I can't just wait forever, so here is my new look named 'navigator' (for now).
This is an alpha version and I know of quite a few problems (no critical ones though).
The code is messy and some parts are not even used at all.

This is what it looks like:

compact mode:


extended mode:


extended mode with large albumart:

Download: navigator

I'll try to give a short description of some of the features.
(LMB and RMB refers to clicking the left or right mouse button)

The info about the current track will scroll if it doesn't fit.

Actions:
Resize: LMB and hold on time (upper right corner) then drag
Toggle mode: RMB on time (upper right corner)
Progress bar: LMB and hold 'skip' , RMB and hold 'scan'.
Albumart: LMB on it to toggle size
Codec/Replaygain info: RMB on it to toggle between the two.
Album-/Genre info: RMB on it to toggle between the two.
Trackrating: The five blue squares turns white according to rating (using the %trackrating% tag). LMB on one of the squares will find the next track in playlist with that specific rating, and show the result in the box to the right of the rating. Double click the result to play it, or press the - button to the right, to empty the box.

Buttons:
:B: show/hide foobar main window
Symbol to the left of :B : LMB 'play/pause', RMB 'stop'
<: LMB 'previous track', RMB 'Start this track over' (I think I will change this)
>: LMB 'next track', RMB 'random track'
s: LMB open 'Search'
g: LMB open 'Playlist generator'
x: LMB 'exit foobar2000'
n: LMB Show/hide a small "remote" used to skip to the next/previous artist/album with LMB (RMB to show the result in the box to the right og the trackrating).
/\ and \/: LMB 'scroll playlist (slow)', RMB 'scroll playlist (fast)'.
<(playlist): LMB 'scroll to current track'.


Try left and right clicking everything and you might find something I forgot to mention. If you look for a 'volume control', you won't find it, but maybe I'll add one later.

The progress bar is by tk32, but I have done some minor modifications.

Thanks to danZ, tk32 and other people who helped and inspired me.

Btw: I don't really need requests and bug reports at this point, as I've got more than enough to do already, and I haven't got alot of time at the moment. But, of course it doesn't hurt to mention the ones you come across, just don't expect me to fix them straight away.

Edit: For some strange reason foo_ui_columns seems to cause a problem, even if it's not being used. The playlist should scroll to show the playing track in the middle when you skip. If it doesn't, or other strange things happen, try removing foo_ui_columns.dll from the components directory.

holy shit

totally amazing!!


not that i expected any less..

do you shit gold by any chance?




you've even convinced me to start testing the star-rating system!

1 suggestion.
work with danZ to find a way of setting the 'rating' by clicking in the boxes, but still incorporate the 'find similar rated track' (although i imagine people will only ever click on the 5-star box )

Thanks
There is so many features I want to add and so much I want to do, but time is the problem.

Edit:
I currently use foo_quicktag by musicmusic to set the rating, but if danZ has a good idea, on how to do it in a safe way with foo_looks, I would add it to my look.

Regarding the use of trackrating, I have only used a three value system up untill now (0,1,2). I think the six levels I added to my "dynamic" formatting by request, is a little too much. I even find 5 levels hard to use as I only use them for different degrees of 'good'. I don't see a reason to use 'negative rating' (with 3 = average or something), and with my way the tracks that are above the average stands out because they have a rating. But this doesn't really make a difference as people can use it as they wish.

I've recently replaced Windows XP with Windows 2003 Server. Foorbar was working fine with foo_looks but now i get his message on every startup:



Any clues?
P.S. I'm using the latest foo_looks with the default look so in theory everything should work

Also, one more problem. Foo_Looks still has the 'always on top' bug... meaning that sometimes after restarting it loses that property.

@upNorth
Amazing work! Although I (sheepishly) won't be using it (foo_ui_columns + foo_looks for album art & now playing display fits my current usage better), I still want to say that navigator has to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing, comprehensive yet easy to use look created.

@danZ
A idea came to my mind, perhaps for a much later version of foo_looks:
Now that many skinners are creating looks with complementary compact and expanded modes, it might be good to have an option to allow skinners to dock their compact mode to the taskbar (like what foo_minibar and WMP9 does).

