Enigma & Rainmeter

A few days ago, I announced that the next - and in a sense, the final - update to Enigma was swiftly approaching. As of now, Enigma 2.5 is here.

But that's only half the story.

I also mentioned a particular "surprise" that was still under wraps. I've been eager to unveil this news for days, and now that the moment has arrived, I'm free to talk. As you may already know, Rainmeter is finally coming out of beta, with its first major update in nearly three years. And among a plethora of new and improved features - a list long enough to warrant its own post - there is one that is most exciting for me: Enigma has been chosen as the default skin for Rainmeter 1.0. As of now, the entire config comes prepackaged with the current version of the app.

Get it here.



The Story

This dual-release is not only an accomplishment for the app developers and myself, but a real tribute to the strength and passion of the nascent Rainmeter community. After literally years of drifting in the Internet void, the project was resurrected a few months ago by a group of designers for no other reason than their belief in Rainmeter's potential. This was around the same time that I took a bit of an unplanned sabbatical from the community.

Imagine my surprise to find, three months later, an active forum, full of new skins, third-party addons and plugins, a lively exchange of tips and concepts, tech support from people who know what they're talking about, and even streaming updates to the app itself, brimming with long-awaited features and fixes. A centralized wealth of talent and creativity that makes the atmosphere in which I first developed Enigma look like the Dark Ages, and is literally a dream come true.

This time around, I had a board full of beta testers. I had daily releases with exactly the upgrades I needed for the things on my rather-ambitious agenda. I had my coding questions answered by the makers themselves. And there was almost always someone in the IRC chatroom, where the whole idea of this joint-release came to be. For the past week, I've been working 'round the clock with the developers - Gregory Schoppe, "Sergeant" E. V. McKay, elestel, kenz0, dragonmage, the indispensable Jeff Morley (who spent a full day on the config tool that now appears in Enigma), and of course Rainy himself - to get this thing ready for the public and the next phase of its evolution. These guys are as clever as they are fearless, and I honestly believe the Rainmeter platform has the potential to eclipse Samurize and redefine an entire class of desktop applications. It is a real honor to be a part of it.

Please don't hesitate to register at Rainmeter.net and get involved in the community. There has never been a better time.



Paradigm Shift

Many of the new "Enigma" features that I'm about to describe are really just the first applications of the Rainmeter 1.0's expanded capabilities. This update to the config is really custom-tailored to showing off these upgrades. That said, I hope Enigma itself is still something of a draw.

If I had to pick the thing I'm most proud of, it's the fact that the user never has to get hands-on with a single file or folder. Everything from installation, to skin-loading, setting personal variables, saving and switching themes, accessing the documentation, and getting help, is 100% automated. It feels like a proper piece of software now, while at the same time keeping the total, utterly transparent customizability - and modularity - that makes it Rainmeter.

When you run the new Rainmeter for the first time, the Home skin is the first thing you see. Some of you probably remember the monstrous contraption that the Home skin used to be, but I've given it a significant overhaul, with a much shorter list of links and a familiar, website-like layout with explanatory labels. In other words, more signal, less noise.

Most importantly, the Home skin now acts as your "center" for all things Enigma and Rainmeter in general. While the Skins are the meat of any good config, you now have quick links to what I consider the three other core components:

• II. Configuration. For basic personal preferences - your feeds, Google account, weather code, etc. - you will no longer need to edit Rainmeter's code directly. With one click, the new GUI Configuration tool automatically sets variables across all skins.
  
  
• III. Themes. Using a new built-in config manager called RainThemes, you can now save and load your setups through a GUI interface.
  
  
• IV. Support. Aside from the packaged Instructions, which have been fully revised and rewritten for this release, you also have a direct link to the official Enigma support thread, where I will be available to answer technical questions in person.

Updates

Even without the organization scheme, though, there's plenty to be excited about.

• Fully functional on Windows Vista and 7. The new installer is flexible to support all three versions of Windows and their 64-bit counterparts, and takes advantage of a change in Rainmeter's file system which sidesteps UAC interference.
  
  
• Resolution-independent. The sidebars and taskbar now adjust to your screen dimensions automatically. In addition, the default Themes will set the proper positions for their skins - for example, the Taskbar will appear on the bottom edge, no matter your resolution.
  
  
• Completed Music skins. At long last, an iTunes plugin for Rainmeter exists; you will no longer need to install CD Art Display alongside Rainmeter.
  
  
• The Readers have been expanded to support Atom feeds, Gmail and Twitter, in addition to the traditional RSS fetcher.
  
  
• Multiple new skins, including a compact calendar, wireless signal strength, system uptime, and even your local sunrise/sunset times.
  
  
• Improved visual options, including text shadows, transformation matrices, and antialiasing.
  
  
• And, by removing redundant and unnecessary images, the whole package is now 2/3rds the size.

You can get a complete changelog with the full package, which is and will always be available from its home on deviantArt. Although the skins and themes are identical to the ones now built into Rainmeter now, it's only this 'old-school' package that has the Special Features - including the CAD styles, Autohotkey scripts and original Samurize configs - which are still very much in demand.

Finally, keep an eye on this blog in the coming weeks and months for updates on my rapidly-evolving plans for Enigma's future.