Blue Knot Software Software: Future Development

I can always think of more features to add to my programs (and new programs) than I have time to create! But I'm working on it! Wanna peek at my 'to-do' list? Here's what's on my mind concerning updates for existing Blue Knot programs and ideas for new ones. Got any other ideas? Let me hear 'em! If I use one of your ideas, you get the registered software FREE!^*

Also check out the Grab βag page and see if there are any preview betas available for any of these programs!

Click a title to skip down to ideas about that specific title:

Black Box ColorLab Glass

Marconnit Newton's Shuffle ProjecTile

Total Rename Tric-Trac New Programs

Key:
Ideas marked with a may be possible, but details are not fully worked out yet.
Items marked with a are in development now and will be out with the next version.
Items marked with a and struck out have been considered but rejected and are listed for explanatory purposes only.
The Fine Print: I reserve the right to strike out (or otherwise 'downgrade') any item. The order that titles and/or ideas are listed does not imply the order that they will be implemented in.

Black Box

• New "Colours" chipset
• See the path of the atoms. A special shot that will show you how an atom would react to your guesses. If it doesn't come out where the real atoms do, something's wrong. (Yes, this makes the game easier, so there will be a point penalty)
• Change color scheme of regular window/chipsets?
• Network Game?
• Timed Game?
• Scalable board for people with vision imparements and lower/higher resolution screens
• A variant played on a hex grid board (probably a seperate program)

ColorLab

• Customizable interface w/ dockable tool windows
• Palette (.pal) editor; palette loading or generation from images (all colors or common/'main' colors)
• Color Harmonizer window - generate, test and tweak a set of compatible colors.
• New help file
• Swatches moved from a toolbar to dockable toolwindow
• Copy list moved to it's own 'page' (like the fav list, picture, web palette, etc.) to save room on the screen layout.
• Import all colors from a given web page into a favorites list
• Copy CSS triplet (i.e., #309 instead of #330099) and nearest CSS triplet
• Exporting the body tag into an existing HTML document.
• CMY/CMYK
• PANTONE colors?
• Ability to save color schemes
• Add Font & Size selections to the Windows Color Manager--make it a full-blown desktop appearance editor
• Import/Export of STYLE tags and .css files (And the addition of individual fonts & the 'hover' color to the Body Tag Builder)
• Different system of 'schemes' for Windows Color Manager, either including a second 'base' color or based on the larger palette (palette editor idea above)
• New, less crowded layout for Windows Color Manager
• Possible name-change to something less 'common' (the name 'ColorLab' gets used for several other color pickers on the web, and is even the name of a line of cosmetics!). I'd like to stay with 'something-Lab'... HueLab? ChromaLab? Suggestions??

Glass

• Time-limit games
• Different sized boards?
• Background Music (MIDI?) No-one cares; and I can better spend my time developing more useful enhancements... and everyone has much better options for playing music on their PC if they want to.

Marconnit

• Function on second screen for multi-monitor displays. Option would be to use both monitors or select WHICH monitor to use for drawing.
• Selection Tool. Select a rectangular area, then either highlight it, outline it, zoom in on it, 'erase' it, copy it (to clipboard), crop & save it, or print it.
• 'Zoom Out' Shrink the screen. This would give a border around the edges of the screen image to draw on.
• Optional preview panel on text entry window (like the sample on the preferences screen). Might just rework the text tool altogether...
• Use your own icons as cursors Does anyone really need more cursor choices above and beyond the 100+ built into Marconnit?

Newton's Shuffle

• New Help File
• Keyboard Play. I may have figured out a practical keyboard interface...
• New Graphics/Change Color Scheme. Yellow & Purple were chosen as high-contrast colors; not necessarily for aesthetic reasons. Maybe someone would like to choose there own?

ProjecTile

There are so many ideas for ProjecTile I may decide to release two versions: the freeware viewer, with at least all the features of the current version; and a shareware 'Pro' version with some of the more advanced editing features. If I do realease a shareware version, don't worry: there will always be a free version.
Also, I have several ideas about some of the wallpaper features that don't really fit the concept of ProjecTile, these may spin off into a completely seperate program.

