Do you not use the columns header? Otherwise it is easier to enable/disable them from its contextmenu.

I'll consider italicising or using a strikethrough effect on disabled columns, and the double click toggle, but its some effort just for prefs, so it can wait for now.

thanks musicmusic,!
another question: can i change the font for the tooltips and where?

I would much rather have the playlist switcher coloring I proposed earlier  

While fixing the mouse wheel support in foo_dbsearch, I noticed that the foo_ui_columns playlist view doesn't handle mouse wheel scrolling correctly, if the scroll size is set to pagewise. SystemParametersInfo() returns an increment of (UINT)-1 in that case.

If the number of lines to scroll is greater than the number of lines viewable, and in particular if it is WHEEL_PAGESCROLL (#defined as UINT_MAX), the scroll operation should be interpreted as clicking once in the page down or page up regions of the scroll bar.

Hmm, I dont think that would actually be too difficult to support. I'll look into it and maybe it will make it into alpha 5

just a quick idea I had for coo_columns:

have a way to give a playlist a "tag"

the idea came to me as a simple way to mark a playlist as containing singles rather than full albums, but I suppose it could be useful in other ways (such as genres etc.)

for example: when you make a new playlist, have a check box for "singles."  (basic) or when making a playlist, have a text box for defining associated tags--a place where you can type something like %_playlist_type% = singles" or something similar. (advanced) then in playlist formatting, add something like

$if($stricmp(%_playlist_tag%,singles),,[%album])

or

$if($stricmp(%_playlist_genre%,rock),{insert color codes here},,)

i can see how this would be useful along with the proposed color tagging in the playlist switcher box as well, as in different genre's playlists get different colors in the switcher, etc.


i'm not sure if this would be possible as far as the way foobar works, but it would be a more elegant way of marking playlists, rather than using the "-s-" designation.

That would be great!

If implementet the way I hope, it would make the display more elegant. What I intended to do in the first place, was to look for parts of a playlist name like "-s-" and replace it with color codes. That way "-s-" woudn't be visible in the playlists list at all, but the color would tell you it's a "singles" playlist.

If this gets implemented, I would also start using other such markers to color extended information (genre, sorting, ...) in playlist names, as I personally like using colors for enhanced readability.

I don't know if spase's way is any simpler to use or implement (sounds more complicated to me, but I'm no expert), but go with whatever you think is best. I'm only after the option to add colors, but the "find and replace" method I suggested would at least make it easy to use more than one color in one single playlist name.

Enough blah blah. If a "kissing-smiley" doesn't do the trick, I don't know what will...

alpha 5
-sidebar panel captions are now optional, default to off for toolbars
-added SHIFT, CTRL modifier key for adding panels to sidebar, as described above
-ui_drop_item_callback now supported
-added simple commandline support for importing/exporting fcs files, so you can associate them if you want. see foobar2000 /columnsui:help for details.
-added option to disable drawing of playback button backgrounds and remove the padding around the bitmaps (requires restart of foobar, buttons are still indented on mousedown since there isn't any other mouse down effect used)
-modifed appearance of sidebar panel captions
-added custom sidebar auto hide show/hide delay settings
-speed test now tests all formatting strings & columns
-fixed vis colour chooser
-added option to remove underscores for dropped playlists
-added option for action when doubleclicking on empty space on playlist
-not registered as a dialog with the dialog manager anymore; fixes "IDOK"/default push button stuff for ui_extensions that are dialogs (was using bad workaround before), and used another work around for the broken tabbing that results as a result of not using dialog manager...
-fixed old columns auto-sizing bug
-info button in prefs detects libpng & zlib
-added option to use titleformatting with playlist switcher panel
-fixed some bugs in playlist switcher drawing code
-changed wm_mousewheel handler, should scroll properly for pages now
-added annoying warning to "List all toolbars"

alpha 4
-fixed bug in painting menu, button toolbar backgrounds
-fixed escape in menubar
-fixed "edit this column"
-added sidebar panel captionbars
-implement revised ui_extension api
-ui is now tabable
-changed sidebar add panel behaviour

