EVE-O preview - multi-client preview / switcher - v 1.13 - EVE Technology Lab (2025)

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Made to solve my multi-client single-monitor situation. ( in C# )
It shows miniature windows of all your open eve clients.
Clicking these resizeable miniatures switches focus to that client!

It's applicable to multi monitor scenarios as well. Screenies of how you use it is welcome! :)

reddit post

Example 1 - Four clients in a "sidebar".
Example 2 - Four clients, unique position of previews for each active. (hiding the active window)
Example 3 - Two clients
Example 4 - Two clients, hiding the frame on the preview window
Example 5 - 12 (twelve!) clients across 3 monitors.

v 1.13

In any order:
Extract and run the exe. Set options according to your preference.
Fire up your eve client

Vista, Win7 or Win8
Aero Enabled
.NET 4.5

It does not work on WinXP, Linux or Mac

Donations are welcome!

- reserved -

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tested it out this evening. works like a charm. many thanks.

1

I tested it yesterday and I really like it.

The only problem I've found is, that if you start another DirectX Game, not EVE, the Preview windows turn white. At least they did it for me.
Edit. It "just" happens if I start another Game in Full Screen and tab back to the desktop.

Two things I would like to see changed are the removal of the Header bar of the Preview window. The part which says "Preview". So they use up a little bit less space and you can cluster them even tighter.

The other I would like are saved settings. Basically the Options "Always on Top" etc. and of course window positions should be stored but I'm sure you are woking on that one :)

btw. it works fine on Vista.

Sweet, thanks for trying it out!

I'll see what I can do about the header bar... Maybe I can make it optional.

well, that is actually non-trivial so I'd rather not go there right now. Once I figure out a good scheme with few corner cases, sure, but haven't yet!

Remembering settings checkboxes is something I have in the pipe for next version, though.

v 1.2

changelog:

* persistent settings
* option to hide the thumbnail frames
* clicking thumbnail restores clients from minimized (but not maximized)
* if unique layout option used, better handling of initial positioning
* icon in setting window
* link to this thread in setting window :)

- clicking and entry in the client list in setting window no longer brings that client up

v 1.3

changelog:

* the size of thumbnails is also stored persistant (if option sync sizes is selected)
* the size of thumbnails can be edited in the settings window
* thumbnail titles work properly
* overview list shows the client window titles

edit:
This version introduced a bug of flicking the show frames option also changes the vertical space somewhat. I'll fix that some other day.

1

tried 1.3, works well, thank you for this

bump!

i just locked an open door.. strange, yet symbolically compelling.

v 1.4

changelog:
* flicking "show frames" should no longer resize the previews
- removed the client list all together

NOTE:
might have changed default values in config. using the ones from 1.3 should work.

1

Hey thanks for the updates.
Really fell in love with this tool. It's allowed me to play fullscreen with every client instead of cascading them. Really creative, and ingenious method too.

I really look forward to seeing this continued with, and expanded.

I do however have a request.

Customized border's. I loved the no border update, and immediately redneck'd one using a chat window to allow for this overlay to seem apart of the UI.

Honestly though bro. I think you figured out how CCP should handle single account, dual active character's. Of course both being plex'd. Have it so the second pilot is displayed as an active thumbnail, if plex'd of course, and allow the player to swap display between the two.

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Just tried it this morning on a Windows 8 64Bit laptop it's seems to work well.

I will have a good test at it tonight.

Thanks for your hard work.

.

Thanks for the kind words guys! I'm glad you like it.

You mean like skinning them to look live eve UI? I think that's outside my scope of know-how. I'll give it some thought tho.

As for future work/directions:

I want to do some internal housekeeping to solve some issues (that you might or might not have noticed).

I also want to toy around with having just one preview window, where all the clients are automatically tiled inside. (as an option)

Another direction I want to mess around with is having "layout styles", as in clicking a button would arrange all the previews and the clients as well for you.

We'll see what happens. I don't want the project to grow too big as that will lead me out of the happy ignorant greenfield enthusiasm zone :)

v 1.5

changelog:

* layouts are stored persistently
* bugfixes

note: now requires .NET 4.5

edit:
Known problem:
Running your eve client in full screen border less mode causes the app to spazz out. Please use windowed for now (maximizing it works).

1

Real easy to use after I updated to the .net 4.5.

Only upgrade I see this needing is the eve UI skin mentioned. However, with borderless frames and a little bit of twiddling, the frames can be resized and aligned to fit into my existing UI's plethora of windows.

1

1

Hey well I noticed that if you oversize beyond the window's size it displays a black background. If anything is there a way you can make it so the color of the background can be changed? after that all you would need to work is aligning the display so that it's center'd and you'd at least have a means to choose the color to allow for some flow into the ingame's UI.

Another suggestion after using it now for a bit.

Mouseover size increase. Sometime I don't need to switch focus, I merely need to read the information on the other display. As easy as it is to switch displays though I think it would great to simply mouse over and have the display scale to a size we can read off of. Allowing for us to maintain focus, while gathering information off side displays.

Also. Having it so we can display other window's outside of just eve. With this app and this idea, you would save countless miner's from dieing in space. No longer forced to abandon focus to satisfy their carnel desires. :D . Aside from that you could have it so eft, is at the ready when you need to work a fit, or a browser at the mouse's reach ( I know there's an ingame one, but honestly... it pales in functionality to even opera )

Anyways. Thanks and good work.

Great ideas! Here I thought I was done and free to play eve! :D

It's fairly easy to make a customizable pattern or list to preview to add things like EFT to be included - this is something I had in mind allready. (or your favourite episode as a PIP?)

Mouse over, yeah! that'd be p cool! I'll see what I can do. On the same topic I thought about adding the actual name of the character as text overlay - I found this info lacking when I was playing in border less.

Colors etc, we'll see!

+

There's a bug in 1.5 that you might have stumbled upon. Unique layout in combination with one account not logged in and a bunch who are -> exception fired (which can be ignored). Will fix.

Well I haven't loaded the new update due to the issue of the fixed window problem.

I will say on 1.4 that I've noticed if you switch between 2 about 3 times any other display disappears until you alt tab it. Then the display shows again.

v 1.6

changelog:
* bugfix for using eve in fixed window mode
* bugfix for exception mentioned ^^^

v 1.7

* new option: zoom on hover - will zoom the preview when hovering over it
* new option: show overlay - will draw the title of the preview target as text overlay on the preview

EDIT:
known new issues:
zoom is buggy if showing the frames
zoom factor is a bit too large? should be an option
overlays sometimes linger after client window being destroyed
...
older known issue:
when not using the unique layout option, locations are not stored persistently.