Okay, here is my previous config + albumart + trackinfo.

Any other goodies to add?

how do you display the codec? I searched the documentation for 'codec' and nothing came up

foobar2000.cfg is the main thing, as thats where most of your settings are stored. The file is either in your foobar2000 dir, or if use profile support is enabled i think it is in the application data\foobar2000 sub-folder in your profile folder.

$codec() is the easiest way..

Yes I see what you mean and your are correct it would be messy trying to to it with those, and so I will look into adding a julian date field (it will only update every hour though).

In terms of getting getting the julian data from those fields, I tried:

Whilst I dont think its anything you couldn't have come up with yourself, its not that complicated, it does actually go inaccurate after 2100 due to leap years I think (?), but then that doesn't really matter.. So you can use that to set a variabl in your global string if you want until the field is added (be warned - those date fields dont work when using preview to console)

Thanks for the $codec() tip. Working now

Graham (n00b)

Thanks for the reply musicmusic!!!

I agree with you, it is not obtrusive (maybe a little annoying, but not obtrusive)

Byes

* Sorry for my bad english!!!

@musicmusic: Thanks alot! Especially for the code using the current fields.
I've set it all up nicely now, but I'll have to use it for a few of days to see how it's working out. I still hope you'll be able to add a julian date field at some point, as my formatting is slow enough already.

Any chance of an option to make foobar to reside only in the systray with this plugin? Or is that hard coded? I just got a multi-monitor setup and it would be great not to have fb take up room on the taskbar since it's always open.

stripe/ben

Your welcome You could actually use $select instead for the month days in that code (maybe faster), but yeah, I'll look into adding your field.

There are two (maybe three) ways for me to implement that, I wrote about it somewhere in this thread. But they are all probably going have some side effect or be a bit hacky. So no at the moment.

I'm really impressed by this plug-in, great work!

Is there any chance of allowing just one playlist to have a different formatting string however? This would be perfect.

Its time to say thanks for this great plugin/ui and all its additional components. Foobar gets more and more customizable and i love it to feel free changing things the way i like it.

THANKS

My current config (screenshot)

Posts regarding foo_ui_columns setup moved to foo_ui_columns configurations thread.

One thing with which i'm very concerned is the increasing mess of decentralized color-configurations. If you're someone who creates fcs's with multiple builtin color-schemes (actived in the global string in a config section) then this really becomes a mess even with just a few panels installed, let alone many panels:

- playlist color-config via strings AND buttons
- playlist-panel color config via buttons
- visualization color-config via dialogs and contextmenu
- <add more of your fav panels in here>

This is a mess and its becoming messier the more features and extensions are added to this otherwise nice plugin. Its not just annoying for fcs-designers, but with enough panels installed also for "normal users".

A centralized color-config is really needed. The most optimal solution would be the "configurator"-idea which was mentioned some months ago - a seperate central configuration-manager-plugin.... which would handle strings, color-schemes, global vars, etc of various plugins and panels(only those which support the configurator-plugin) - and which could export/import those.

- Lyx

edit: if i would have the programming skills, i would do it myself - unfortunatelly, the only thing with which i could assist is concept-work and docs.

Thanks The playlist filters are the prefered way to do it (much faster), using them you can set up different sets of columns for different playlists.

Otherwise you can do it using tagz as well - use $ifequal(%_playlist_name%,playlists name,formatting a,formatting b) or even something like $if($strstr(temp,%_playlist_name%),blah,blah) etc. see the titleformatting hepl for for info on what you can do.

You welcome

I agree with you but like someone once said I dont have unlimited free time, and so we still need someone to develop it, and perhaps more challenging, make it work (I havent given it much consideration to be honest). I recall foosion saying he was going to when we discussed it first, but I don't know maybe he gave up..

In terms of central colour config I think just some config_vars (+ config page) that can be accessed by all plugins would be good enough. But the problem comes in with the colour strings, and how it should be handled converting these values to the string. A button to manually generate a matching string would be sanest I think, or something like that..

In terms of central config export/import I think that is a separate issue, it just needs some service to be designed and implemented in the respective plugins. Not to difficult I think, I dont think it needs to be more than an interface to get a guid and the config data to write out, and a function to set it as well. More advanced would be getting the name of the component as well, so you can design a dialogue to select what exactly to import/export. Even more advaned would be the ability to assign guids/names to particular settings or groups of settings so you can choose what to import/export at a deeper level, perhaps in a tree fashion.

So unless you want to learn some c++ anytime soon, nothing will happen until someone turns up that feels like designing and implementing all of this.. Of course then I will have no reluctance in implementing it in columns ui etc. provided it is well designed.

That's more or less what I had in mind for storing preferences.

