How do I add more panels to the sidebar when the present panel (playlist switcher) has caption/header disabled? There is just nowhere to click to bring up the related context menu.


I had foo_uie_tabs as the second panel with the rest as tabs, but a foo_temple problem forced me to remove and readd foo_uie_tabs, and then I got stuck because I can't find a way to enable it again.

I think the only way to do it is to reset the sidebar (columns ui prefs|reset sidebar). I'd also like a more sophisticated way to add new panels.

What I currently do is that I have the seekbar enabled as the topmost panel, because you can add new panels by clicking on it, even though it doesn't have the caption disabled.

Thanks alot, anza. I missed that button when I browsed through preferences.

@musicmusic: How about you also add the mentioned context menu to the components menu? That way it would be easy to access at all times.

@musicmusic: The Hide Delay option is pretty cool, but if I specify a hide delay, move away from the panel and then back over it, the panel still hides even if I'm using it.

I realize this is literally what a hide delay would do, but it would be nice if there was an option to check to see if the mouse is back over the panel before hideing it. I'm pretty clumsy and tend to loose the panel from time to time when I'm using it.

Well yeah, Im not decided in what form though. I think you said have one big sidebar in place of the playlist, other people said have sidebars on all sides of the playlist, more sophisticated would be docking panels like other programs have (only one I can think of right now is winspector). Or maybe have a screen in prefs where you can design your own layout by spliting a rectangle that represents the main window up.

I don't know, there are probably many ways it could be done, I would like to choose the most flexible one really.
Your welcome

That would be a bug really, I'll fix it for the next version.
That would be a bug in database explorer then, I'll look into it.
See below.
Your also welcome

You mean when the panel is locked I'll consider it when I fix up the resizing.

Post split up into two due to forum many-quote forum bugs.

It was only an experiment. besides I am not one to provide modified binaries of official components.
Wrong thread

I could do that, but then you have a main window that is a bitch to move around, and doesn't appear on the taskbar. Why don't you want foobar in ALT-TAB? I could add the option to not show the titlebar, Im not sure show about the toolwindow though.
Hrmm.. Maybe the albumlist panel should clear its selection when the playlist is changed. Or more simply switch back to the database view playlist when you click on an item. I'll try and get it fixed.

Sorry I am not going to develop this. It could be done, but it doesn't need to, snd shouldn't, be implemented in columns ui itself.



I don't really feel like putting it there. What I will probably do is add a config to prefs for the sidebar.

well i'm mainly after the titlebar removal but it would be nice to remove it from the alt+tab menu since it's always open and i never focus it unless i specifically click on it (never minimized either). i control it with hotkeys mostly.

but once again, removal of the titlebar would be awesome.

Yeah, that sounds like a better solution.

Musicmusic,

My panel is now getting a bit crowded. I don't suppose you could add an option to make the playlists panel a selectable dropdown instead of one long visible list?

I put up a post about this for foo_uie_tabs and was wondering if there wasn't a reason why the playlists panel couldn't also be a dropdown.

Cheers

and even further than removing the titlebar... i think having the ability to have a flat window (like miranda's flat contact list plugin) would be great too so you don't have any borders on the window at all... just one flat color so it blends into the desktop perfectly. that'd be great.

This is related to something I thought about some days ago:

Would it make sense to gather all config pages which belongs to panels under the 'Columns Ui' config panel instead of the 'Components' page?

For now it's:



But I think something like this:


or this:


would make more sense. For me panel extensions are in some way different to 'normal' plugins so they shoul be grouped in some way to make the preference dialog more clearly arranged. I think my foobar instalation currently have ~10 pages under 'Components' so putting the ones which are panels in an own group would be very helpfull.
I know that there currently only a few panels are available but I'm very sure that there are much more to come. Let's say you have ~10 normal config pages and ~6 panel config pages, this would sum up to ~16 pages under 'Components'. I don't hink that this is very clear. So moving the panel ones to a new place would certainly help.
What do you think of this?


Another point which is somehow related to the above:
@musicmusic: Since your playlist switcher is a single extension wouldn't it make more sense to give it its own config dialog? In the current version the colors config is in the 'Display' tab and the other options are in 'Playlists' tab. Also in 'playlist' tab there are some options which doesn't belong to the playlist switcher panel. I see the logic in the current organisation but I think there are way to many options in Columns UI to leave it that way, I often me clicking around in all tabs searching for an option.