Current "Stable" Version: 0.1.1

Current "Alpha" Version: 0.1.2 alpha 5

Current development files (For UI Extension API Version 4.x)
-UI Extension SDK
-History panel source
-Extended Search (modified to be a hybrid UI Extension)
-Static Panel (Simple panel that displays some simple text)
-Album list panel source
-Database explorer source
Available Here

Available extensions:
Included in columns UI:
-Menubar
-Seekbar
-Playback buttons
-Playback order dropdown
-Visualisation
-Playlist switcher

Others:
-Albumlist Panel
-Database Explorer
-History Panel (obsolete, for History 0.7x)
-Volume control (by kode54)
-HTTP Reader (by kode54)
-History (by foosion)

Other links
Formatting thread and site
libpng website and win32 binaries, and also required is zlib

FAQ - How do I use the plugin?
After copying it to your components folder, start foobar2000, goto the display section, and choose columns ui under the list of user interface modules, and finally restart foobar2000.

Next Version: ?

Why I can't download the DLL files through your hyper links?

For the main ui columns dll try this

@musicmusic:
You can add the link as a mirror to your first post, for the case when someone isn't able to download from your link

edit:
Is there a way to make the caption of a sidebar visible again after hiding it with unchecking 'Show Toolbar' other than 'Reset Sidebar'

He uses a free host which happens to block off-site linking to files. Copy the links to a new window, or equip a nice filter proxy that blocks referral information in the appropriate places without breaking things which need it.

I have no problems with the links to .dll files. Are you sure they block them?

I'm using protowall and I have to stop it in order to be able to download the dll so people behind some firewall and using blacklist and/or block appaz can't reach it. Surely lycos try to get some information from your PC and so it block the website to load.

I have no problems with the links to .dll files. Are you sure they block them?

Otherwise, maybe the original poster caught me whilst I was updating the lnks (?)

This has probably been requested before, but anyway... would it be possible to remove the selection frame, or better yet control the selection frame via global variables? If the latter, you can always use custom colour specs on the columns to make it appear as though there isn't a frame.

Have you tried setting the colour of the 'Selected item frame' (Preference > Display > Columns UI > Display) to the same colour as the background of the currently selected row?

Possibly a post-0.1.2 request, but would it be possible to scroll by simply hovering the mouse over an area instead of first click-focus'ing it? Say you have a panel which has a vertical scroll bar. Currently, if you're viewing your main playlist and open the sidebar, you'll have to click inside the panel in order to use the mousewheel, otherwise it'd still be scrolling the playlist. Would be a nice convenience if not too hard to implement.

teh thanks.

-nt

Possibly a post-0.1.2 request, but would it be possible to scroll by simply hovering the mouse over an area instead of first click-focus'ing it? Say you have a panel which has a vertical scroll bar. Currently, if you're viewing your main playlist and open the sidebar, you'll have to click inside the panel in order to use the mousewheel, otherwise it'd still be scrolling the playlist. Would be a nice convenience if not too hard to implement.

teh thanks.

-nt

WM_MOUSEWHEEL messages are only sent to the window which has input focus. Input focus would have to follow the cursor for this to work. That, or every single panel would have to hook the message queue of the top level window they're planted in, like foo_uie_volume currently does. Which is an ugly solution.

Unless somebody knows an alternate solution?

It can't be up to the top level window to handle the messages, as WM_MOUSEWHEEL is designed such that the focused child window receives it, and if it doesn't process it, it passes it on to DefWindowProc, which passes it up the chain of parent windows until something processes it. Or, in the case of dialogs, returning zero to tell the dialog handler that it should call the default handler.

Since uie_volume doesn't hold focus, this isn't a problem, unless anyone tries using the scrollwheel while dragging the slider, and expects it to scroll whichever window the cursor is over.

Scrollwheel working for whichever window the cursor is over magically works for other software because the respective software has worked around this issue. That, or there's a mouse software package which changes this behavior, whether produced by some input hardware vendor or a third party. *shrug*

This has probably been requested before, but anyway... would it be possible to remove the selection frame, or better yet control the selection frame via global variables? If the latter, you can always use custom colour specs on the columns to make it appear as though there isn't a frame.



