thanks for the compliments tk32. This wouldn't have been possible without your help, and DanZ help too !!
in the next few days maybe i'll make a microbar mode (currently, my own weapon of choice is DanZ small-modded microlayout bar )
@DanZ : upNorth requested, but i miss a look_setValue feature too... if this could work also on sprites (not only section) this would be great

I can see about adding that back. I felt it had limited usage since the .ski file is read only once when the look is loaded so subsequent changes to .ski values don't have any effect and they aren't saved when the look is reloaded. But I can see a useage for it as you have eluded to - storing values that are later accessed in scripting with look_getValue().

I'll put it on my to do list for the next version but I'm not sure when that is going to happen yet.

sprite and section are exactly the same with respect to look_getValue/look_setValue.

Carel: I totally agree with tk32, quite a few impressing features in your look

I'm glad you like it . Feel free to do whatever you want with it as I'm not sure when, if ever, I will continue on it myself. It was just for learning anyway.

I'm currently working on an extended version of the last look I posted. I personally found the sliding playlist in "concept" fun to code, but useless because of the delay it causes when using it. For my new look I try to add features I would actually use and no unnecessary bloat.

@danZ (if you're still around... ): It seems like the look_measureTextAbs(sprite) has a problem with characters like ö (as in Motörhead) and such. I use it in my scrolling-text-script and this problem makes the text disappear every time it measures such a character. It would be very nice if you could provide a solution to this problem.

Another thing I have been thinking about: I have made a "drag to resize" script, and it works very well. One thing it could be used for is extend the number of visible playlist entries, not that I have planed to do that now, but that's not the point here. The fact that everything is very static because of the use of "one sprite for each entry" seems to make such a feature impossible to implement. Am I right about this? If so, can it be solved, because I imagine it would be a critical obstacle for someone considering a look that could replace the main UI?

Btw: I still appreciate this plugin alot even though I whine about all these things

Edit: If it didn't take me ages to write this, I would have seen that you are still around

this is exactly what i'm trying to work on

a 'look' that complements foobar's 'substance over style' policy.

i coded Graviton to entice more casual users into coding for foo_looks, but it's a skin i rarely use

after all, foobar users, by their very definition, have already made the choice to go for features instead of looks (otherwise they would still be winamp users) - so it's important that foo_looks skins also reflect this and don't attempt to simply get into skin-wars with winamp.

i'm trying to devize a skin where practicality is paramount - something that will make using foo_looks (as an addition to the main UI) very appealing

i don't want any useless features, but i still want it to be nice to look at

Concept was the first skin i saw that achieved both of these requirements.

if anyone has any cool ideas for a skin that would perfectly enhance (and complement) the main UI, then please let me know - i'd be very happy to code it.

@upNorth : Thanks glad you appreciate them, hope the code may be re-usable on another look.

@DanZ : oops sorry i was thinking look_getValue didn't work on sprites, but it was a 'spelling' mistake.

@tk32 (and @upNorth too) : about ideas, one thing i miss in upNorth's concept is playlist switching / browsing (i have 9-10 playlists, each with 500+ items...) Maybe we could use the 'fastscrolling mode' i added in HeaBside playlist management ? It would be useful (at least for me) to have a way to switch between playlists... Then maybe i'll make a 'concept' mod soon (can I upNorth ?)

I have a few more ideas about look-coding, but these are quite cosmetical because i'm currently trying to convert as many friends as possible to Foobar : as they find it quite ugly and / or difficult to use, i try to make it a bit more good-looking and user-friendly (yet i find it more more friendly than, say, winamp)... So another 'visual' look soon ;

But i agree with you two, as for my own use i prefer DanZ microbar : substance over style !

I have a question:
How do I convert a string to a number in LUA? I have tried tonumber() and I also read that it should in fact try to do this automagically anyway:From Reference manual for Lua 4.0

I try to get the value of a trackrating tag into a script as a number, but I keep getting this error:
ERROR (foo_looks) : attempt to compare string with number

The sprite and script looks something like this:

The contents of the %trackrating% tag is only a number, and when I print it to console as a string, it looks just fine. I wouldn't expect LUA to have any problems performing an automatic conversion with such an "easy" string.

