Introducing the Vaadin Screensaver

Cheers everyone!

We all agree that Vaadin is awesome - it makes it super-easy to create enterprisey applications that look good and make you and your users happy…(does it really make you happy though?)

Anyway, one thing has been missing from Vaadin since the dawn of time. One thing that no self-respecting-enterprise application can live without even after it has been ported to the web. And that ‘something’ is a kick-ass-sweet-screensaver! A screensaver can make your life so much happier - so here it is:


Test it live here running on top of the
5-minute tutorial
to Vaadin with a 5 second timeout (so be patient):

ScreenSaver.BLANK


ScreenSaver.STARFIELD


ScreenSaver.MOVINGTEXT


ScreenSaver.SNOWSCAPE


ScreenSaver.MATRIX


Not only that, but it’s also super-easy to use:

  1. Download the project JAR (and gwt-graphics) => To be added as one download in the forthcoming Vaadin Directory. But until then see the README.TXT in the SVN.
  2. Write your 3 lines of code:

[code]
//Create a screensaver of your choice, add timeout and BOOM, you’re done.
ScreenSaver screensaver = new ScreenSaver(ScreenSaver.SNOWSCAPE);
screensaver.setTimeout(5000);
getMainWindow().addComponent(screensaver);

[/code] 3. Profit!

As for the sourcecode, feel free to poke around:
http://dev.vaadin.com/browser/contrib/Screensaver
and make your changes or
contact me directly
.

The screensaver uses
Hene’s

gwt-graphics
library to produce browser independent SVG/MVG vector graphics and it’s really easy to use and extend.
Fancy writing your own screensaver?
See the
README.TXT
in the project for 3 easy steps!

As I’m writing this the Screensaver is at version 0.9.0 which means that it works, but it probably has a few glitches. (And with a few, I mean more than a few… actually I’m not sure it i.e. works in IE at all!). Also I’m looking forward to adding your awesome screensavers to the project soon… and who knows, I might even create my own Vaadin screensaver directory one day with downloadable Vaadin/GWT Screensavers! :wink:


Now stop reading and see what your app will look like with a little bit of snow or the cheap-ass-matrix-clone!

Wow! Totally useless, but somehow it is so nerdishly fabulous… Must resist adding this as an easter egg with three hour timeout to a production application :)

You could probably have it launched at a session timeout if you wanted to… just launch the matrix and change it so that it after a while writes on the screen “There is no Application” :wink:

Truly amazing! :lol: I really like the snowy one when it just adds a little detail on top of the app. But the real question is when are we gonna get this with a “get on my horse” -option, with sounds and all!

This is cool… Now we only need the RSS 3D visualization screensaver! :slight_smile:

I was actually thinking of a starwars twitterfeed aggregator as my next one… any other ideas?-)

Kind a great ! We’re all amazed here )

Could you add an event to support the screen saver exit to be able to prompt a password for sample?

Also, as additional screen it would nice to add a simple bluring panel.

Hmm… nice idea! Will add that to my internal-trac… But I’m afraid it will probably be some time before I have time to code anything again :slight_smile: I would also need to add better support for different browsers and a blurring screensaver would be nice as well.

If you want to, you could add the following functionality to the screensaver (source code available from the link in the directory): Have it trigger an event to the serverside when the mouse is moved and the screensaver is on. Then you could catch that on the serverside and do whatever you like… such as ask for a password & username.

Since I’ve implemented this feature, I’ll share the code.
Do you plan a full IE8 compatibility?

Interesting. How can we get this modified screeensaver?

Hello!

I just tried your add-on using maven and there seem to be some problems regarding the the GWT-Graphic resources. Since the name changed from “com.vaadin.contrib…” to “org.vaadin…” it is currently not possible to compile the widgetset.

See:

org.vaadin.screensaver.widgetset.ScreensaverWidgetset.gwt.xml

Or am I doing something wrong here?

Cheers,
Chris