Aeris (Desktop 25), and Simplicity 2

Maximized Window Demonstration

 

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Simplicity 2.0

 

With the original artist's permission, I have taken Simplicity - an old, but popular and well-designed Rainmeter config - and rewritten it line-by-line. It may not look much different on the outside, but the code makes use of some advanced, cutting-edge features that have only been available in Rainmeter for weeks or days:

 

1| Dynamic Variables. Before, most meters could only be bound to certain types of measure data, and in very rigid, inflexible ways. We are now able to take the value of any measure and insert it just about anywhere else. For example, I can grab the timezone from a weather feed and plug that straight into a Time measure, in the manner of

 

TimeZone=[MeasureTimeZone]

 

Similarly, instead of writing out a long string of commands to hide certain meters when I click a button, I can tie their visibility to a variable, as such -

 

Hidden=#HideThisMeterGroup#

 

- and use the button to simply reset this variable.

 

LeftMouseDownAction=!RainmeterSetVariable HideThisMeterGroup 1

 

2| Meter Styles. Instead of copying the font, color, size, alignment, etc. from one meter to another, I can now use styles, which tell Rainmeter to assume that the properties of a meter are the same as a certain template, or another meter, unless otherwise specified.

 

[Meter2]

MeterStyle=Meter1

 

To define a "style," all you have to do is create a section with all the properties of the meter itself, except the Meter= key. Without that, Rainmeter will simply ignore the section unless another meter calls upon it as a style.

 

3| Inclusions. This is probably the most powerful new addition, especially in conjunction with Styles. Using a one-line statement -

 

@include filename.inc

 

- we can tell Rainmeter to treat sections from a completely different file as if they were part of the skin. In this way, multiple skins can draw from a common set of variables, measures, and styles, saving an enormous amount of redundant code (believe me, I've counted) and giving you the power to modify the format of an entire suite of skins from a single file.

 

This is the basis of Simplicity 2.0. The bar-centric format of the original skin is completely consistent, so I was able to incorporate inclusions that provide virtually all display information, including background meters. The skins themselves contain nothing but measures and informational keys (Text, Postfix, AutoScale, stuff like that). Much like CSS or XML, this means that the user can write their own styles and apply them successfully without making a single change to the skins.

 

While it wasn't my original intention, the Simplicity project eventually became a proving ground for these new capabilities. You can start using them right away, An updated release of Rainmeter - version 1.1 - is tentatively planned for the next few weeks, and we intend to post it with a number of skins - including a corresponding Enigma upgrade, version 2.6 - that take advantage of all of these features.

 

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Desktop

 

Theme:

- Lakrits. Requires patched uxtheme.dll - patcher here.

- Wallpaper: unnamed, from Social Wallpapering. (Update: Found the direct link. :)

 

Startups:

- Autohotkey.

- Launchy. Skin: RooLa, customized.

 

Programs running:

- Rainmeter. Skins: Enigma 2.6 Beta, Simplicity 2.0.

Done