Polar – A 3D shell for Windows
This is a sexy OpenGL 3D shell for Windows. Originally written in 2001, it was my Final Project at university and won me the Project Prize.
After uni, I briefly toyed with turning it into a finished product, and indeed a more advanced version was completed with auto updater, Lua skin scripts, etc, but I never did get it as polished as I wanted and with Vista et al., I feel the boat is rather missed.
Picture the scene – it’s 2001 (and still is, for those of us proudly ignoring Vista). Windows is wasting your graphics card. The “desktop” is a bad metaphor, but because Apple and Linux need to poach Microsoft userbase, they’re scared to innovate too far away from the dominant interface paradigm.
I wanted to get away from the physical-world analogies, and adopt an abstract interface metaphor. The camera allows the user to be focused on the task manager (the vertical panels) or the wharf (the hexagons), allowing a task-centric view depending on whether the user wants to launch an app or switch between running apps. Plus, hexagons! I love hexagons.
Here’s a video of Polar in action:
Polar is written in VC++ and runs on Windows 2000 or XP. If you try it on Vista I’d love to know how badly it bombs!
It hooks the OS to receive window event notifications and keep itself at the bottom of the Z order. The code that grabs the window as a texture is arcane but elegant Win32, no XP-specific tricks. It can run as a shell; if you’re confident with alternate shells feel free to do the usual registry trick or use a shell switcher. NextSTART makes a good additional launcher to run alongside it.
Take a look in the supplier readme to see how skins work; the skin definition is XML. The wharf can be configured to use a custom icon set or automatically pull shortcuts from your desktop. Only the Gradient Background option is enabled in this download.
Oh, I should add that it’ll write a log file to c:\polar.log.
Download (184Kb Zip file, binary only)
WOW, your projects are brilliant! I really like your work and see a bright future ahead.
Comment by Jessica — Aug 16 2007 @ 9:45 pm
Thanks, Jessica! Your WP layout is excellent, btw
Comment by Iain — Aug 17 2007 @ 7:49 pm
Aww, thanks!
Comment by Jessica — Aug 18 2007 @ 5:57 pm
Will this work on XP 64 ?
Comment by Rev Dave — Dec 14 2007 @ 4:29 pm
Hi Dave – no idea mate but please do try and let me know how it fares
Comment by Iain — Dec 19 2007 @ 9:04 pm
Hey man, I’m going to be trying this on Vista just for kicks, so I will let you know how it goes.
Comment by Jackson — Apr 17 2008 @ 11:46 pm
Very nice, I just tried it in vista and it runs well except the start button circle thing from vista is still there which isnt necessacerily a bad thing. The pictures above show a more advanced version with menus and whatnot…if it runs could you email me a copy for personal use?
Comment by Brian — May 27 2008 @ 6:00 pm
Hey, Im excited about this program, whens the final release comming?! Id like to see the orangeish version set out, or even a fully integrated site..
BTW, im going to test how well this program works with multi shelling. For example, Litestep and Polar. Ill let you know what turns up.
Comment by Jonathan — Jun 16 2008 @ 4:59 pm
Update:
Litestep and Polar Fight over Lowest Z-Order, but GeoShell (with its always on top z-order) get together in perfect harmony. I would REALLY recomend running both at the same time, alleast until Polar gets a Systray addon.
Comment by Jonathan — Jun 16 2008 @ 5:24 pm
Hi Jonathan, many thanks for your testing and encouragement. Totally agree on GeoShell, perfect for the task.
I’ve made so many promises about “finishing” this thing over the years that I won’t even build your expectations up, but I may get round to it yet!
Comment by Iain — Jun 30 2008 @ 11:16 pm
perfect project!! great job!
Comment by dim1988 — Jul 20 2008 @ 1:20 pm
This is an exciting new alternative to the current lot of shell alternatives. Congratulations. I thing there is still a place for your 3D shell. Please, develop it further. Suggestions: Nice if you could drag’n'drop your programs onto a hex. like ObjectBar from Stardock. How does one customize your shell without a lot of programming skill?
Comment by Tony — Sep 1 2008 @ 7:31 am
How can i add a wallpaper to your program?, I ve been using it for a while, and it’s a nice work.
Comment by XXXX — Feb 8 2009 @ 8:16 pm
I, first of all nice work, I ve been using it for a while, but I’d like to change the wallpaper, can you tell me how can i do this?
Comment by turboaux — Feb 8 2009 @ 8:32 pm
This is a great piece of work. When is the next release coming out? It would be nice to be able to skin the environment completely (y’know backgrounds, alphablending and transparency) and maybe some mouseovers for the tiles/icons and a context menu. It’s the sort of thing I’d definitely pay for. PS. Are there any “hidden” bits in the skin.xml?
Comment by Matt — Mar 3 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Hi guys — Woah, sorry for the delay replying. turboaux and XXXX, check out skin.xml to change the wallpaper.
Matt — Thanks
No hidden bits *that I can remember*… Ach, you never know, this might get some more dev time yet. I always kept thinking, MS would render it obsolete any day, but I’ve been thinking that for years..
Comment by Iain — Jun 12 2009 @ 6:06 pm