DHES

Hey small,
Nice to see an effort by others to help make DHPOS a better product.
I checked out your pole. Display, that is...
Here some feed back and ideas that come to mind.

I know this is your first whack at this but the program should at least be able to duplicate the features of the Big Pole Display and then have a little something extra to give it a wow factor. Otherwise it is just a limited version of the BigPole but takes 8mb of extra disk space to do it.

So first it should include the missing option to have scrolling similar to the BigPole's 40 with scrolling. And I think the BigPoleDisplay can be run on a separate computer from the POS system. I have no way to test if yours did this or not.

The graphic jpg of the "Pole" is a bit cheesy but I do like the fact that its a separate jpg. A creative person could customize it to include a store's logo or whatever would be more interesting than looking at a pole. This is hands down better than what BPD can do! For years Dale has refused requests to put a pony on the main screen, well now those people can put it on their pole display. Ohh joy!!

Here is a combination of ideas related to usability and viewing options that will also add a coolness factor to your pole.
1. Have the "Display Screen" area be 'masked' so the user can have color options of the display instead of just White text on Black. Let the user choose fore and back colors. If not a complete 16bit color palette to choose from, then at least some color options found on various pole displays. Such as: Black on Green like the Pertellian pole display, Black on Gray, Blue on White, Black on Orange, Black on White, or White on Blue (to mimic the Big Pole Display). I don't know how the text is generated on screen but there would be added bonus points if the user could also select from various styles of mono space fonts.

2. Allow user options to control the pole display's application window. As it is now,it cannot be resized.
The app window should be allowed to be resized thereby allowing the user to size the app window to just the size of the 'Display Area' for either the standard 4 line view or for the scrolling option. With the window sized to the "Display Area" this allows the rest of the desk top screen to be used for a slide showing running full screen behind it. Slide show could be of store sales info or display new products. Video Or whatever the user wants that would capture customers attention and perhaps get them to buy something else or inform them of upcoming store events. [just Bruce's rambling ideas]

In keeping with the thought of having another application like a screen show or video running in the background full screen.
The window would be more user friendly if it also had the feature to 'Dock'/'Snap' itself at the top or bottom of the screen when in 4 line view or dock to either side of the screen if in 'Scrolling' view.
Adding the option to have the pole display stay on top of all other windows would also be helpful to ensure it stayed on top of any other applications that were running thereby ensuring it didn't get lost behind something else because of an accidental mouse click or move.

Also allow for a full screen view, maximized, so if there isn't anything else interesting on the desktop that the user wants to display, the pole display fills the screen real estate. (with or without the pole). Perhaps also included in the full screen mode a simple and basic scrolling marque feature that would crawl underneath the 4 line display. Implement it by reading from a txt file that the user could easily maintain. It would give the user the ability to add info about store sales or store hours or whatever. Double bonus points for adding user options of fore/back colors and fonts for the crawl.

As usual, users have no idea what it takes to get their fanciful ideas coded into software. I'll place myself in this group known as Users for the ideas I've given above. Best of luck if you choose to add these features. If nothing else maybe this will spawn some other ideas of your own.

Hopefully others will check it out and offer some input also but the response may be low.
I'm sure most users don't use any pole display with DHPOS. Some use the Pertellian like my self. But I'd image there are very few users who use the Big Pole Display with a second monitor so the audience is going to be really small. For myself, the 64BigPoleDisplay would have to have some really big wow factor for me to pull out another computer and monitor to use as a Pole Display!

small,
My hat is off to you for your efforts! Don't sell yourself short; You are a programmer! Give some of these ideas a shot. As a learning tool It should be fun to try out some of these. Its always more fun to learn how to program with real world project. Sometimes writing code is just for your own satisfaction. And if in the end it can help others thats OK too.

I look forward to seeing more. Good luck!