As for a centralized configuration, I was thinking about letting components expose settings dynamically, so multiple instances of panels are covered as well. (Hey, I had that idea even before UI extensions came around. So long ago and still no implementation...) This would be restricted to certain types of settings, for example formatting strings, fonts and colors. The user would then be able to either edit these settings directly, or create variables of the aforementioned types and link settings to a variable. Yes, changing colors everywhere also bugs me. That's why I haven't done it for a while.

The problem now is moderation tasks and my existing components also require a significant share of my free time.

I tried this code and found it goes wrong after march because it doesn't count days of year correctly, so I modified it.


doesn't look so nice, but anyway it works for me. thanks for the hint, musicmusic!

Be carefull, not all years multiples of 4 are leap years (e.g. 1900 IIRC)

Yeah, I know it. maybe someone can make it smarter, but anyway the code works from 1901 to 2099. so actually there is no problem for me.
(though of course the field for julian date would be better.)

I neither plan to travel back in time, nor live that long, so thanks for the update.

My bad, I forgot the month day count should be cumulative, and to account for leap years there, probably not surprising since I only tested it with janurary dates

Thanks for pointing that out.

Centralized configuration for UI extensions sounds great, but as you said, not important enough to bother with considering the time you have to work on Columns UI.

Regarding leap years, every year divisible by 4 is a leap year, except when it is divisible by 100, but if it is divisible by 400 then it is a leap year regardless. So, 2000 was a leap year because it was divisible by 4. However, it was also divisible by 100. Nevertheless, it was divisible by 400, so it was a leap year after all.

If I want to display my song rating in my playlist is it just as simple as adding a %rating% tag in a new colum? currently if i have a rating added it shows the number rather then the little 5 stars i have seen people use...

any help appreciated

also is there some sort of component what i can set the rating? maybe a button or something??

Use the $repeat command, eg for rates from 0 to 5:
$repeat(●,%rating%)

or, %rating% red ● followed by 5-%rating% grey ●:
$repeat(0A5499|0A5499●,%rating%)
$repeat(BDAC9D|BDAC9D●,$sub(5,%rating%))

Edit: You should've posted in the configuration topic instead, this topic is about the component itself -)

sweet those dots work perfect but i want to be able to click on it to add a rating...

ie if i click 4 times it make it have a rating of 4 or something?

i dont know how to program but what i want is

on click
if rating < 5
rating = rating +1
else
rating = 0


is this sort of thing possible ?

No, it's not possible. But you could use musicmusic's QuickTag plugin so you can have menu items for setting ratings (and bind hotkeys for them).

Guys am I a complete retard?

I imported the plisk thing and it looks like this:
http://www.areyouserios.com/uploads/plisk.jpg

Where as it's supposed to look like this:
http://www.areyouserios.com/uploads/plisk_v014.png

What am I doing wrong?

Your playlist is named "Default". That will make plisk config display it in single mode. Rename the playlist or disable the Playlist filters in the Columns options.

Oh wow, so simple, thank you

how are you guys getting your panels on top of the playlist?


Edit: nm. i figured it out.

Well not just that, but it doesn't apply to just UI extensions as foosion sort of mentioned, popup dialogs like database search etc. are also included. I think it is very tedious changing colours n times, but the central config belongs in a separate component, not Columns UI.

Anyway, following the complaints of information being spread all over this thread, and the fact I will never be able to maintain any decent documentation myself, I set up a wiki here, which currently is mostly a port of the old documentation. Feel free to add any helpful information to the wiki, as long as it is related to columns ui or ui extensions.

why not a foobar wiki

Well make it what you want, I dont mind, the start page is editable to registered users and I can change the title if need be. The only thing is a general foobar wiki might be much more popular, and I dont have unlimited bandwidth.. A general foobar wiki could also go in the HA wiki, it used to be there somewhere anyway..

[nitpicker mode]
I have recently started using custom playback buttons, but I don't really like the effect they have one the size of the toolbar, as it looks to me like it's nearly twice as high as it needs to be. Would it be possible to add a setting to adjust the height of the toolbar?

Even when using default buttons I think I could trim it down a little. Screen space is sacred, and something I can't afford to waste

One thing I've trimmed down quite a bit already, is the height of the tabs in Phi's foo_uie_tabs, and I like the effect. Makes it look as if I have a high res monitor, and not this old 17 inch Hitachi CRT

In case it's possible, and something you decide to implement, how about a setting for the "status bar" too, while you're at it...
[/nitpicker mode]

i would like to see double-buffering for status bar so it would have not flicker

The size of the buttons when using custom buttons is decided by the size of the image you select. If its the same size as the bitmap of the standard buttons (which is in foo_ui_columns.dll) then your buttons will be the same size as the standard buttons.

