What is this program and what is it for?
Desktop doodle is a small program that will allow you to draw aimlessly on
your desktop using variety of colors and pen sizes. The purpose of this
program is totally depending on its user, it can be very usefully or it
can be a totally useless program that may waste your time. My personal reason
for creating this program is just to release work stress, or just have fun
by drawing anything on my desktop.
What’s required to run it?
The program is written in Win32 assembly language, without using any
external libraries. This made it technically portable to all Win32 Platforms
(Win9x, WinNT, WinXP, Win2000, and Win2003). All you need to download is the
executable file, run it and start "doodling on to your desktop".
Getting started:
The program is very easy to use, after you executed it, you will then receive a
“Pen” cursor, then you are already started, draw anything on your desktop using
the mouse by holding the left-mouse button. Releasing left mouse button means
you are lifting your pen from the desktop. The program has two modes,
active-mode means you are drawing to your desktop and inactive-mode which will
add a pen icon to the system tray, and hide the program until you activate it
again.
Change the size of the pen:
You can change the size of the pen from the context-menu of the program (while
it is active), right-click anywhere on your desktop to display the context-menu:
In the “Pen Size” menu, select your desired size for the pen. The default is
4 units.
You can also change the size of the pen using the number keys from your
keyboard:
Press 1 while in Active mode = 1 unit
Press 2 while in Active mode = 2 units
Press 3 while in Active mode = 4 units
Press 4 while in Active mode = 8 units
Press 5 while in Active mode = 16 units
Press 6 while in Active mode = 24 units
Press 7 while in Active mode = 32 units
Press 8 while in Active mode = 48 units
Press 9 while in Active mode = 64 units
Changing the pen cursor:
While the cursor don’t affect anything in the drawing area, this program
features 9 different cursors you can choose to help with “customizations” a
little. The default cursor is “Downward Pen”. You can change it from the “Pen
Cursor” menu:
You can also change the pen cursor using the F1 to F9 function keys from
your keyboard:
Press F1 while in Active mode = Arrow
Press F2 while in Active mode = Upward Pen
Press F3 while in Active mode = Downward Pen
Press F4 while in Active mode = Hand
Press F5 while in Active mode = Crosshair
Press F6 while in Active mode = Small block
Press F7 while in Active mode = Archon
Press F8 while in Active mode = Chalk
Press F9 while in Active mode = Marker
Changing the pen color: While the program is in Active mode, pressing the Spacebar or Enter key will
bring-up the color dialog box where you can select color for your pen:
Alternatively, you can access the same dialog box from the context-menu, by
choosing “Choose Color” menu item:
If you notice, there are set of “Custom Colors” below the “Choose Color” menu item.
These custom colors are the same custom colors in the Colors Dialog
(defaults are predefined to standard 16-color values).
You can customize these using Colors Dialog, press Spacebar to bring-up the dialog:
Your custom colors will immediately affect the 16 custom color menu items in the
context-menu. Like pen sizes and pen cursors, the program while in active-mode
has a preset shortcut keys from the keyboard, these a letter keys you would
normally access using your left hand (because your right hand is busy with the
mouse):
QWERTY
ASDFG
ZXCVB
These letters will respond as follows:
Press Q while in Active mode = Custom color 1
Press W while in Active mode = Custom color 2
Press E while in Active mode = Custom color 3
Press R while in Active mode = Custom color 4
Press T while in Active mode = Custom color 5
Press Y while in Active mode = Custom color 6
Press A while in Active mode = Custom color 7
Press S while in Active mode = Custom color 8
Press D while in Active mode = Custom color 9
Press F while in Active mode = Custom color 10
Press G while in Active mode = Custom color 11
Press Z while in Active mode = Custom color 12
Press X while in Active mode = Custom color 13
Press C while in Active mode = Custom color 14
Press V while in Active mode = Custom color 15
Press B while in Active mode = Custom color 16
Clear all the drawings you've made:
While the program is active, pressing Backspace or number 0 will clear all
your drawings from the desktop. You can do it from the “Clear”
context-menu as well:
Save your drawing: The program has no feature of saving your drawing. However, you can use the
window’s screen capture function by pressing the “Print Screen” button, that
will save a copy of the entire desktop (excluding the mouse pointer) to the
clipboard. Open the paint program, and paste the screen you captured, and save
it to bitmap file.
Deactivate the program:
When you’re done doing all your drawings stuffs and finally realized that
you are wasting time, and you decided you want to deactivate the program,
simply press the Escape key while it is active, this will make the program hide
itself to the system tray:
Alternatively, you can
choose to deactivate the program from the context-menu:
Activate the program: After you’ve done
your tasks, and you decided you want to waste more time with desktop doodle,
just activate the program, either double click the “Pen” icon from the
system-tray, or right-click the icon, then choose “Activate” from the
context-menu:
Terminate the program: The are two ways to terminate the program:
1. If the program is active, press Shift-Escape key combination.
2. If the program is not-active, right-click the “Pen” icon from system tray,
then choose “Exit” from the context-menu:
Source-code Distribution:
The program is not distributed with a source-code currently, because the program was
written in assembly language, and the source-codes for this program are currently
not-too-friendly from readers other than me. However, I am planning to add more comments
to the source-code and re-code it to make it more readable, and release the source-code
in the future updates.
Contact:
You can send me email at
gwapo@models.com for any inquiries regarding this program (bug reports, and
suggestions). You can also visit my blog at this address:
http://community.devpinoy.org/blogs/cvega
to know latest information about me and what's my latest release.
