Wide-screen layout, and one executable with a tray icon - #8
Merged
Conversation
nekron's ultrawide showed the problem: the content column was capped at 1440px, so on a 3440px display two thirds of the glass was dead black, with the header stranded a screen away from the table beneath it. The column is one variable now - min(2040px, 94vw) - shared by the page, the footer and the header's inner padding, so the brand lines up with the content instead of hugging a distant edge. 2040 is where these tables stop being readable; beyond that the eye loses the row. What the column still cannot use is given to the brand rather than left blank: the emblem stripped to its geometry sits in the right margin at six per cent and runs off the edge, a vertical wordmark labels the left margin the way a HUD labels a panel, and hairline rails mark where the column begins and ends so the margin reads as framing. All three appear only past 1600px and never in the overlay, which has no space to spare. Also a faint overhead glow behind everything. At this size the flat black read as an unfinished page rather than a dark one. The watermark needed two attempts: anchored to the viewport edge it computed to -660px on an ultrawide and sat entirely off-screen. It is positioned from the column's right rail outwards instead, which holds at any width. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Answering "how do we simplify this for people who are not technical?" The release defeated them four times over: install the .NET Desktop Runtime first, pick the right file out of a fifty-file zip, get past SmartScreen, and then find no way to stop the thing short of Task Manager. The server now runs inside the overlay process. Program.cs became a three-line entry point over a new ServerHost.Build, which the WPF app calls at startup and the standalone server still calls for itself. The overlay no longer hunts for Quantumwake.Server.exe and starts it as a child, which also removes a failure mode: an orphaned server outliving a crashed overlay. The dashboard is compiled into the assembly. web/ still copies next to the binary and that copy still wins - editing a stylesheet should not need a rebuild - but the same files are embedded as resources and EmbeddedWeb serves those when no directory exists beside the executable. A middleware rather than an IFileProvider: twenty lines against a class that would have to lie about directory listings, range requests and change tokens. The result is a self-contained single file of 87 MB needing no runtime at all. I measured before committing to the approach, expecting a self-contained WPF build to be far worse; against "install .NET first" the trade is not close. A tray icon, because there was nowhere to click: open dashboard, show or hide the overlay, quit. Hiding the overlay leaves the dashboard running, which is what a second-monitor user wants, and the choice persists in settings.json - kept apart from overlay.json deliberately, since geometry is rewritten on every drag and a preference someone chose should not share a file with that. Shutdown is explicit, so closing the overlay no longer kills the app. Deliberately not built: an installer, because a single exe does not need one, and code signing, which costs a few hundred a year a free fan tool cannot justify. The SmartScreen prompt is documented in the release notes instead. Verified by publishing and running the single file: it serves index.html, app.css and the SVG marks out of embedded resources with correct content types, and with ShowOverlay=false it starts no WebView2 child at all while the dashboard still answers. 154 tests pass. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Dependabot filed six pull requests within minutes of the workflows landing, all of them fair - the action pins were already a major version or three behind what GitHub ships. Folded into this branch rather than merged separately, so main takes one review instead of seven, and they close themselves when it lands. actions/checkout 4 -> 7 actions/setup-dotnet 4 -> 6 actions/upload-artifact 4 -> 7 Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk 17.14.1 -> 18.9.0 xunit.runner.visualstudio 3.1.4 -> 4.0.0 coverlet.collector 6.0.4 -> 10.0.1 Three of those are major bumps of the test runner. Verified rather than assumed: restore is clean and all 154 tests pass on the new versions. Also parks nekron's question - which commodities can be sold where - in docs/commodity-catalogue.md while the detail is fresh. The short of it: the community's account of p4k encryption is accurate, but on this install the DataCore is not the wall. Game2.dcb is 330 MB and unencrypted and P4kArchive can already pull it out; what has never been done is parse it, since every search so far was a raw byte scan that finds strings and misses structure. The doc records four routes and what each costs: write a DataForge reader (recommended - offline, no redistribution, and it settles the question either way), ship pre-extracted scunpacked JSON (contradicts our own NOTICE), fetch UEX at runtime (breaks the no-network promise, so opt-in only), or decrypt the shop inventory tables (not planned - reading what CIG left open is one thing, circumventing what they deliberately encrypted is another). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This was referenced Aug 21, 2026
nekron merged four of the dependabot pull requests while this branch was folding all six in, so both sides raised checkout, setup-dotnet, upload-artifact and coverlet to the same versions. Git handled three files; the test project conflicted on Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk, where this branch has 18.9.0 and main still had 17.14.1 because that pull request is open. Kept 18.9.0, which with xunit.runner.visualstudio 4.0.0 makes this branch a superset of main: merging it closes the two remaining dependabot requests as well. 154 tests pass on the merged tree. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This file contains hidden or bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Sign up for free
to join this conversation on GitHub.
Already have an account?
Sign in to comment
1 participant
Add this suggestion to a batch that can be applied as a single commit.This suggestion is invalid because no changes were made to the code.Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is closed.Suggestions cannot be applied while viewing a subset of changes.Only one suggestion per line can be applied in a batch.Add this suggestion to a batch that can be applied as a single commit.Applying suggestions on deleted lines is not supported.You must change the existing code in this line in order to create a valid suggestion.Outdated suggestions cannot be applied.This suggestion has been applied or marked resolved.Suggestions cannot be applied from pending reviews.Suggestions cannot be applied on multi-line comments.Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is queued to merge.Suggestion cannot be applied right now. Please check back later.
Two things: the dashboard now uses a wide screen, and the whole application ships as one file with a tray icon.
Use the whole screen
An ultrawide showed the problem — the content column was capped at
1440px, so on a 3440px display two thirds of the glass was dead black with the header stranded a screen away from the table beneath it.min(2040px, 94vw), shared by the page, the footer and the header's inner padding. 2040 is where these tables stop being readable.All decorative pieces appear only past 1600px and never in the overlay.
One executable, and somewhere to click
The release defeated a non-technical user four times over: install the .NET Desktop Runtime, pick the right file out of a fifty-file zip, get past SmartScreen, then find no way to stop it short of Task Manager.
Program.csis a three-line entry point over a newServerHost.Build, which the WPF app calls at startup and the standalone server still calls for itself. No more hunting forQuantumwake.Server.exeto spawn, and no orphaned server outliving a crashed overlay.web/still copies beside the binary and that copy still wins, so a stylesheet edit needs no rebuild;EmbeddedWebserves the compiled-in copy when no directory exists next to the executable.settings.json, kept apart fromoverlay.jsonbecause geometry is rewritten on every drag.Deliberately not built: an installer (a single exe does not need one) and code signing (a few hundred a year that a free fan tool cannot justify — the SmartScreen prompt is documented in the release notes instead).
Verification
154 tests pass. The published single file was run and checked: it serves
index.html,app.cssand the SVG marks out of embedded resources with correct content types, and withShowOverlay=falseit starts no WebView2 child at all while the dashboard still answers.Note on the release
release.ymlhere builds the single file. Thev0.1.0tag has not been pushed yet — pushing it before this merges would cut a release from the old workflow and ship the three-executable, runtime-dependent zip this change exists to replace. Merge first, then move the tag onto the merged commit.