That's my only gripe with Columns UI at the moment.

Thanks for the configurable hide delay, it's perfect!
All the other features rock also, thanks for making this UI even better and better

edit: Cooool! You also added the what-to-do-when-you-doubleclick-the-background feature! Thanks buddy!

Surely, if I used a message hook in foo_ui_columns, and redirect the WM_MOUSEWHEEL messages sent to the the main window's child windows to the window at the POINT the message was generated, and map the POINT coordinates to the other windows client area, it would work fine?

In this case, the playlist's listbox control has focus, so it receives the WM_MOUSEWHEEL message first. Unless, of course, the main window has focus by default, in which case it is possible for it to pass this message to any child windows which are under the cursor at the time of the action. Of course, you have to be careful, as any child windows which do not process this message will pass it right back up to you. The fact that uie_volume doesn't behave this way is only for a special case design.

Also, the POINT structure associated with the message is in screen coordinates, so you don't have to translate it.

Ok, I just assumed it wasn't, its not like you would usually use it when processing the WM_MOUSEWHEEL message..

Oh, and I didn't read that you intended to hook your own message loop, rather than process the message at the main window process level. In that case, you could check for that within your message loop, rather than installing a hook.

Isn't the message loop in the core?

I could add an option to disable it if you really want, if you are happy to not know where the focus is.. Or maybe dump it in the colour string.

hi, i have a customized columns ui thing but one annoying thing is that it doesn't seem to 'track' the current playing song. so i have to double click on the status bar to 'find' the song that's currently playing.

any idea on how to fix this?

cheers?

here's the columnsui .fcs file in case that is the culprit: http://www.stevekim.net/!/blue.fcs

Well, I use your foo_scroll plugin to keep the currently playing track in focus, so that isn't a problem. Maybe some optional colour variables for the frame would be better than actually disabling it.

Right now the colour string is:
text|selected text|background|selected background|[selected background non-focus]|[left frame]|[top frame]|[right frame]|[bottom frame]

Maybe it could be edited like so:
text|selected text|background|selected background|[selected background non-focus]|[left frame]|[top frame]|[right frame]|[bottom frame]|[selection frame]

Or maybe you could just add an option to display it or not along with adding the colour variables...

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I have a request for the albumlist panel plugin. I wish there was a way to get rid of the "All albums" item at the top. It wastes space and I never use it anyways. If it could be removed, the horizontal scroll bar would be used less which is a good thing.

The problem is though, migrating exisiting configs to the new one. Writing downthe RGB vales when upgrading is tedious, and it cant fallback onto the old setting when the colour is not specified in the string, because then it wouldn't be optional. But having it optional on a per-column basis is a bit wierd anyway, maybe it would have its uses though. And I dislike the idea of having the selection frame colour at the end of the string it should be fourth or fifth. But then compatibility would be broke.

So, adding it to the colour string can wait, maybe when I make some other changes that brake config compatibility. I can add the option for not showing the frame though for now., though.

beta1
-mousewheel scrolls window underneath cursor
-png loader sets PNG_TRANSFORM_PACKING, PNG_TRANSFORM_EXPAND and PNG_TRANSFORM_SHIFT flags as suggestted by kode54
-fixed transparency & 32 bpp pngs when desktop is set to <32 bpp, or you were using my laptop
-png loader now attempts to load libpng13.dll first
-tab key stops at playlist tabs
-other bugfixes

Could you please ask a moderator to give you access to the first Post in this thread in some way? It would be a lot easier for all if you put all the news and files there instead of putting them at the end where they get lost as the discussion continues 

musicmusic, are you still thinking of making the whole playlist area a single panel (and thus also the ability to have sidepanels on all the sides)?

So maybe you could please also always add links in the current posts about new updates

As usual all else I can say is: Great work. Am still enjoying columns UI as much as always. 

Not for 0.1.2. It is a minor revision after all, and a final has to come out some day...

-mousewheel scrolls window underneath cursor