MGDesktop Introduction

MGDesktop version 2.6 Copyright © 2001-2005 Feynman Software. All rights reserved.

MGDesktop (MiniGUI Desktop) is a comprehensive demo system for MiniGUI Ver2.0.x based on MiniGUI. You will know the unique features of MiniGUI easily in MGDesktop environment. In this environment, you can launch many typical MiniGUI demo applications, such as browsers, embedded GIS, 2D/3D graphics tools, GTK and games. MGDesktop even offers taskbar and start menu like Windows and X Window. As MGDesktop is a demo system, there is no warranty for it.

To learn how to use the download file, please visit here.

Hardware Requirements

To run MGDesktop, the following hardwares are required:

  • Processor: Intel Pentium 300MHz or higher clock rate
  • RAM: 256MB is recommended, at least 128MB
  • CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
  • Graphics display adapter: VESA compatible display card with a display resolution of 1024x768 and a 16-bit color depth
  • Monitor: 1024x768 resolution or higher
  • Mouse: USB or PS/2 compatible mouse
  • Network connectivity: To visit internet with the embedded browsers, there should be a common PCI 100Mb Ethernet adapter, such as RealTek RTL 8139 (A/B/C) Ethernet adapter and networking environment.

    • Note: In order not to affect the OS and the data existed in your PC, the whole demo system runs in memory. The data and the resources needed by MGDesktop will be loaded in memory firstly. So, there should be enough memory to load these applications and the data.

    Start Menu

    MGDesktop V2.6 provides a Windows or X Window like desktop environment.

    You can use "Start menu" to run all applications. Click "Startmenu" button, you will see there are seven items on the list: Applicaton; 2D Graphics; 3D Graphics; GTK + on MiniGUI; Games; Accessories and Setup.
    Start menu
    Click the pictures on the left side to see the screenshot of each application.
  • Application

    		•  mSpider is a full-featured lightweight embedded browser. The browser has an extendable architecture, so it can be modularized and customized according to different characteristics of hardwares and customers' requirements. More information of mSpider...

    		mGIS is an embedded geographic information system designed for embedded devices based on MiniGUI. It has many general map operating functions, such as roaming viewing, zooming out, zooming in, measurement, searching, etc. Also, GPS locating interfaces has been integrated into this application on Linux and VxWorks platforms successfully. Now, mGIS provides a lot of APIs for developers. With only a little specific works in secondary development, you can implement your own GIS products for mobile devices effectively, which support many kinds of operating systems and many kinds of map file formats. More information of mGIS...

    		This is a web browser based on the Opera 8 core and runs on MiniGUI. When you open Opera, you will see a welcome webpage. It shows you how to use Opera on MiniGUI. Opera in this CD-ROM: Copyright © 1995-2005 Opera Software ASA. All right reserved.

  • 2D Graphics

    		• Alpha Blending shows the effect of graphics alpha blending on MiniGUI.

    		Light Effect shows one way to implement colored lighting effect.

    		Double Buffer shows the use of double buffering. It moves a image across the screen two times to show you the different effect between directly painting and memory cached painting. In one round, it erases the screen and paints to the screen directly. You can see it flickers a lot; In the other round, it paints the image and text to a memory draw context (DC) first, then paints that image to the window DC. You can see it doesn't flicker any more.

    		Palette This is a palette effect demo on MiniGUI. It draws a set of concentric circles to the screen and animates them by cycling the palette.

    		Spline uses "spline curves" to create smooth paths connecting a number of nodes. This demo is useful for constructing realistic motion and animations. Click the mouse to add new control point; Pressing Del key while clicking on a control point to delete it; Right-click the mouse to display the spline curves; Press key C to display the control points, press W or S to change the spline curves.

    		Flame shows a burning flame effect on MiniGUI.

    		Unicode Text MiniGUI supports Unicode text displaying. This demo shows that the different language texts displaying on MiniGUI.

    		GDI: Graphics Device Interface on MiniGUI. This demo shows some common-use GDI on MiniGUI such as drawing lines, circles, pictures, etc.

  • 3D Graphics

    		• Stars program draws a 3D starfield (depth-cued) and a controllable polygon spaceship. Press cursor key to change the direction; press Page Up and Page Down to rotate the spaceship; press Ctrl to fire the engine.

    		Camera simulates a plane in a 3D environment, demonstrates the function to view a 3D world from any position and angle.You can change the angle follow the hint on the camera window.

    		3D Cubes displays the stochastic movement of cubes.

  • GTK + on MiniGUI

    		• GTK software can run on MiniGUI very well. Here you can see many samples of GTK + on MiniGUI.

  • Games

    		• House Keeper is a famous classic game. Also named Sokoban. It's easy to learn and once you start you can't stop playing it. :)

    		Also a famous game. Double click two or more blocks of the same type that touch horizontally or vertically to make them disappear, but be aware that the more blocks in a group, the higher your score when you click!

    		This is a fully graphical mine sweeper program, just like that in Windows.

  • Accessories

    		• This is a Windows-like notepad editor on MiniGUI.

    		This is a Windows-like calculator.

    		A painter on MiniGUI.

  • Setup

    		• Here you can configure the network. For more detailed steps to configure the network, please visit here.

    Taskbar


    The above picture is the taskbar on MGDesktop V2.0. Taskbar is a special application desktop toolbar. Use the taskbar you could quickly launch some programs like browsers, GTK and setup etc.

  • The operating interface of MGDesktop V2.0 is just like the Windows or X Window desktop environment, including the X Window workspace function (called "layer" in MiniGUI). You can select the applications you wish to run in the start menu. Applications will be automatically added to different layers. You can switch between the different layers by clicking the layer buttons.

    • Layer buttons