The latest version of Rainmeter has many improvements, both for users of the application and for those creating and editing skins.
As always, Rainmeter 2.5 fully supports skins written for earlier versions, and users can simply upgrade existing installations. There is no need to uninstall or change any existing setup to use the new version.
Version Highlights
- New FileView plugin. This powerful new plugin will index and gather information about all files and folders in a defined path. Information supported includes the path, name, size, type, date, and icon. Commands can be used to scroll through the index of files, move up and down in the folder tree, and select files for display or opening with the associated program.
- Added new ClipString=2 setting and new ClipStringW / ClipStringH options. This will allow for more dynamic clipping and wrapping of a string while sizing the containing meter to accommodate the entire contents. - Details are at Change Announcements.
- Added new Mouse Actions to support the scroll wheel. Details are at Change Announcements.
- Added new Mouse Variables. These are "macro" variables used in the context of a mouse click action to provide the current X and Y position of the mouse cursor relative to the meter or skin in pixels or a percentage. Details are at Change Announcements.
- Added new OnUpdateAction command to Skins, Meters and Measures. This will allow an action to take place when the element is updated normally or by any bang.
- Added new OnChangeAction command to Measures. This will allow an action to take place when the value of a measure changes.
- Added new OnFocusAction and OnUnFocusAction options to the [Rainmeter] section of the skin, to execute actions when a skin gains or loses focus (by clicking it) in Windows.
- Added "*" as a wildcard parameter to the !UpdateMeasure and !UpdateMeter bangs to immediately update all measures and meters.
Changed the behavior of the WebParser ProxyServer option to better handle how WebParser interacts with Internet Explorer for proxy management.
- In addition, there are dozens of other improvements and fixes in the 2.5 version. See Rainmeter 2.5 beta notes or the Version History for a complete list.
Basic Tutorials
The Rainmeter Team has begun work on a series of basic skin tutorials in the documentation. If you are new to editing or creating skins in Rainmeter, these can be a valuable resource for learning how to get started, and over the course will introduce many of the concepts and functions used in skins in a clear "how-to" way. More tutorials will be added over time.
