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Make things for Stillward Display

Every look in Stillward Display is a file somebody can make: window animations, taskbar looks, pointer sets, widgets, icon sets, island activities and setups. None of them is code. You make them in the program's own editors or by hand, check them from the command line, and publish them to the Steam Workshop.

Start with a style Schemas and examples on GitHub
Window animation styles

Window animation styles

How a window minimizes, opens, closes, snaps, drags, resizes and moves between screens.

*.motion.json
Taskbar looks

Taskbar looks

A dock, or a taskbar of glass islands, with the modules you choose.

*.taskbar.json
Pointer sets

Pointer sets

Seventeen pointers in SVG, drawn sharp at every scale.

scheme.json + SVG
Widgets

Widgets

A card on the wallpaper: the time, the system, what is playing.

*.widget.json
Island activities

Island activities

What the island shows while something is going on, and how it moves.

activity.json
Setups

Setups

A whole look in one item: styles, taskbar, pointers, icons, island, widgets.

setup.json

A file, and what it does

This is the whole of a minimize style, and beside it the picture the program draws from that file and nothing else. The Workshop card of a style plays exactly this.

pour.motion.json Download
{
  "$schema": "https://stillwarddisplay.com/schema/motion.json",
  "version": 2,
  "name": "Pour",
  "minimize": {
    "effect": {
      "kind": "pour",
      "bend": 0.7,
      "squeeze": 0.6,
      "slices": 64,
      "fade": 0.3,
      "sway": 0.4,
      "waist": 0.5
    },
    "duration_ms": 480,
    "ease": {
      "bezier": [0, 0, 1, 1]
    }
  },
  "knobs": "… 3 settings people can turn"
}

Shortened here; the whole file is under Download.

Drawn by the program from the file on the left

Three ways to make one

In the program

Every library has an editor. For a style: pick a moment on the Animations page and choose Make a style. Sliders shape the length, the curve, the bounce and each effect's amounts, and the picture above them plays the draft; windows you minimize use it too, slowed down four times if you ask.

By hand

A file saved with Save as a file starts with a $schema line, so an editor that knows JSON Schema offers every field with its range as you type. Open it on the Animations page with Open a style from a file; every save updates the style while Stillward runs. Save, minimize a window, look.

From a script

Anything that writes JSON can make styles: a script that makes variations, or an exporter from a 3D or motion program that writes a mesh. The program checks a file without starting anything else.

stillward-display.exe --check "Calm.motion.json" --gif "Calm.gif"

ok: "Calm", a minimize style
  minimize: pour in 480 ms
changed on the way in (1):
  minimize.effect.sway: 1.4 → 1
its Workshop card can play it (187 of 5000 bytes)
its Workshop picture: Calm.gif

The program is in its folder in your Steam library. A check opens no window, does not start Steam and counts no time. It ends with code 0 for a file it takes and 1 for one it refuses, so it fits in a build script.

A first style in five minutes

  1. Open the Animations page and stay on Minimize. Choose Make a style.
  2. Set Effect to Grid. Choose the middle key moment on the track.
  3. Drag the bottom row of points toward the taskbar button and the top row a little to one side. The picture above plays it.
  4. Choose Add a key and pull that moment's grid into a narrower shape. Turn on Slow motion and minimize a window to see it on the desk.
  5. Give it a name and a line of description, then Save. In your styles it now has Publish, and the editor has Save as a file.

Sharing

Your own styles, looks, sets and widgets each have a Publish button. The program draws the Workshop picture itself, on the same sample desk for every item, from the file alone: nothing of your screen is ever in it. In other people's Stillward the Workshop card plays your item before they add it (up to 5000 bytes travel with the item; a larger mesh shows the window standing on its card, and its page shows the picture).

A file works anywhere a file can go. Dropped on the Stillward window, a .motion.json or .taskbar.json joins the library the same way a Workshop item does. Workshop collections show in the program as sets, with one button that adds everything in them.

What a file cannot do

A file cannot run anything, open a file outside its folder, reach the network or read the screen. Stillward moves pictures of windows that Windows already draws, and never draws inside another program. Every number is brought into its range, and an effect, curve or version the program does not know is refused with its reason, so a file made to be extreme still draws something sane, and one from a newer version is refused whole rather than half working.

Files