I think there should be at least three different config pages:
- 'Playlist Switcher' config page which contains a design (font/color) tab, the 'Playlists' tab (minus the options which doesn't belong to playlist switcher) and the 'drag and drop' tab
- 'Columns Playlist' config page which contains the 'Playlist' tab, the 'Gloals' tab, the 'Columns' tab and a tab for colors/fonts and stuff
- 'Columns UI' which contains all the other stuff like sidebar configuration, statusbar/systray


To sum it up:
For me the stock Columns UI consists of three mainly independent parts: The main window, the Playlist and the playlist switcher. Because of this I think that this seperation should also be represented in the organisation of the config pages. 8 tabs on one config dialog is truly to much easily navigate (In particular when there is a pair called Playlist/Playlists which is kind of hard to distinguish from).
Also I think it makes sense to gather all panel config dialogs in one place, either under Components/Panels or under Display/ColumnsUI/Panels instead of cluttering them among the other components.

I hope you get what I want to express (I sometimes write fairly complicated/imprecise ) and I'm glad to hear your opinions about my proposal (not only from musicmusic but also from other Columns UI users)

One problem with this, is plugins like foo_history, that can be used both as a panel and as a dialog/window. Your own foo_temple plugin also has an undock feature, that makes it more difficult to categorise.

I agree that Columns UI preferences, and maybe especially playlist/playlists, could do with some reorganising. But, I think musicmusic has done a pretty good job so far, considering the number og settings available.

Edit: spelling

Good point, never thought about it

So we need more categories, like 'Normal plugins', 'Panel plugins' and 'Hybrid plugins' (Just kidding )



Perhaps my writings sounds a bit too negative I didn't want to say that the current options layout is bad, I just wanted to point out that it could be better (at least to me). The problem I see that there isn't that much space left for new options so instead of reordering the old system to make e.g an additional checkbox fit I want to propose that a newly designed config layout could be the better solution.

I can live with the current system, but from time to time it's a little bit annoying to see options belonging to one component cluttered over several tabs and mixed up with other options from other components (espacially the ones from playlist switcher I'd like to see in one place).


edit: changed last sentence to make it more precise

Wouldn't make more sense to make the Playlist Switcher a seperate component. Now that you think of it, the Columns UI is now more of a container instead of a Playlist Switcher.

Plus it would free up heaps of space in the Columns UI options.

It'll be easier for the user to configure all the panels. RIght now it's alittle confusing, you have to know your plugins and what they do, and where they belong. For an experienced foobar user there's no problem but if you're new to foobar you're clearly lost

@janjan: I think we see this exactly the same way. I often find myself searching through alot of settings to find what I'm looking for. That's a "problem" with foobar in general, but I think it's mostly so because certain settings are hard to categorise, as they fit in more than one place.

Concerning Columns UI, I think a possible improvement would be to remove the "Display" tab, and moved everything in it to a "Display" area in their respective tab. Playlist font/color could be moved to the "Playlist" tab and so on. Maybe the "Playlists" tab should be renamed to "Playlist switcher"? That way it wouldn't look so similar to the "Playlist" tab. Or turn it into a component as Insolent suggested. Unless it is too integrated for that to happen.

Changing from tabs, to expanding the "UI Columns" branch in the tree view might also make it cleaner. That way you could use levels of sub categories to organize things.

upNorth + janjan: i agree with you guys, for me, i think uie panels should go under components->panels. as for hybrid plugins, they could
1) put config page for their panel's settings under components->panels
2) link to their own config page from main panels page.
as for 2) - it would be handy to have list of all available toolbars / panels in one listbox / treeview on top page at components->panels. 'config' button, pop-up context menu or double click would take you to that panel's config page ...

I think maybe that should be implemented as a separate toolbar.
I don't know what miranda looks like, show me a screenshot..

I did think that in the first place. But, for placing all panels under componenets/panels, or display/panels, it seemed to me that it would require a central componenet to create the "panel" page, for panels to use as their parent page.

Placing them under columns ui does not make sense, because there are other hosts than just columns ui.

I did think that the playlist switcher should be moved to its own page at first, but then I decided I was being pendantic, or maybe lazy.

Also, many of those options applies to both the playlist switcher and tabs, and so would need to be duplicated. I mean, it depends on what extent you consider the playlist switcher panel a separate entity, it is a part of columns ui afterall.


Maybe but all tabs are in one page because there are already too many pages in the tree. Spliting the tabs up into separate pages would also require having either a blank "columns ui" page to serve as the parent page for the other pages, or having a set of tabs under that vague title, with the other pages coming out of it. Then, in the latter case, because of the page with the vague title, it makes browsing the prefs more difficult as you have to switch pages to go through all of the tabs

Perhaps, it wouldn't free much space up though because most the options apply to the playlist atbs as well. And 80% of users probably currently use the playlist switcher panel, so why separate it into a separate dll? At least not at this stage, perhaps later, if alternative playlist switcher panels are developed.


