Blog: Windows Handles, Web-based widgets, fun with SP2.

In Windows 95, 98, and ME, we were always running out of "resources". There was even a resource monitor that would tell you what % was left.  But don't worry, Windows NT (and its descendants Win2K and XP) would take care of that...NOT. Now there's a new resource limit that causes the unwary all kinds of problems: Handles. 

If you get up over around 17,000 used on your system, it'll eventually start getting flakey just like if you ran out of resources on the old versions of Windows. And what's really bad is that Internet Explorer is the biggest pig.

I've been resetting up my laptop so it's still quite "stock" right now. I don't really have that much stuff running yet. But Internet Explorer, for some reason, feels like it needs to suck up 20 megs for each window. I have 5 Internet explorer windows open using a total of 60 megabytes of RAM and about 1,400 handles. Give it time though and it will grow.  I also have 5 svchost.exe's running using a total of ~40 megs and 2000 handles. SVCHost.exe is one of the processes that the XP theme service runs. This hiding out under that process name allows some people to claim XP themes are (ahem) "0 foot print" or use no resources and other such nonsense.  So just between those two things I've got about 100 megabytes using and 3,500 handles used. 

Of course, DesktopX is using 20 megs of RAM and 400 handles itself. But in its defense, it has a ton of ActiveX based controls floating on it right now. In watching the various Dashboard vs. Konfabulator flame wars I've seen Mac advocates make a big deal that unlike Konfabulator, Dashboard "widgets" are just web pages and that was the real innovation that others didn't have.  Ahem. Once again, this is an area DesktopX has had for years and before that, Active Desktop.  Any web page can be a DesktopX object (See screenshot of this Java clock).  What I've been playing around with is trying to find a way to have irregularly shaped web-based objects (like a round clock) on my desktop.  Alberto and Martin have done it but I haven't quite figured out how to do it.  It has to do with covering the parts you want with a transparent object that ignores the web control.  I haven't figured out how to do it despite having received 2 working samples.

Meanwhile, DesktopX 2.2 should go "gold" for Object Desktop users this next week. It's got the new graphics engine and hundreds of other features and tweaks.  For me though it's all about the overlays.  The overlay feature allows me to have all my widgets/objects pop up or disappear by hitting a hot key (like F9).  So I can cram my desktop full of widgets (calculator, stock monitor, headlines, weather, task list, sales monitor, etc.) but hit F9 and make them all disappear off my desktop and with another press of F9 have them all appear on top of whatever I'm doing so I can do whatever.  No doubt the Mac people will say we stole this from their unreleased OS feature.  For the record, we stole this idea from Tivo.   I think this feature will make DesktopX even more compelling.

This past week has been full of massive amounts of work that few people will ever notice. We're working on getting WindowBlinds working on the 64bit version of Windows XP.  It's almost done.  Plus there are some SP2 things with certain AMD chipsets we're looking into.  Stuff that few people will notice but has to be dealt with. Especially given how widespread Object Desktop based technologies are.  For instance, a certain super-hero based premium suite is expected to come out in the next couple of weeks to coincide with its movie which came out recently.  Since it's likely to be very popular, we have to make sure this stuff works perfectly.