Edit: Just found out about the small remote. Very interesting!

@upNorth
Really great job! A few minor things you should fix/improve (IMHO):

1) When a song title is longer than the previously playing song, it displays a title as wide as the previous one and if you shrink the skin to make the title scroll it will display the title of the previous song. Note that this doesn't happen when you manually skip to the next song with >.
2) Restore last defined size at startup.
3) Make the left button (play/pause/stop) less "cryptic".

Now if you could only add somewhere a (resizable) popup to display a specific tag (like %lyrics% )....!

Thanks for your work.

Alessandro

[EDIT]
4) When a song title is shorter than the previously playing song, it isn't centered and if you shrink the skin to make the title scroll it will display the title of the previous song. Note that this doesn't happen when you manually skip to the next song with > (seems to be the same bug as #1, but I thought I'd mention it for completeness).
[/EDIT]

plz help

That's what I like about foobar, it's so much you can do to make it fit your needs. I'm personally not comfortable with foo_ui_columns as it doesn't fit my usage. I really tried to get used to it as it is such a good component, but in the end the default UI works better for me. Thanks for the compliments about the look though, as it tells me I'm on the right track to accomplish my goal. I like to think of it as making it in the spirit of foobar2000 itself.


1) & 4): Thanks for tracking down the cause of this problem. I have seen it from time to time, but never looked more into it.
3): Done, now it looks like a real play button.
2): I'm not sure how easy it would be, but it might be possible with the experimental 'write to file' feature. It's really something I would like to add, but I feel that there are more important things to do first.

I have actually thought about adding something like that. Don't know when I'll look into it as there are quite a few other things I would like to accomplish first.


Then a question:
Is there no math function in LUA that will return the closest integer value? I would like to use it instead of the following:Not a big deal, just wondering as I want to make my code more compact and readable.

@foosion: Thanks, for that clever solution

navigator Hooray for sweet original foo looks!

Thanks for this great look!

Hi tk32, I listed a list of bugs some time ago. Are you done with the update? Where can I get them? Thanks...

@upNorth : navigator is REALLY GREAT !! I love your resizable window !!!

just a minor issue : with some titles the scrolling makes it "flicker" ; it happens only when the letter with accent touches the left side of the title zone... should be the same problem you raised before.

great work anyway !

hi Atici

sorry it's taken me so long, i didn't realise anybody was waiting

ok, if you mean these requests:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=193939

i've already done them

i'm just making a few more adjustments before i upload the update


sorry for the delay

That's fine. I actually thought those skins were updated a long while ago and didn't know where they were hosted (I haven't been following this thread for a while). Thanks for the effort.

One more thing. For the fooamp skin, can you make it so that if you expand the bottom part and restart foobar it starts up with the bottom part expanded?

Thanks
I have rewritten large parts of the scrolling script, and changed the way it works. It turned out alot better, and it can also handle "all" fontsizes now (at least all I tried). The problem with displaying e.g. "Motörhead" is gone, but it required a workaround because look_measureTextAbs() has a problem with such characters (it returns '0'). I don't really know how good that workaround is, but it seems to solve it.

Question/feature request:
I need a way to get the index of the playing playlist/tab. fb2k_getActivePlaylist() will return the index of the active/open one, but I can't seem to find a way to identify the playlist that is actually playing. I need it among other things, to add the "double click status bar to open playing tab" feature to my look.

For anyone wondering about the couple of bugs that exist in the Carbon look. I am working on getting a release version out soon, but I have lots of deadlines at the moment, and I am under a lot of pressure.

I'll let you know, this was just so you know I'm still very much active.

thank you DocUk, nobody would tell me how to fix those or point me somewhere so i couldnt figure it out myself

@upNorth:

Sorry for pestering you, but I was wondering if you have a new version of navigator ready for us to enjoy .

Alessandro

Would it be possible to add another trigger function that runs when the UI becomes activated? - For example, when it goes from hidden in the system tray to active.

Thanks

Edit: Also, is there a way to set fillcolor2 from lua? I only see look_setFillColor.

