Making web games with DesktopX!
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DesktopX lets you use VBScript and Javascript (and any other scripting language that supports Windows scripting host) to extend what DesktopX can do.
But it also allows you to directly access EVERY COM object (ActiveX controls) on your system.
This morning I saw my son playing a game from Lego.com. That got me thinking, wouldn't it be cool if I could take that game and email it to my friends and family who have kids. Not a URL, but the actual game. And what if the final "Game object" was only 2K?
Here's how I did it:
Ist, I right clicked on the DX tray icon and chose "new object". It opened up the object props dialog and I chose to create a NEW script. This opened up the DXScript editor and put in the VBScript template code. Since I wanted to make an IE control I went to the script menu item and picked the ActiveX control chooser item.
This opens up the ActiveX control list. These are all the ActiveX controls on my computer. Most people have no idea what ActiveX controls are nor do they realize just how much of them on their system. Basically, most modern programs are no longer monolithic. They are instead broken up into COM objects. DesktopX lets you directly access them. I went down and found the Microsoft web browser object and chose that.
Now, I don't know VBscript at all. All I know is that ActiveX controls are referred to as well "Controls". Thankfully, DesktopX's script editor has intellisense. So I typed Control. and then intellisense showed all the methods of the IE control. I went through it until I found one that looked like it would let me navigate to a particular page (navigate2). I'd never have known what the method was without this as I haven't messed with COM myself. So Picked that one.
Then I put in the URL page from the Lego site my kid was playing on.
I exited out of it. There is no "save" option because it's all "live". I right clicked on the object and chose "enable script" to get it started. I held down the Ctrl key to resize the object to be the size I wanted it to be.
And voila, my game is on the desktop. Only thing left to do is create some pretty bitmaps to act as the borders of this "window" and then group them together (drag select all the objects and choose to group them). Then I can email it to anyone running DesktopX and they now can play this game.
But it also allows you to directly access EVERY COM object (ActiveX controls) on your system.
This morning I saw my son playing a game from Lego.com. That got me thinking, wouldn't it be cool if I could take that game and email it to my friends and family who have kids. Not a URL, but the actual game. And what if the final "Game object" was only 2K?
Here's how I did it:
Ist, I right clicked on the DX tray icon and chose "new object". It opened up the object props dialog and I chose to create a NEW script. This opened up the DXScript editor and put in the VBScript template code. Since I wanted to make an IE control I went to the script menu item and picked the ActiveX control chooser item.
This opens up the ActiveX control list. These are all the ActiveX controls on my computer. Most people have no idea what ActiveX controls are nor do they realize just how much of them on their system. Basically, most modern programs are no longer monolithic. They are instead broken up into COM objects. DesktopX lets you directly access them. I went down and found the Microsoft web browser object and chose that.
Now, I don't know VBscript at all. All I know is that ActiveX controls are referred to as well "Controls". Thankfully, DesktopX's script editor has intellisense. So I typed Control. and then intellisense showed all the methods of the IE control. I went through it until I found one that looked like it would let me navigate to a particular page (navigate2). I'd never have known what the method was without this as I haven't messed with COM myself. So Picked that one.
Then I put in the URL page from the Lego site my kid was playing on.
I exited out of it. There is no "save" option because it's all "live". I right clicked on the object and chose "enable script" to get it started. I held down the Ctrl key to resize the object to be the size I wanted it to be.
And voila, my game is on the desktop. Only thing left to do is create some pretty bitmaps to act as the borders of this "window" and then group them together (drag select all the objects and choose to group them). Then I can email it to anyone running DesktopX and they now can play this game.
But I know what you mean. It's incredible how powerful Desktop X 2 is, especially compared to Desktop X 1. BIIIG difference! And a very good one, too. Thanks for showing us how to do this.