I would really appreciate it if someone could help me with this one.

@carel: You can do whatever you like with "concept".

Edit: Solved it. It's strange how posting about a problem always seems to help.
The solution was:
if tonumber(current) >= rated then

UpNorth:

i may well be wrong, but i have a feeling that if you initialized current as 0 instead of "", then you may not need to use 'tonumber()' at all

give it a try

i may well be wrong - i'm almost as new to LUA as you - and most of my problems are solved by trying wacky code

i've never been comfortable with weak variable types - i find them strange

carel I LOVE YOUR SKIN!!!!!
thanks heaps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

im trying to think of a way to improve it but i dunno...
maybe auto-scrolling of playlists/track names/album names./ when u highlight them?

and maybe turn them a different color when they are mouseovered? just a suggestion, its great how it is.
thanks

Same here: absolutely 1-derful skin! Cheers Carel!

Just a little thingie: clicking the "Always on top" button doesn't make the skin do what it should do (stay on top of all other windows). Any idea?

Thanks, Rob

@upNorth : thanks, i've made a quick modification (copy'n paste from HeaBside) to add fastscrolling of playlist, and tabs playlist navigation, ski files are here (sorry, had to change some placements). Your relative placement code is very clever, i didn't figured how it works until i saw the ascii figure

@robenroute :

Happy to see you like HeaBside
the "always on top" button should remain highlighted when Always on top mode is active. If it's still transparent, then this mode is inactive. My code isn't really clean about this, i was too lazy to fix it clearly, so just keep clicking on it until it remains highlighted (added your request into my todo list )

@mixmixmix :

i've tried to implement something in previous betas using upNorth great smooth scrolling code, but i had some weird issues with foreign characters (some accents on french tracks, and with come japanese ones too) so i've decided not to release it. Instead, there's a tooltip wich displays more informations about the track than the fields in the look.



If you want a simple scrolling, just modify the HeaBside.ski : under the

I can't think of a way to toggle this scrolling on/off using mouseenter trigger... maybe we'll need the look_setValue function for this ?


good idea, but what color should be used ? maybe the rgb complement of the standard color ? i'll try to do this asap, but i'm working on another idea now (added your request too into my todo list )

i've made a webpage to explain HeaBside features, and to explain how you can keep your color preferences : HeaBside webpage

thanks for your feedbacks, it's important for me to know how other foobarfans use it, what are the problems, wich improvements you see...

Here is the last (for now) version of "concept" I made a while back. It has a better version of the "patchwork" script, but IMHO some other things have changed for the worse.
That ascii figure was actually for a more advanced version I planned then, but I guess it makes sense for the current version too.

I need to find a workaround (if possible) concerning the issues with foreign characters in my scrolling script. Hopefully danZ can do something with look_measureTextAbs() that seems to cause this problem.

Right now, I love foo_looks more than ever! It enables me to realize some of my ideas for plugins, without being able to create a plugin myself. Thanks danZ

I'll take a look that the text measuring problem very soon to see why the special characters don't appear to be working.

I'm glad you enjoy foo_looks - I think you and several others have finally realized how flexible and powerful the lua scripting turned out to be.

Keep up the good work - I'm just coasting for awhile and letting you guys turn out some cool stuff but I'm always watching for inspiration for the next "big" feature.

yeah

it's danZ' time to relax

let's all show our massive appreciation by filling up the gallery with many well-coded skins


i'm going to try to build a reference manual of some sort - and start a library of re-usable plug&play style scripts

tk32_progBar.ski is the first example of a typical plug&play script

in other words, you just import the script into your own code, and then add the necessary sprites/instructions

just a quick question: would it be possible to integrate the foobar standard playlist (with all the nice features and formatting strings) into a new look ? For me the perfect skin would just replace everything BUT the playlist with a nicer look while keeping the playlist integrated. That is one of the things that is letting me stay away from foo_looks because I hate switching around between a look and the normal playlist and I'm not quite satisfied with the playlists that come with all the looks.

one very stupid question,see this:

section window
int width 200
int height window.width
int border 4
int album 192

int album = int width - (2x int border)

it is possible to make calculation automatically?

