Gesture Magic's Criticism

Whilst software I give away on this site usually has praise (Aerofoil being a good example, LocateMe for its educational value, Optimizer for having been a best seller when it was sold) I've recently come across (my first piece!) some criticism of Gesture Magic. Bear in mind Gesture Magic was stated on here (due to time constraints) to be released with a limited feature set because it was better than sitting on my machine not getting used or not getting improved by third party developers, so I did expect some criticism.

What irks me is that the criticism was not constructive, it was left on a third party site and no feedback left for me here.

Even if the user cannot program, lack of simple etiquette to provide some useful feedback of the software on this site shows the lack of understanding of the open source process and how developers rely on feedback to improve the product. This is the cost of the product. You pay Microsoft with money, for open source for whom people who give their own time writing software for others, it's good practice to provide help or feedback. It's all about community, sharing and importantly goodwill.

To summarise my feedback on this issue, based on the intentional simplistic design of Gesture Magic, once I've finished the Nintendo DS game I'm working on, I intend to
- Improve accessor/modifier keys on Gesture Magic (find some other way to start the gesture drawing)
- Improve application starting (add start in directory option)
- Provide integrated default functions, such as minimise/maximise window, close Window, and search.
- Better help support
- Fix or improve some of the issues raised by users.

At least the user said Gesture Magic makes your desktop look like a video game, which was an intention all along :)

Gesture Magic Source Code Release

Sorry for the delay... I started writing a Nintendo DS game and forgot I was releasing the Gesture Magic C# source!

Gesture Magic 1.0 Source

Gesture Magic 1.0 Installer

And the obligatory "what the hell is it?" video (NOTE BETA VERSION VIDEO):

Gesture Magic to be released for free next week

Gesture Magic has been sitting on my PC for the last few months and hasn't changed much*, but by the end of next week you'll be able to get your mitts on it - for nothing - gratis - free!

Gesture Magic allows you to start programs or batch files by painting gestures on screen - directly on top of the desktop. Whilst this may not seem amazingly useful (especially when you could just use program shortcuts), it looks cool and with some configuration and some crafty batch file usage you could probably accomplish some complex tasks more quickly.

* Regrettably the code isn't great and is unfinished (i.e. prototypish so not a good example of C# code :( ), but so it doesn't rot I'll release it as GPL as bug fixed as I can make it. Feel free to build on it, but remember to provide the source.

Here's the youtube preview of an earlier version.