That name is very long, and I think there was a length limit on the name of the tab. A tab with a long name takes up too much space. I agree it is confusing, I only just changed "Display II" to "Playlist", I know it is similar to "playlists", but I thought it was better than "display" & "display ii".

heres a screen shot of miranda: http://www.miranda-im.org/about/screenshots.php (the first 2 are good examples)
I think what he means is he wants the listview to have no border at all

I'd vote for that kind of configuration. Would be cool and probably very flexible.


Waiting for the next version......

Request: It's probably not in the architecture to be able to do this, but a playlists panel that would auto-resize to contain only the number of playlists that exist would be really nifty, IMO. Comments?

Well, it is possible. Extensions can have minimum and maximum height and width, and they can inform the host if any of these changes.

Even better if the playlists could be just added to the end of the Album List. In WMP the playlists are part of the artist tree-view. Very useful, one of it's only sensible features. This would be my preferred solution.

Hi,
Anyone got ui_columns looking like foo_tunes?

You can hide the statusbar. toolbars etc., so i dont see how that would be different from no titlebar, that's what a standard titlebarless window looks like (afaik, see e.g. task manager)

Though maybe slightly too ambitious

Imagine the coding mess, with minimium, maximum dimensions everywhere, and auto-sizing on top of that, and the manual resizing as well...
It has been requested before, I forget what I said last time, I am not going to implement this in the near future though, I can only see it being useful if you dont have a lot of playlists. I also dont know if you would find doing it through min/max heights acceptable, as if you had many playlists, you wouldn't be able to resize it smaller, or at all for that matter..


That did cross my mind, its up to whoever wants to develop it. An alternative would be using the panel stack plugin and put the playlists and albumlist panels in that.

[edit]
uploaded fixed foo_search_ex, foo_history_panel sources

I think there's a configuration that looks like iTunes. You may want to take a look in here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=22306

I only wanted to point out that such a thing is theoretically possible, not that it's pretty or that anyone is going to implement soon.

Hello musicmusic,

Is there any chance of having multiple instances of the same panel again? I can see if being very useful to have muliple instances of the Tabbed Panels panel.

Cheers

I would like that too. In fact, I didn't even know it was gone, and designed the plugin I have under development, to take advantage of it.

Ok Actually, my reply was mostly directed at Canar anyway..


I mentioned it somewhere, when adding a panel from the context menu, click toggles the panel, shift-click adds a new instance of the panel, ctrl click toggles the panel, but inserts when it would rather have added, and shift+ctrl+click inserts inserts a new instance of the panel.

Ahh, thanks, I must have missed that comment. Then I don't need to change my design, only add something to my code to support multiple instances, because it didn't work with my current build

me too, my bad! Columns UI is now getting very complicated :s

MusicMusic, first I want to compliment with the ever better getting status of the columnsUI.

I have a small request:
I use the custom buttons, with the default drawing disabled. This makes my buttons stick to the most right edge of the window, I have them in the sidebar. Would it be possible to implement an option to give it a little padding, that is between the buttons and between the window edge an the buttons itself.

Good luck

I should probably add the comment to the status bar, I probably will for 0.1.2 final.

What do you mean, that there is no padding on the left side of the buttons when in the sidebar? Please clarify, I dont know why you state your buttons "stick to the right edge of the window".



beta 2 is out.

changelog:

Consider this a 0.1.2 final RC, if there are any remaining bugs, please post now.

Hi there!

I just found a little redraw bug - although I don't know if it's a bug from the sidepanel itself or the database explorer. Look at this screenshot I made -> HERE

This happens when I drag the scrollbar up / down and a hint pops up that covers the database explorer entry which is not completely visible at the time. When I drag further up / down the hint disppears but leaves this grey box instead of the entry title... weird.

My current FCS configuration -> HERE

Using foobar 0.8.3 / ColumnsUI 0.1.2 (Beta 2) / foo_uie_tabs


Greetz.
Moon

First, thank you for a great component, musicmusic. I can't imagine foobar without it. But I seem to have hit a bug, and even though it is probably not "your" bug, I'd like to ask for some information.

I run foobar inside wine (an application that lets you run windows apps in linux). This used to work great with 0.1.1. Today I updated both my wine and foobar. I am now using 0.1.2beta2. The most noticable new 'feature' is that right-clicking in the sidebar kills foobar. I think the following wine message has something to do with it:



I have two questions:

- is it possible that right-clicking in the sidebar calls this unimplemented function, so that getting it implemented in wine will fix this crash?
- are there any other obvious places that call this function, so I know where not to click

Thank you in advance for any insights.

Edit: gah. Just found something else that crashes: scrollwheel in the playlist...

I can't seem to get the tabbed panels, there's just a menu with General and Toolbars and umm well no tab stuff, look:

A little question: Is this possible to apply a font to an specific column? I'm asking this because I want to display stars (wingdings) 'ala' itunes, but I'm using trebuchet as my font for all the columns.

Thanks.

Its foo_uie_tabs bug.