Not in the .ski syntax.

The .ski file is a mixture of my typed syntax such as

section window
int height 10

and lua blocks

lua

foo = 10
foo = foo + 10

endlua

Math is not supported in my .ski syntax at this time.

OK, thank you for your answer!

(about mask)

i'm trying to use mask on image, but i'm not really succesfull : is there any way to set a mask and make a layer be shown only on the white pixels of the mask ?
I mean, i made a 'mask' = transparent hole inside a red shape, and my layer is visible through the transparent part, but the red part is visible. A true mask (with white instead of transparent) would show only the "white area" of my layer...
i read something about this feature when tk32 called for skin-designers, but haven't figured how to do this yet.
How could this be used ? For example, a smooth scrolling text could easily be done using a white box as mask on the text sprite, larger than the box (size of the text), moving on any direction, font-size independant, etc. ; i tried to make upNorth scrolling script working in HeaBside, but in transparent mode the border sprites were visible...
Another example : a standard volume dragging bar could be done with only 1 layer sliding through a mask wich defines its non-rectangular visible shape, thus enabling real per-pixel dragging (possible if the surrounding shape is opaque, but not possible if there's anything transparent on its sides... well still another HeaBside problem here

@DanZ : if not possible with scripting, do you think it would be interesting / difficult to implement it in foo_looks ?
@tk32 : if you think my color control panel could be re-usable, i'd be happy to type some instructions for this, like you did for tk32_progBar.ski
@upNorth : thanks for concept updated code, what do you think have changed for the worse ?

'true masks' as you call them - are not possible

the correct name for this is a 'clipping mask' (like the ones in Adobe Photoshop)

..and it's very hard to code a clipping mask in foo_looks (probably possible, but lots of CPU)

the only type of masking possible is by using graphics with invisible sections that show-through

an example of this type of mask is in Micropanel - i overlay a duplicate of the two edges of the skin to block out the text as it scrolls.


hope that answers your question.

in the first version of foo_looks 2.0, the default look tried to use the formatting string used by the main UI.. it worked fine with simple formatting strings, but with more complicated ones (such as upnorth's dynamic string (still my personal favorite ) and many other ones) it caused massive CPU usage, rendering the look virtually unusable.. it was disabled in the next version..


this moment in foo_looks history brought to you by bogsnarth

if skin-designers really concentrated on making a functional playlist inside of foo_looks, i think it could be very powerful - and suit all of your needs

it would just take some dedication, since most skin makers are interested in jazzy 'show-off' graphics & buttons. (with freeform alpha-blending etc..)


playlist support is an area nobody has spent much time on yet

..even i keep meaning to work on it and never do.



-- WATCH THIS SPACE --

ok thanks for the answers. Unfortunately my coding skills are severely limited to some basic java stuff, since I had a java course in university. Otherwise I would probably tried myself. But still, i very much admire your work on foo_looks even if I don't use it at the moment, keep up your great work and maybe one day a skin developer will have a look at the playlist

thanks for answering, i wanted to be sure of that before trying coding. maybe the cpu cost wouldn't be so high : i thought complex alphablendings would be really heavy before i really tried to code in HeaBside

other questions :
is someone already working on AstAmp port ?
is there a way to work with script on items in a playlist, like erasing, moving items up/down... ?

New version of See through cover art
now display border around cover
very simple to change border, dimensions and behavior

Download

Completed AlbumDisplay0.2

Download

Is it just me, or is the playlist in foo_looks behaving strangely with foobar v.0.8.1 beta 3? I have copied and modified the playlist code from the default look (and something from tk32), and it used to work just fine. Now it seems like it doesn't react to e.g. onplaybacknewtrack() and onplaybackstart() anymore. Can anyone comfirm this? I would like to rule out this option first so that I don't waste alot of time trying to fix something I didn't break in the first place. The main problem is that the playlist isn't updated to highlight the current track after a change. It's stuck untill i press the "find and highlight current track" button.

