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I didn’t think I had anything more to do with my TopProcess Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget after its minor update a couple months ago. However, I got a suggestion emailed to me from a TopProcess user that was easy to implement and adds a lot to the gadget. So, TopProcess now allows you to choose between measuring the top consumers of CPU, and the top consumers of RAM. So all you need to do is add two copies of the gadget to your sidebar, and set one to track memory and one to track CPU. Check it out (Firefox users will not be surprised that it always sits at the top):

In CPU mode it displays percentages, and in RAM mode it displays absolute memory footprint values. Remember that some apps (like .NET or Java apps) look like they’re taking a lot of memory, but will give it back when you get low on RAM, so it’s not a worry if they gobble up some extra RAM when you’ve got it. Of course, for most native apps (like Firefox or Photoshop), the value displayed in TopProcess represents a less flexible chunk of resources.

A couple of bugs and less-than-desirable behaviors have been fixed, too. Whenever you change settings the changes will be reflected in the gadget immediately, and turning text fade off and then on again won’t cause text to overlap in a big mess. Also, some of the comments on the Windows Live Gallery page for TopProcess suggest that people have been seeing performance problems with the gadget. I haven’t actually seen any problems myself, but I went through the code and tightened it up a bit here and there - hopefully it’ll work better for those people.

So pick up the new version, rate it on Windows Live Gallery, and enjoy the new functionality.

PS: I was holding this back until my friend could come through with the Russian and Japanese translations, but he’s just too busy and I had to fall back to Google Translate. I apologize if the translations are awful. If you would like to help fix them, or to translate TopProcess into your favorite language, please contact me.

Just a quick update on the Top Process Windows Sidebar Gadget I made a couple months ago. First, I’ve added an option to disable the crossfade effect whenever the list of processes is updated. When this setting is checked, there’s no more smooth fade, but your text is also not bold. I actually prefer it without the fade, and based on some feedback I’ve gotten, this will be a welcome change.

The second change is that Top Process has been translated into 3 more languages. This is the first software I’ve ever written that has been localized, and I’m super excited, even though there wasn’t that much to translate. User Stefano Pirovano contributed an Italian translation, and my multilingual college buddy Mitch provided Japanese and Russian translations. If anyone else wants to take a crack at it, just email me. Hopefully some of my .NET stuff can be ready for localization at some point too.

Last weekend I decided that I would try my hand at developing a Windows Sidebar Gadget. I’ve got a few ideas about gadgets that I’d like to make, so I thought I’d whip up a quick, useful gadget to get familiar with the platform. I ended up making the TopProcess gadget. It’s basically a version of the standard UNIX top command. It’ll show the top X processes on your computer, which are the processes taking the most CPU. It just sits there in the sidebar updating that list every few seconds, letting you know what’s chewing up your dual cores.

You can grab it from me on my new Sidebar Gadgets page, or from Windows Live Gallery. If you like it, please rate it or review it on Windows Live Gallery, so more people get to see it.

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