‘About’ box:
Application name: Specify the name for your application here
Company: Place your name here, either yourself as the author or your company
Version: You can specify the application version here
URL: You can provide a website address that the user can link to from the ‘About’ box
Application icon: Optionally you can check the box and specify a “.ICO” file that will be used
for the application. If an icon is not specified then the default DesktopX icon will be used.
Run Type: You can specify how you want the application to run. Main applications will
probably want to run as “Taskbar items” and utilities run from the “System Tray”.
Multiple instances: Specify this is you want to allow more than one copy of the application to
run at any time. For example, if creating an international clock object you may want to allow
users to run several instances to allow them to have clocks for different time zones.
On the next page you have options to export the file in two ways. The first way is similar to the
standard widget, in that a single executable file is created which can be run. All the files needed
by DesktopX are placed in a temporary directory when this is run, so it is still possible to access
these via script.
The second export type separates all the files used so they can be installed using another method.
You will want to use this option if the widget is part of a bigger deliverable that you want to
package using a custom installer.
The final item on this page allows to specify a text file that will be accessible from the “About”
box. This can be used to communicate information about the application or a licensing
agreement for the applications use.
Once you have specified your choices here, the next and final page asks you to confirm your
agreement to the distribution of the executable files, and then you can specify where you want to
store your application/files.
Users can choose to have widgets run on startup from the widget’s right click menu.