Selection is updated with 'follow cursor' enabled ... if you mean this?
I use your concept skin and and i like it a lot.

Unfortunately it the playlist window does not update if the selection has moved out of the shown playlist section.

in the minimized mode I recognized this: If the artist's name is very long (longer than the space available in the whole line) it looks somehow messed up. maybe the artist's name should be cut off if too long?

Also I'd like the color scheme matching that of your 'dynamic' playlist format.

playlist support is something we should all do some work on

i'm gonna try to find an opportunity to work with danZ on making a re-usable playlist script for use in skins

no doubt we'll discover a number of bugs & areas where things need to be improved

at the moment it's been hard finding free time to work on foo_looks - but i have some free time very soon.

thanks for being patient

Hey,

Sorry if this has been mentioned before. I'm very new to foobar. But I was trying out the foo_looks v2.1 and I have trouble getting it to work. I'm on Windows XP and using foobar v8.0. Whenever I try to enable a skin, all i get is this multicolored box that blinks when I click on it or mouse over it. I've followed the instructions during installation. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

sounds like you might be suffering from the 'StyleXP' related bug

(at least, we think it is styleXP related)


if you scan back a few pages you should see a post on the topic.


my advice is to load the messed up 'multi-colored' look window, then click inside it (to set keyboard focus) and try pressing 'F9' (Function 9 key)

let me know what happens after doing this

hey,

yeah pressing F9 fixed the problem. yeesh, and I uninstalled StyleXP a while ago too.

well thanks. next time i'll be more disciplined and actually read through the whole thread before whining.

late.

Something like 50 or 60 pages in total now?

that reminds me

i must write an FAQ

anybody know how to make it so that the skin displays time of song playing, not remaining?

use

%et% "elapsed time (0:00)"
%eet% "extended elapsed time (padded to fit 00:00)"
%etm% "elapsed time in minutes (1:02:00 hours will be 62:00)"

hello

@ carel: In the file "HeaBside_scripts.ski" of your skin , there s a little mistake that makes the fonction "Always on top" not functionning

you wrote : fb2k_menuCommand('Components/Look/Always on Top')

instead of : fb2k_menuCommand('Components/Look/Show/Always on Top')


keep improving your skin please ( for example a better way to display album art ), i love it

Is there any way to disable foo looks without uninstalling it entirely?

you could try renaming foo_looks.dll to foo_looks.bak

or any other file type that foobar ignores

so would %et% "elapsed time (0:00)"
%eet% "extended elapsed time (padded to fit 00:00)"
%etm% "elapsed time in minutes (1:02:00 hours will be 62:00)"

make it so that if the song is at 1:19 it'll display that instead of 3:00-1:19

i don't want to show the remaining time, thx

Idiots are funny

tell me what look (skin) you want to modify and i'll upload a custom version with only the playing time

hi Hamallainen,
thanks for tracking this bug in HeaBside, i was really too tired (and busy) to take a closer look at it. Feel free to improve the code the way you want : i'll credit you a mod and upload it to my webspace. But... i tried this fix and it doesn't allow me to disable "Always on top" anymore... any idea ? I thought i had to use exact comand name to trigger it (in my foobar 0.8 the command name is 'Components/Look/Always on Top'... perhaps are you using beta ?)
As i don't use cover art option myself, i don't really know what users would like to do about this... Could you suggest a more precise feature ?
Anyway, i still update my to-do list, i'll try to implement these... well, asap :
Sorry everyone for not posting there / helping others during this last week : i don't have free time now (studying for exams ) ; but i still read the thread and i'm still happy to test others skins (Melomane, great skin you've done - i love the automatic hide/show ; i had an idea to ease window resizing with mouse maybe i'll try to make a mod ... asap)

Hi

@carel:
i m using foobar v0.8 (no beta) and the actual version of foo_looks (v2.1) , for me the command name is
'Components/Look/Show/Always on Top' ( screenshot) That's strange we don't have the same thing !

