doombot » Xbox Friends Widget: Conclusion

[Update: If your widget is just displaying a blank white screen, don't worry! We've fixed it.]

Awhile back, I implored you, the internet, to make me a Mac Dashboard widget that would quickly and cleanly tell me what my Xbox Live Friends were doing at any given time. First, Jacob answered with a mockup, and once again I asked if anybody wanted to help finish it off.

Then, Andrew Baldwin replied, made it work, fixed a bunch of bugs that Dan and I were good at pointing out but useless in helping to fix, and even spruced up the interface after I was already impressed and using the thing. So, what does it do?

Shows gamer pic, gamertag, game being played, and in-game status of profiles you specify
Checkbox for whether offline names should be shown (off by default)
Clicking on gamer pic loads that gamer’s profile in default browser
Only lists profiles who are set to be viewable to “Everyone” in Privacy Settings
Allows for scrolling between names with a button, to keep the widget small
Looks pretty and compact
Makes me happy

Had I realized sooner that simply asking for things through this blog could bring entire new objects into being, I probably would have been begging you all for sandwiches long ago. This is much cooler, though.

Thanks to Andrew and Jacob for making this happen. Thanks also to Duncan Mackenzie for running and granting permission to use the online service this draws from, which keeps track of Xbox Live profiles’ online status.

So, without further ado: DOWNLOAD THE WIDGET.

12 Comments so far

God forbade it, indeed; but Jason hath done it: for
the vain pleasure of four-and-twenty widgets hath Jason lost
eternal joy and felicity. I writ them a bill with mine own blood:
the date is expired; this is the time, and he will fetch me.

EXIT

Awesome! Will be giving this a whirl fer sure. Good work, doombot and internet!

Also: This is DOOMBOT’S 600th POST! That is so wild.

awesome widget. few ideas for future though:

1) option to resize widget to show more names at once
2) probably not possible, but a way to grab names from live server instead of manually typing in.

bugs: sometimes shows names as online when not

regardless, this widget is awesome and thanks to all who were involved. out of maclive/xboxlivefriends/1337pwn.com/ i prefer this one above all.

Nice. Much better looking than 1337pwn one which I was using.
Functionality seems the same though, I was looking for one that refreshed status in a timely manor and didnt lie!

Perhaps a refresh button on the widget.

I will keep this one anyway as it looks spot on.

how do you enter your details in the widget to get it working ??

You don’t log in with your own gamertag to check just your list of friends. You click in the lower right-hand corner of the widget, and when it flips over, you enter other people’s gamertags to check for later.

This widget is great! It’s exactly what I was looking for. Is this still being actively worked on? How will I know if there are updates available for the widget?

I think it’s being treated as done by those who worked on it, but maybe they’d share code if anybody wanted to fiddle with it further.

Thanks for the info. It’d be great if it was able to send messages. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t know what to do with the code even if they shared it with me.

Your widget isn’t displaying any of the friends anymore… Did microsoft change something on their server that you need to adjust in your widget? is anyone else’s widget not working anymore?

[...] you’ve been using one of the fine folk using our Xbox Live Widget, you may have noticed that it’s lately been suffering from a mild case of [...]

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Xbox Friends Widget: Conclusion

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