Edit2: What about a function to attach a Lua script to a sprite?

It seems the thread has died down a bit - Oh well, I'll keep waiting for answers.

I've fixed all the bugs in Carbon, and now I am improving some bits of code, and adding a few features. Some of my improvements, I am sure other skin authors can use, and I'll post a few details of them when Carbon 1.5 is done.

I'm glad you enjoy it

I have added some new, more or less useful, features and improved it a bit, but I'm still not satisfied with the way the playlist behaves. I use the code from the default look, with some modifications, but I will have to rewrite quite a bit before it works as I want it to.

Currently my motivation is limited by the fact that other plugins interferes with foo_looks. I knew about foo_ui_columns, but now it turns out that the Extended Playlist generator (foo_playlistgen_ex) does the same thing (at least version 1.3.1). Both of them makes the playlist in my look not behave as it should upon track change. Just adding foo_ui_columns to the components directory, even without enabling it, makes this happen. When I remove these plugins, everything works just fine.

The still present problem with always on top not working from time to time, is a little anoying too. IIRC danZ can't figure out why this happens, so it's not much hope to see it fixed either.

Well, I'm not using, at the moment, any of the plugins you mentioned.

If this is the main reason refraining you from releasing your work, rest assured I won't file a complaint for a plugin conflict!

With regard to the AOT problem, it happens very rarely (to me, at least), usually when trying new looks (which I have no intention of doing, if you just fix those issues I mentioned in one of my previous posts ).

So if you have something PLEASE release it!

Thanks for reading.

Alessandro

That is odd. I have both plugins installed and use foo_ui_columns as my GUI and my playlist in your Navigator works fine. When a new song starts the playlist tracks and highlights the correct song properly.

There aren't any callbacks in the SDK for these events so I don't have a good way to create script triggers for them.



{ "look_setFillColor", "void", "sprite [ {sprite, ... } ], color, which [0,1,2 or nil == both]" },

Not a great match for the names used but

0 = fillcolor
1 = fillcolor2
2 or nil = change both colors

look_setFillColor(mySprite, look_color(255,0,0,0),1)



Not supported but not a bad idea. I also plan at some point to allow sprites to be created on the fly.

I was planning on asking this next - Thanks for being amazing.

I think your description of the function is incorrect. It seems that the value of -1 sets fillcolor 1, and any other value sets fillcolor 2 once fillcolor 1 has been set..

I don't really understand the code behind this behaviour, but it seems kinda weird. My code does what is intended now, but I don't know why...

If I could make a request, in the next version could you add the ability to disable foo_looks without removing the plugin? It would be a nice feature for people like me who like to install a lot of plugins but don't necessarily like to use them all the time.

Is it possible to change the way getAlbumArtList() behaves? I am using single flac/cue for each album and I have everything organized with one folder for each artist will all albums in that folder. With that, the album art that gets displayed is the first picture it finds in the folder. Is there a way to configure foo_looks to return the cover art that is named the same (or configurable via TAGZ) as the referenced file playing instead of the first file it finds? And, will it ever be possible to reach inside a matroska container to retrieve the attached cover art file? Thanks!

artlist = look_getAlbumArtList()

returns a list of all album art files found based on the current song. You must be using a script that just gets the list and displays the first item in the list.

You could certainly create some scripting that would allow you to handle the album art list as you see fit.

In the default look I created a slider that lets you move through all the art.



The ablum art list is filled in based on the configured search algorithm. The default search is

m_Skin->GetValue(_T("albumart"),_T("search1"),_T("?")),
m_Skin->GetValue(_T("albumart"),_T("search2"),_T("?")),
m_Skin->GetValue(_T("albumart"),_T("search3"),_T("?")),
m_Skin->GetValue(_T("albumart"),_T("search4"),_T("?")),
m_Skin->GetValue(_T("albumart"),_T("search5"),_T("?")),
_T("%albumart%"),
_T("%title%"),
_T("%album%"),
_T("cover"),
_T("folder"),

So for the current playing song it will look for files use the artist, title, album metadata and files named cover or folder. The supported extensions are bmp, png, gif, jpg.