Is "always on top" working correctly for you when you use this :'Components/Look/Always on Top'?
For me it was never changing the "always on top" mode when i was clicking the button ( the button had no effect on the "always on top" status ). And now , with 'Components/Look/Show/Always on Top' the button works as intended ( one click : activated , another click: de-activated .... )

Could you check if you re not using foo_looks 2.0 instead of 2.1 , maybe that s why there s difference between us ?


For album art i put it like this ( screenshot ) , it s a bit small but it s ok
But there s a problem , when i set the layer for the albumart box above the playlist box , i can t select the songs in the playlist that are "under" the album art box even when the albumart is not activated. I don t know how to solve this

@Hamallainen :
aaarrrg !!! i'm still using the old foo_looks 2.0 version ! i was wondering why some functions weren't recognised ... i'm too silly, and you're smart right
thanks for this, i'll update and post a fix soon.
I'm really happy you made a mod to suit your needs, in fact this kind of coverart was the first thing i tried, but i thought it was too small (for example AlbumDisplay or See through Cover Art are quite bigger), that's why i made it fill the whole window.

about the layer problem, i would need to have a look at your mod script to see how it behaves, but first idea : the sprite is not visible but still enabled thus it catches mouseclick because it's on upper layer than playlist entries.
So you can try adding a line in sprite albumart :


Well.... in fact there's no need to modify the script, this line in the sprite section is enough to make what you want, BUT if you added scripts with this sprite (triggers when mouseover/mouseclick) you also need to modify this line in HeaBside_scripts.ski (lua Displaycontrols, in function onrightbuttonup(this)) :


to


It should make the sprite enabled or not according to visible state (oops the code should be on the same line, there's no need to line feed look_setEnabled)


...and i think you know that already, the sprite is at least at layer 3

Another "designing" question : did you had hard time to modify HeaBside ? i actually use a trick from tk32 to ease designing : in sprites global i add 3 line script to render a red thin border in order to see where the sprites are.
i wondered if it would be useful if i made a script to 'drag&drop' sprites with mouse (after switching to a special 'editing look' mode) ? in order to offer a kind of 'on the fly look modification' without having to mess in .ski ?

another little question : are you french ? do you know any places where french people talk about foo_looks ?

Hi


thanks it works , that s exactly what i needed



well since i m not a coder at all, it took me about 2 evening to make it suit to my needs ! lol
So yes it has been a bit hard for me , but i guess someone else with coding skills would have done it in no time



I've not found how to activate this (except for playlists title) , but yes that's good to place things more accurately



Sure it would make things even easier but i m not sure it worth the time needed to code it . I don t move sprites everyday , i would do it only once if i'd like to modify a skin a little. Maybe it would be useful for coders but as i m not a coder, i can't really tell. Sorry


oui je suis français but i've not seen any french site or forum dedicated to foo-looks nor even foobar2000


right now i m searching how to make the volume bar appears "orange" at startup by default without success, any idea ?

about the live-edit mode you were discussing.


we could write a script called moveable, or some other name

the script would add left mouse drag feature to any sprite (but the sprite must be 'bool enabled true')

you would be able to drag the sprites around the skin, and the script could output the coordinates to the console.

eg.




it could save a lot of time guessing coordinates - but it might be a pain in the ass if you need to onlu nudge sprites by a few pixels, because keyboard support in foo_looks is still basic and not tested.

cAREL & Hamallainen

FORUM FRENCH FOR FOOBAR

http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/VideoS...t-53319-101.htm

Thanks Melomane , i m going to check it

hi tk32,
i completely agree with you, but as i heavily use every button on my mouse, maybe it would be more secure to activate this mode with a script attached to a kind of 'control panel button' in order to be able to 'drag' the sprite.

i don't know how to output the coordinates to the console (maybe haven't searched enough)



i still have problems with keyboard inputs in foo_looks, i've tried to detect arrows pressed but nothing... in :

... i tried a lot of decimal values instead of something, but nothing responds to arrow