Yes, I use it in those two places, and in the toolbars context menu as well. (edit: resizing panels as well..) So if it was implemented in wine it would fix that.

I use it as opposed to WindowFromPoint, or ChildWindowFromPoint, as it ignores transparent areas of windows. Otherwise, e.g. mousewheel over a tooltip would be broken. I don't think ChildWindowFromPointEx would work the same as RealChildWindowFromPoint either, but I will double check if it would work ok using that. I probably am using RealChildWindowFromPoint unneccessarily in some places anyway..

Its a separate component developed by Phi, and it is for the sidebar, not toolbars. Check its thread in the thrid party components forum, or see the first post in this thread.

No, not currently. Thats an interesting idea I never thought of though, but the possibility of using images in the columns would be more suitable for ratings (i think this was discussed some time ago).

Still no option to remove the selection frame?

Thanks for confirming that.

Please don't go to all that trouble. Foobar and foo_ui_columns are windows applications. That they also happen to work in wine is just a nice side-effect. I'd prefer to fix this in wine rather than having ui_columns work around something that is obviously a wine bug. I think I'll tell wine to use the non-Real ChildWindowFromPoint as a replacement, and implement the missing function correctly if I am able to.

Edit: thanks for mentioning ChildWindowFromPointEx. I just patched wine to call that with CWP_SKIPTRANSPARENT and it helps. It no longer crashes, I seem to get the 'right' context menus, and scroll the window I'm over. I am curious about what could be wrong with implementing it this way in wine. If you could tell me of any differences between ChildWindowFromPointEx with this flag and RealChildWindowFromPoint I would be grateful. As I know next to nothing about the windows api I'd have to reboot between windows and linux to hunt for differences which is a bit inconvenient.

Wine users: if you also have crashes with the new foo_ui_columns, you might want to try applying RealChildWindowFromPoint.patch to wine 20041019.

Windows users: sorry for the long somewhat-offtopic post, I'll (hopefully) go back to lurk mode now.

edit to edit: hmm, it's not perfect yet. The right-click context menu for the albumlist and database explorer randomly stops functioning. Left-clicking works, right-clicking the captions or the playlist switcher works. I assume all this works on windows?

edit to edit to edit: It's not random. double right-clicking brings up the menu. Is this a bug or a feature?

Oh, and I love those extensions. Many thanks for them!

i just installed the database explorer, but where is it / how do i use it?

it's in preferences, but i have no idea how to actually access it .

it might be because it's sunday morning, but maybe someone can shed some light on this?

edit: ouch, i found it. right-click on Columns playlists header?? is that the only way to access it, because that would be very unintuitive?

musicmusic,
please return toolbars remembering their position.
thnx!

Sorry, no new features for 0.1.2. You'll have to wait for some future version where I might move it into the colour string like discussed.



MSDN explains the difference between RealChildWindowFromPoint and ChildWindowFromPoint well:

As far as I know ChildWindowFromPointEx with the CWP_SKIPTRANSPARENT flag just skips windows with the WS_EX_TRANSPARENT style, so don't use that, if anything, use CWP_SKIPINVISIBLE.

In practise, you won't notice any difference in functionality when using columns ui. It was WindowFromPoint that didn't do what I wanted really, which is why I don't care about changing it.

Not here, Wine bug I guess..

Your welcome

Well once upon a time it showed up in all of teh conext menus in the sidebar, and people complained. I can't please everyone, and I also can't make it appear in preferences at the click of my fingers, or even the click of my heels, would you believe.

The only ability you lose by hiding the captions is the ability to move the panels up and down. You can still right-click on the panel sizing separators to add or remove panels.

How about they remember theire size, and are inserted where you right click? I try and get it done for 0.1.2, and see which behaviour I prefer..

I had read that msdn page already. So I read it again a couple of times, and read the rest of your reply a couple of times, until I realized HTTRANSPARENT != WS_EX_TRANSPARENT. Doh!

Thanks again for explaining all this, it works 'good enough' with the patched wine. And I love the database explorer. It had better not stop working, I can't live without it already

well it's okay, it's not a big deal as long as you know what to do. maybe you could just make it a little easier for newbies (like me) by pointing it out somewhere?

it's definitely an excellent plugin nonetheless.

Is there any trick to adding multiple instances of the same toolbar, or is it just not supported? I'm using a blank spacer toolbar to make my toolbar area look a little more symmetrical (before, after), and I'd like to add more than one version of it.

If it's not easy to change, don't worry... I can live without a neat little line here and there.

Have you tried this:

Yeah, those don't seem to apply for the toolbar.

I'm really liking the new Columns UI extensions a lot. One request for foosion: any chance of you making a Columns UI Extension of your VU Meter?

Here's my config right now

edit: image seemed to big for hotlinking