If you have special needs you can add to the search which is what the "albumart", "search1" values are for.

Examaple,

section albumart
string search1 "*folder*" // any file with the word folder in it

Can't you just hide the window? That effectively is disabling it (although it may still be handling some messages, etc.). Are you looking for something more drastic like not even creating the window, etc.?

I'll have to look but there might be a problem with setting the fillcolor in a script if no fillcolor was originally defined in the sprite declaration.

That is

sprite foo
list fillcolor int { 255,0,0,0 }
list fillcolor int { 255,0,0,0 }
list scripts string { "changeFillcolor" }

and

sprite foo2
// no fillcolors explicitly defined
list scripts string { "changeFillcolor" }

might behave differently.

Maybe you can confirm this for me?

It seems that look_setFillColor's third argument does not behave in the way you specified. Even after putting.



in the sprite, it still seems -1 will be fillcolor(1).

Right Click the foobar taskbar icon.
Choose "Look"
Choose "Activate" (this should un-check and deactivate the look.)

I don't have that menu item. Is it supposed to be there by default? How would I go about enabling it?

/me anxiously waits for the debut of carbon 1.5, the best skin in my opinion

hi all,

just come across foo looks - i'm having the same problem that villa21 was having earlier in this thread. Unfortunately no one seems to answer him in this thread and despite having gone through most of the archive i can't seem to find his other post.

What is happening is that instead of any skins appearing all i'm getting is several multicoloured boxes. From what i've read this can happen on winnt 4.0 etc but im running win xp pro with sp1 so i'm a bit confused as to why it's happening.

i can try and post screenies later if it will help; other important details is that i was running foobar 0.78 and installed the latest stable (ie non beta) foo looks on to it and had the same problem. I then d/l the latest foo looks beta and still the same and then tried the latest version of foobar (0.81). Didn't uninstall in between, just installed over the top.

Running Shuttle SB75G2, 1GB TwinMos PC3200 RAM, Hercules AIW 9800 SE (running as Pro due to softmod) on a 2.8GHz Northwood 'C' P4. All components at stock aside from softmod on WinXP Pro SP1 with all latest updates.

Anyone got any ideas as to whats happening?

Cheers,

rOAdeh

hi

there seems to be a correlation between desktop mods & this error

most of the other users who reported the same problems all had used some sort of windows shell replacement/mod (most commonly styleXP)

however, there were some users who were running shell replacements (including stylexp) and foo_looks still worked fine.

here's the first test i'd like you to try:

1. activate foo_looks
2. start playing a track
3. click the mouse pointer inside of the badly rendered skin (so it gets focus)
4. press 'F9' and look at what happens

note: you may need to try holding 'F9' for a second or more

report back here with the results please.

tk32

btw all: i'm back with lots of freetime - so i can finally get going with all those promises i made

hi tk32,

for the record i'm not currently running anything like stylexp..

in fact i normally do run both stylexp and samurize but haven't been bothered to reinstall either since i last formatted.

pressing f9 reveals the equalizer working fine.. tho the rest is still just coloured boxes.

pressing f9 again just makes the equalizer go back to a flashing multicoloured box (for the duration of the keypress) and doesnt reveal anything else once f9 is released again the equalizer works again.

if it helps the outer box is purple, the inner one is beige and the equalizer sits inside that - before it seemed to flash yellow, blue, green, red etc in relation the music.

oooh, next song just came on and now the beige box is working! - very curious

just the outer purple one is screwed - any more suggestions?

regards,

rOAdeh

edit: ignore the above, just tried to swap to a different skin and it now works fully

gah so irritating! i spent about an hour trying scanning through the forum and this thread trying to find some help but didnt see anything re: f9 :/ - can i suggest putting it as a common troubleshooting tip so as to stop possibly offputting people who are new to foo looks?

rOAdeh

ok

i'm glad you got something working at last

the second question i wanted to ask is...

