SysStats

SysStats provides a way for non-developers to produce sophisticated widgets for display on the desktop and in docks. SysStats achieves this by allowing a user to link together three different types of component: Overlays, Meters and Controllers, using a set of simple dialogs.
Overlays are the visual aspect of a SysStats widget. They include things like text, graphs, images and animations which can be combined together to produce the final product.
Meters provide data. These can include CPU usage, disk usage, memory usage, network usage, web pages, XML data Windows management objects, scripts. The list is very long.
Controllers allow a user to interact with a widget. These include timers, mouse clicks, key presses, windows events and scripts.
SysStats allows a user to tie all of these together to produce a dynamic, interactive and attractive widget.
Some Details
SysStats achieves this by a strict adherence to object-oriented programming principles. When a user builds a widget they are hooking together various objects and their properties provided by SysStats. SysStats exposes all of these objects and their properties using COM so they can be accessed from scripts too.
History
SysStats started development as a configurable docklet for ObjectDock. The aim was to allow users to construct their own docklets without having to know C++. There were several systems that allowed people with some technical skill to construct widgets at the time. Most notable amongst them: desktopx, samurize and konfabulator. After becoming frustrated with some perceived shortcomings of DesktopX, the author decided it would be a good idea to break SysStats out of the dock and move it to the desktop. Coincidentally, another developer - Andreas Verhoeven had a similar idea at the same time. Paul decided that since Andreas was already heading down that road he should leave him to it and concentrate on expanding SysStats. Andreas application is what became AveDesk.
When development of SysStats tailed off, the author published the sources as an open source project called WinStats on sourceforge.

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