The icons should be pushed with the next update, along with a few other features that we’ve added. The next area I’ll focus on is the main screen, and making that area a bit more pretty. The current brown mess isn’t going to be sticking around for long.

Version 1.0 at the moment features a highscores lookup. However with future updates we plan to expand on the content to include database lookups (prices, items, monsters, clans), Adventure Log, basic calculators, notifications and much more.

If you do have an Android device we encourage you to install it and let us know how it performs, positively or negatively.

Database Editor
This is a new tool that has been developed to allow SwiftKit staff members to access, modify, add and delete data within the SwiftKit00x.skd files. The SwiftKitData00x.skd files are used for the calculators, quest center, atlas, achievement diary center etc. The tool was written in .NET and connects to a MySQL database on the SwiftKit server. Currently the changes made are not live, in order for the changes to take effect the data needs to be exported, packed and then uploaded. The main benefit of the tool is that it allows other staff members to manage the data instead of just myself.

SwiftKit Control Panel
This is a tool that I wrote for myself back when I was initially developing SwiftKit. The main purpose of this tool is to allow me to manage updates for SwiftKit (including SwiftKit MS). While the tool doesn’t actually do the uploading it more or less does everything else. Including packaging, compressing, signing integrity, version control and placing all the update files in a holding directory ready for upload.

The first screenshot is where I grab the world info for all the RuneScape servers and pack it into a single file. The second screenshot is where I come after I have compiled a new version of SwiftKit. Clicking one of the update buttons increments the version number, compresses the executable and signs its integrity. The last screenshot is where I package and compress all the SwiftKit000x.skd data files into a single .skd file. The SwiftKitData001.skd file has over 670 calculator images compressed into it. This is why you see an unpacking images progress bar in the Calculators utility.

So there’s a quick look the two main tools used for managing the SwiftKit project. Not an ordinary Dev Blog post but hopefully still informative for those who had been wondering – or had asked me about them in the past.

You can also check out the new Screenshot Viewer in the latest SwiftKit MS update. For instructions on how to download SwiftKit MS see here.

The first most noticeable feature is the thumbnails. This was something we wanted to do from the start however when a typical player has hundreds and hundreds of screenshots in a single folder it can get a bit tricky. We overcome this problem by having the thumbnails generate on the fly when they come into view. Originally it would take around 5 seconds to open a folder with a hundred or so screenshots, now it’s opens instantly.

Organising your screenshots will also be a lot easier with the ability to create new folders, drag and drop existing screenshots/folders and also cut,copy and paste.

The above screenshots show you what happens when you double click or ‘View’ a screenshot. The forward and back buttons will navigate you back or forward through the other screenshots in the current directory. With the ‘Stretch to Fit’ button checked the screenshot will stretch or shrink depending on the window size, otherwise with it unchecked the screenshot will remain in it’s original size and you can pan it. The upload feature is not yet finished that will have to wait for the next post.

That’s about it for now, just a quick glimpse at what we’ve been working on. There’s only so much we can do before MechScape is released but so far so good. We encourage you to check out SwiftKit MS and let us know what you think on the forums or in a comment here.

Docking Tool Windows:
The first feature I want to talk about, and probably the most important is the ability to dock tool windows. In SwiftKit RS you can sort of do this, by moving the tabs about. In SwiftKit MS though, we wanted to implement it properly. You will have the ability to dock, undock, add, remove, resize, autohide and detach all internal tool windows. You can see an example of this in the screenshots below, when you grab a tool and drag it you are presented with a number of placement options.

This gives you a lot more freedom, there are so many placement options we’re certain you will find a way for it to suit you. The first screenshot above shows you what tools are currently in SwiftKit MS, all of which are more or less fully functional. For those with a keen eye, yes the IRC Client from SwiftKit RS is in and running very smoothly. Here’s a few more screenshots of placement examples.

Gecko(Firefox):
Something else we’re also excited about is the option to select the Gecko(Firefox) webbrowser, instead of the normal Internet Explorer. This has always been a popular suggestion for SwiftKit RS but we just couldn’t do it as the gecko control for VB6 is outdated and unstable. This will be completely optional though, Internet Explorer will be used by default for SK MS with the option of downloading the Gecko plugin via Settings.

SwiftBrowse
We’ve spiced up SwiftBrowse a bit for SK MS, as you can see from the screenshot below we’ve added tabs. The bookmarks are also a lot better this time around. SwiftBrowse will also utilize the Gecko(Firefox) webbrowser control if you have that option enabled.

Quick Links
The Quick Links tool has received a number of enhancements compared to the version in SwiftKit RS. You have the ability to create folders and also edit your quick links. Two new options have been added which are Open Websites Internally and Open Notes Internally, with these enabled when you click on a notes link or website in the Quick Links it will open them in a new tab internally.

That just about wraps things up for now, the above should hopefully give you an idea for the direction we’re heading in. As mentioned earlier, you’ll be able to download SwiftKit MS in a week or two. Keep an eye on the SwiftKit MS forums for news on that. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions please don’t hesitate to post them on the forums.

If we had a big beefy dedicated server at our disposal the implementation of such a feature would most likely of been quite trivial. A simple connection between SwiftKit and the server with a ping pong type system to validate connectivity would of been fine, then we could of just counted the number of connections and voila. The problem was we knew the number of SwiftKit users at any given time would be anywhere between 5 and 20 thousand. So we couldn’t do the method mentioned above on the resources that were available to us.

Eventually we came up with a viable solution, one that would work with the resources we had. Every three minutes SwiftKit would silently load a webpage(less than 1kb) on one of our servers. This webpage contained only a script that would add an entry to our Users Online database, adding a unique id and an expire time which was the current time plus 200 seconds. Since this is done every 3 minutes we add an entry once, after that we use the unique id to update the expire time. Finally a script is run on the server every five minutes that remove any entries in the database that are less than the current time. In other words, it deletes all the expired entries.

So with this method, we finally have a way to count the number of active SwiftKit Users and not use up too many resources on our server. The SwiftKit update 1.30 was when we added it in, but no mention of it was made as we wanted to test it first. Initially there were a few problems with the database server, the main one was it kept hitting the max connection limit. A few tweaks and optimizations were made(mainly replacing Apache with Lighttpd) the server began to handle it just fine. In fact better than expected, this weekend should be interesting though as the weekends are the busiest time.

So now on the SwiftKit website you can check out how many active SwiftKit users there are. Currently at the time of writing this there are a bit over 11,000  users using it at once. For kicks we added a % of current RuneScape players figure, this figure is a little off though as the SwiftKit Users figure also takes into account those who have left SwiftKit open and are logged off.

If you are aware of a better method for counting users of a desktop application I’d love to hear about it. Obviously our method isn’t mind blowing, but it seems to be working. Feel free to leave a comment or some constructive criticism if you have it.

Links:
http://www.swiftkit.net/index.php?page=stats