Smooth Agent

What is SmoothAgent ?

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Features

• The assistant stays on user's desktop (minimized state).
  
• When new information is available, the assistant notifies the user by changing the way it looks; for example, by showing an animated image.
  
• Clicking on the assistant shows an information panel composed of text links and image links. In a way common to any Web browser, the user can click on the links to open his favorite browser on the related URL.
  
• The way the agent looks is customizable by creating new "skins" that can be downloaded for the server. 4 skins are currently available (see them below). Creating a new skin only requires to provide a few GIF files.
• The graphics use alpha blending to display transparency effects.
• A special algorithm allows SmoothAgent to use standard "transparent" GIF image files and to display them over a background of any color without the ugly usual result caused by anti-aliasing.
  For example, Smooth Agent will display:
  
  instead of:
  
  and this will work over a background of any color (and over a non-solid background as well, like a picture).
• The agent is dynamically localizable (any end-user can create a localized version without access to the source code). Current version (and installer) supports English and Japanese. See below the contextual menu in Japanese:
  

Technical facts

• Platform: the client runs on Windows 98 and above.
• Entirely written in C++ (source code: 50KB specific to this application, 650KB in a reusable library).
• Binary: s_agent.exe, 168KB.
• Dependencies: none but the standard MSVC system libraries (present on any Windows machine).
• Transparency implementation: under Windows 2000 and XP, layered windows are used. Under Windows 98, since this feature does not exist, non-rectangular regions are used (the result is not perfect, but acceptable).

Available skins

Click on images for full size. To make graphics look more visible, I used a light grey background here, but remember that the agent looks fine on any background color.

Snapshot	Name	Comments	Animation
	"Babe"	Swim suit, anybody? ;)
	"FlagUS"	American flag. Note that the buttons are on the bottom.
	"Orca"	Killer whale. Note that the background is an image. Also note that the "earth" image shows no anti-aliasing problem even though the background is dark blue instead of white.
	"Rakuten"	Another fish! (sorry, I like them). Real size is bigger.