what skin was causing the coloured boxes to display?
i need to know skin name and version (if possible)

can you give as much info as possible. infact, you could even email the .ski to me:
tkelly32@btinternet.com

there is a chance you were trying to use a 1.x compatible skin with foo_looks 2.x

remember - NONE of the skins featured on www.foobarlooks.tk will work any more!!!!

if you'd like to do some more tests, see what happens when you try out the skins found on this page (these are all tested with the latest foo_looks):

http://www.btinternet.com/~sean.m.kelly/fo...oks/gallery.htm



i hope we can sort out your problem,

tk32

i got all skins from this thread (either ones that were on the thread or linked to) - any old versions i tried to d/l didnt work so i'm pretty sure i got the newest vers:

your very own micropanel didnt work (date on the file was 3/2/04)
nor did the file coverart.zip (dated 17/2/04)
along with the default one that was included in foo looks (hand orb or whatever)

all gave exactly the same look - a purple square which contained a beige box which contained a multicoloured rectangle...

edit: removed my crappy ascii drawing of what i had as posting it seemed to screw it up completely :/

im positive they are all the latest files (and im sure hand orb must be if its included with the release). will email the files still if you'd prefer? not had a problem since pressing f9 (though admittedly i havent reset my computer yet or anything .. may update tomorrow!)

2 slightly ot questions:

1) very impressed with your graviton skin - one of the best i've seen for a while.. any word on the promised new version? preferably with all the features supported and also hopefully that dodgy scrolling

2) with regards to cover art scripts, i already have all my cover art set out in a folder called f:\cover art (due to integration of j river media center for my ipaq for remote control) each is named in the format <artist> - <album>.jpg - is there any code i can use to replace the default search in the local folder and instead search the specified folder?

keep up the excellent work

regards,

rOAdeh

new version of Graviton soon

i'm hoping to get some assistance from UpNorth (and some code too) to help smooth out the text scroll

---

rOAdeh:

last question:

what graphics card are you using?


sorry i can't be of more assistance - it's a tough bug to indentify

As stated in my original post im running a Hercules 9800 SE AIW card running the softmod enabled omega drivers v2.5.3 (equivalent to the cat 4.3s iirc!)

just started up foobar this morning after a reboot and had the same problem with the multicoloured boxes...

once again pressing f9 solves it fine :| - what exactly is f9 doing?

I still fail to see how StyleXP could cause these issues. All it is is a slight modified Microsoft uxtheme.dll that allows you to run non-Microsoft themes and a program for changing the themes easily.

If it is the themes causing the problem then it has to do with Microsoft's theme system more than StyleXP.

F9 was for debugging the the drawing algorithm. Each color box is the invalid region that was rendered on that particluar loop of the drawing routine. Try pressing F9 and moving the mouse around over the look. You should see boxes showing up in relation to your mouse movement and what this shows you is the algorithm drawing the smallest region possible (spites under the mouse).

Other boxes my show up as part of scripted events like time displays, etc. that cause invalid regions not from mouse movement.

I'll try taking F9 support out in the next (whenever I get a new build) version. My guess is that somehow on some systems it gets in a state where the API used is incorrectly stating that the F9 key is pressed when if fact it is not.

BTW, here is my idea for the next release.

I want to add another built in sprite (sprite spectrum is currently the only built in) called sprite Playlist

This sprite will adhere to all the current sprite properties and scripts but will also implement a windows list control that will allow for a rich list view of a playlist. This will include unlimited number of lines, custom columns (title, artist, album, etc.), perhaps support for color information in formatting specifiers, anti-aliased text (if practical), and more.

examples:



or



Since releasing 2.0 with the "you can do it all in scripts" attitude it has become clear to me that this is a good case for a built in object that does a lot of the work internally and frees up the need to create playlist scripts,etc. And, it will just work better and be cooler.

So, how much of this do I have done you ask - well about 1% - I have the idea and know how I'll go about it. Once I have more time I'll tackle the coding.

just some little suggestions : i tried foo_ui_columns and i find the way it manages playlists quite efficient : could you add something like


and... imho DanZ, this is a BRILLIANT idea !

wish i'd have more time to code scripts again...
and, sadly, foobar & especially foo_looks makes me swichting to linux more unlikely