• Multiple toolbars to provide more control on more specific tasks (i.e., wallpaper toolbar, export toolbar, web page toolbar, etc.)
• Automatic wallpaper style selection (like WinXP). Automatically choose tiled, centered, or stretch based on size.
• Display (and export) different tile combinations like horizontal-only and vertical-only (especially for web pages)
• More wallpaper control, including resizing graphic and non-centered placement.
• CSS/Inline STYLE tag capabilities in the Body Tag Helper. This is also a possibility for the next version of ColorLab, and it will probably show up there first. But once I get the details worked out, yes, it will be here too.
• A simple editor integrated into the program. things like resize, flip, simple image filtering (Blur, sharpen, emboss, etc.) Also things like grayscale, tint, brightness, etc.. Yes, and height map/bump map if I can work out the details.
• New help file
• Set tiled backgrounds for IE toolbars, XP folders. Is this a function anybody wants?
• Support for other file formats. Mostly likely PNG and maybe TGA. I need to look further into copyright issues on this. To me, it's not worth paying for rights to add a feature to a free program
• Move/Copy/Delete multiple files at once.
• Export other than as a fully tiled image. A border-style background (patterened on left with plain space on right)? A button (with '3D' edges)?
• Scroll tiled image in preview window. The only advantage to this feature would be if you had an uneven pattern you might want to preview text against different sections of it.
• Save to GIF/Display animated GIFs. If you haven't heard, there are some nasty copyright issues over the formerly-free LZW compression used in the GIF file format (click here for some articles.) Loading and displaying GIFs is still supported for now, because I use the image loading and display functions built into Visual Basic by Microsoft, and presumably they are paying the exorbitant licensing fees. But saving or displaying animated GIFs would force me to add additional code that may violate the ridiculous 'patent' claim.

Total Rename

• A new interface: explorer-style folder tree, file list with extra information like file size & date, dockable tool windows
• New help file (will come after interface is redesigned)
• Support for ID3v2 tags (MP3 name extraction)
• Naming of MOD & other tracker files from internal name
• Option to rename folders
• Batch processing to include subdirectories
• New tasks
• Script-like functions to add your own tasks
• Explorer Shell integration. It's a nice idea, but I'm not sure why I'd want to other than "I can." To right-click on a file or files and have Total Rename do... what?
• Multiple Level Undo. Doesn't work well with the 'Undo Selected' feature, which is a more valuable tool.

Tric-Trac

• Tournament mode. Players alternate turns, the first person whose cumulative score reaches a set level wins. Same computer or network play.
• Option to roll only one die once all numbers > 6 are covered (how will that work with Tric-Trac 12?)
• New help file
• Timed game?
• Multi-player mode over network?
• New Variations. You can do things with a computer you can't do in real life--like 9 or 10 sided dice! Imagine dice numbers up to 9 and track numbers up to 15 (21 with three dice?)
• Improved keyboard play

New Programs

Which ones are you most interested in?

• SwitchSaver. Easily manipulate your screensaver, and disable it with a single click when you don't want it popping up. βeta available!
• Clikonnit. A partner to Marconnit that makes mouse clicks visible! βeta available!
• Portable Hole. Everyone needs one! They could lead anywhere... Drag & drop files into the 'hole' to move/copy them anywhere. Also includes holes to 'Oblivion' (high-security file shredder) and Recycle Bin
• Lineup. A new original dice/math game. I'm keeping the details of this one secret, it's such a good idea :-) Actually, this is just one of a set of dice-based math/learning games in the works.
• Luxury Yacht. Yacht is a traditional dice game (you may know of a commercial version with a similar sounding name.) The traditional version and the commercial one use slightly different categories--Luxury Yacht will include both variants, some new variants (including new categories and options to use different number/type of dice) as well as a 'design-your-own' mode. Also on the drawing board: Yacht Squares - either as seperate or as a variation to Luxury Yacht
• Sound Memory. A version of the classic matching game featuring audio clues instead of/alongside the traditional pictures. "Where was that other bugle sound?" "Where's that 'moo' to go with this picture of a cow?" I am thinking of calling it ConSoundTration but I'm not 100% sold on it...
• Daleks. Another classic game given new life--I have lots of ideas to make this old favorite fresh and new again
• KnotBoard. A handy-dandy multiple clipboard manager in taskbar form.
• More? Hey, there's always more, but everything else is pretty vague and unformed at this point, and I hardly have time to finish the ideas I've listed...

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