In terms of there being too much padding around the images, I can adjust this. Currently the "disable default drawing" option completely eliminates it, but also disables some of the drawing effects. I will add making the padding completely configurable to my todo list.

As for the status bar, do you wish for its height to be configurable? Or rather have the same height as the font you have selected (The latter will only make sense if/when the font is applied to the whole status bar).


It doesnt flicker much though? How do you want me to do this anyway? There's WS_EX_COMPOSITED, thats xp and newer only though. I can't really see any other decent way to do it. Maybe I could concoct something by subclassing it and handling its WM_PAINT, using the WM_PRINTCLIENT message somewhere. If that would even work though, its probably a bad idea..

Are you seeing flickering only in the left part of the status bar? I could check whether you have a TAB char in your formatting string before deciding to redraw that part, which would reduce flickering in the case you didnt.

It turns out I was able to reduce the height quite a bit, just by croping the image. After a closer look, I discovered that it had transparent areas both above and below the actual buttons. It still looks like I could shave off about six pixles of the menu height, so I could still make use of the requested option. But, if you think it's too much trouble for so little, don't bother.

As for the status bar, my first thought is that separate settings for font and height would be nice, but do whatever you think makes sense.

In fact, what I would like above all, is adding all of this (the whole toolbar and a status display) to a single tab using foo_uie_tabs, composing a menu/buttons/mode/status "panel", but that would require support for multiple toolbars and panels per tab. IIRC, I mentioned it in the foo_uie_tabs thread a while ago, and I've has been considering bringing it up once more. IMHO, such a feature would bring some new useful possibilities. Anyway, that's not really relevant to discuss in this thread.

Last but not least, thanks for even considering every idea I come up with

it does flicker quite a lot - it may be that i have slow cpu (atlon 1.3) or graphic card (geforce 2 gts). only the left part does that; my formatting string has progress bar in it.

as for what to do - i don't know, i have experience only with delphi, where you can set 'doublebuffered' attribute for most of controls or for panels. it helps with flicker (though not completely). afaik it makes component draw itself to bitmap first and then only show that bitmap ...

If someone someday wants to start coding a centralized config component, and would like a helping hand with architecture- and UI-drafts and docs, then contact me via PM and i will help.

- Lyx

I think adding multiple panels per tab is relatively easy. Someone just have to program a 'splitter' panel which can host 2 other panels with a splitter bar in between. There should be a horizontal and a vertical version of this bar.
with the help a a splitter panel within a splitter panel it should be easy to achieve as many panels in one tab as you like.
An advantage of such a panel in the normal sidebar would be that you can place several panels side to side and not only above each other.

I wonder why nobody has programmed such a panel yet...

How to I put panels like albumart and stuff at the top?

got it but can't adjust height

bahh

How do I add seperate tabbed things like this guys: http://home.cogeco.ca/~korsairr/f2k.png

I think I was wrong about what I said before about reducing redrawing whhen you dont use the tab char, because I cant see any code explicitly redrawing it like I thought.

I didnt think Delphi uses the common controls? Hence it is no problem for it do to what it wants. I am not really going to write a custom control for such little benefit.

The only viable solution is WS_EX_COMPOSITED, which isnt very nice from what I can see, but seems to work ok with the status bar.


You have to use the panel's minimum height setting to control the height, and the tabs are a separate component, Panel stack, theres a link to it in the first post in this thread.

eNforcer
hold down shift button(and keep pressed for the whole of this action) and right mouse click on the tab seperator bar
goto layout --> tabbed panel stack ...(which will be ticked) ...click it anyway new tab appears.... and setup as usual.
Hope this helps
Mr E
edit: Oh I presumed he had panel stack

I have it, thanks

could the option be added to have the sidebar on the right side?

edit: also, there is a bug that custom colors are not saved at all.

Wait for 0.1.3.


What do you mean? The custom colour string, or custom colours in the choose colour dialog? I know they aren't saved in the dialog, I cant repro any problems with the former.

musicmusic, could you make an option to remove the root node (All music) in foo_uie_albumlist?

also, variable horizontal padding like in uie_trackinfo would be nice!

Looks like the ColumnsUI userbase is growing everyday.. along foobar2000 itself.. I hear more and more people use it every day.

Sure is hopping around here.

Yes, should be in its next update..
Where do you want this padding?
It seemed to me that foobar userbase is growing generally, I dont recall there being so many new user posts as these days..

Excuse me, I meant being able to modify the pannel's "padding-left" and "padding-top", for example I'd have the first + (those right below My music) at about 8 pixels from the pannels left edge. I admit it wouldn't be as much useful if My music was removed though =o