March 2nd, 2007, posted by FofR
The feedback and bug reports keep coming in – helping me to continue developing and improving this configuration. I’m proud to announce version 0.5 of my design (maybe I should give them names). Once again, this version uses some new PanelsUI features so be sure to get the 0.7.0 beta so that everything works.
So, what’s new?
Version 0.5:
- Added last played and playcounts to Song Info panel
- Improved track codec text in Song Info Panel
- Album/artist group headers crop when there is not enough space
- Added installation notice
- Added Volume slider to bottom ‘cog’ menu
- Added second but primary source for album art in Now Playing: “$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,folder.*)” before resorting to the old method.
- Added support for %album artist%, if this meta tag exists then both artist and track are displayed in playlist
- Switched SCPL album art from %tracknumber% to %_itemindex% based drawing, so that tracknumber errors do not render image erroneously. Similarly multi-cd albums show artwork only once unless discs are in separate groups.
- Added “Sort By” panel on SCPL – clicking Sort by Artist changes how items are grouped then sorts the tracks by artist.
- Sort by Artist, Sort by Path, Sort by Title, Sort by Album, Reverse Sorting
- When Sorted by title – No tracknumber is displayed, Artist appears to right of song title
- When Sorted by artist – no album art is shown, instead an artist image is used
- Improved White Theme pause on Now Playing, fixed Spectrum overlay bug.
- Improved Theme and in particular Hotness colours for White Theme
- Border of selected tracks now colour of “hotness”
- Random other bug fixes
If you have any requests please make them known in the comments.
At the moment I don’t have much time to write a full html enriched tutorial describing how to install this configuration and then customise it. If anone could take the time to do this, explaining fonts, components, etc I would be most grateful as I am sure many others will be.
Animated screenshot after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
March 1st, 2007, posted by FofR
Terrestrial has just released the latest version of his PanelsUI component. With it come a few new features.
0.7.0
- Multiple buttons over same area can be executed
- Move window by click & drag on empty area
- Button to set window size: WINDOWSIZE:width:height
- Moved location of PanelsUI subfolder from profile directory to foobar directory
- “context-selected” and “context-playing” options for buttons
- Various bug fixes / improvements
Note the highlighted text – when upgrading make sure to have a backup of your existing PanelsUI directory which is situated in foobar’s profile folder, for example: “C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\foobar2000\PanelsUI“. It has now moved and you will have to copy this backup into the foobar application directory, e.g. “C:\Program Files\foobar2000\PanelsUI“.
When executing multiple buttons (i.e. four buttons that cover the same area, when clicked each is executed sequentially), if one of these actions is from the context menu or main menu the sequential execution will stop, thus any actions after this point will not be performed. It is important to layer your buttons in the correct order. A general rule of thumb – set PVARs first, then perform your PanelsUI functions (e.g. a window resize), then perform your final main menu or context menu action.
February 26th, 2007, posted by FofR
I’ve been hard at work improving the reported bugs and adding new features and today I am proud to release the fourth version of this configuration. New features include a white theme, style image folders, more options. This new release uses the latest PanelsUI for the $eval function, I repeat – you need the latest PanelsUI version.
The most reported bug with the last two versions were image loading problems – please, the first thing you should do when loading this configuration is double-click the titlebar, go to settings and update the pvar “dir” to the correct folder, without any trailing slashes (‘/’).
Version 0.4:
- Updated all maths from $sub, $add etc. to the new PanelsUI $eval function
- Bug fixes
- Made changing button text and panels easier, fixed centre-ing issues
- Added “fave track” image to track display when %RATING% exists
- Option to place artwork on right of SCPL (0 = left, 1 = right)
- Added optional spectrum analyser atop of album art on Now Playing (off by default)
- Tweaked track display text positioning to adapt to screen size – not enough space: text shifts up, if still not enough space crops line by line.
- Song Details track display added to Now Playing tab
- Added Theme Selection (0 = black, 1 = white)
- Refined background image display code, still needs some fixing
- Added white images for white theme
- Moved more options into configuration section, SCPL options mainly.
I am sure there will be bugs with this version, mainly with the white theme. Please post them in the comments. Something to note, many panels do not allow multiple instances, for example the search bar and the album list panel. For these sections you will have to manually change the colour settings, but that takes all of 2 seconds.
Screenshots after the break… Read the rest of this entry »
February 25th, 2007, posted by FofR
I am of course referring to 3rd party component development. With Terrestrial’s recent developments the foobar aesthetic capabilities have increased dramatically and we are all seeing some great design ideas. But I want to ask you now, what do you think is the next step in 3rd party development? What should be the next step? What features do you feel foobar still sorely lacks?
I personally would love to have some sort of web interactivity – the ability to scrape or download information from the web, for instance a wiki entry for each artist I am listening to.
(Feel free to post some article requests in the comments also – this platform is open for anyone to make a post once they have registered here.)
February 24th, 2007, posted by FofR
Not a lot of people seemed to have noticed this so I will bring it to your attention here. As of PanelsUI 0.6.1 beta (Feb 16th), Terrestrial has included a maths evaluation function, $eval.
Valid operators are + – / * @(modulus) {} (instead of parenthesis)
Here are some simple examples:
$eval(1+2*3), outputs 7 – multiplication performed first.
$eval({1+2}/3), outputs 1 – example of parenthesis
For a progress bar example of width 100:
$eval({%playback_time_seconds%*100}/%length_seconds%)