Creating an update

I created waggle a couple of years ago to scratch a personal itch, loosing my mouse pointer on one or more high definition screens. The application was fairly simple - want to find your mouse pointer? - Then shake it from side to side. The application would draw multicoloured circles around the mouse pointer. Once you stopped shaking the mouse the circles would vanish.

This led to me writing the TBool, a C++ temporal Boolean which can help with detecting the mouse shake.

I eventually released the first version of waggle. Several people downloaded the application. I reached out to a few and got some feedback on it. This led to me wanting to do an updated version. However the update got delayed a little. You see at the same time as trying to do the update I moved countries, changed continents, jobs, houses, cars, and got my kids into a new school. To say it was hectic would have been a complete understatement.

But this itch of wanting to do better has stayed with me, and now, I’m delighted to say that I have an update. This update provides the following:

  • Start the application when the user logs into their account
  • New waggle detection code
  • New animation code allowing circles to grow as you waggle and shrink when you stop
  • New window handling code to try to ensure that the circles always appear on top of every window on the screen
  • A new installer

I am sharing an early version of Waggle My Mouse 2.0 to some the folks who purchased the original copy, and I’m looking for feedback and ways in which I can improve it. Once I’m happy with it, I hope to provide to everyone who’d like a copy.

Finally, why circles and why those colours?

Well this is a question I have been asked about, well, the colours where picked when looking at my son’s crayola crayon case. Thinking about the desktop, I didn’t know what application would be running on the machine, nor what would be displayed, however it was important to show the mouse location. So thinking that the crayon case contained nearly every primary colour I used that as a starting point. You’ll notice if you shake long enough nearly every colour available in crayon case will appear.