Hi,

Having had enough of itunes freezing, I found this awesome player yesterday. I love the fact that you can add whatever you want, that it takes so little space and plays straight away unlike itunes which takes ages to load.

This is what I've got sofar



so I've got:
foo_ui_columns-0.1.3-beta1v7.7z
foo_playcount.zip (not sure what it does)
foo_prettypop.dll (Pretty!)
foo_uie_albumart.dll (took me ages to find out how to get the pictures to show though.)
foo_dop.dll (works like a charm with itunes 6)

and some other things that I downloaded here and there but haven't installed because I can't remember what they do and the explanations on the components page are rather cryptic. (I got something called foo_cwb_hooks for instance)

But after hours of searching the forum there are still a few basic things that I don't understand.

All this stuff about panels? I downloaded powerpanels but am not sure what it does.

The 'top bit' How to change the look of it.

How do I get a nice volume control bar?

And above all - How do I install buttons???? I've tried every info I could find - right clicking on the buttons -> customize -> "tools" and trying to upload a fcb file - nothing. Going to preferences and trying to find a toolbar function in column UI but all I have is "reset toolbar."

And why people just post the picture of their buttons and not the download file that goes with it in the button folder?

It's probably something very simple that I missed, I'm sorry.

I also saw someone who had a great title and song display with a kind of spectrum thingy at the top of their player.

Anything that would make that toolbar nicer would be welcome. And how to install it!!!

Oh and is there a search bar so I can find songs by typing a few words as in itunes?

Thank you for taking the time to answer.

Hi, first off, there are some good resources for you to look at. I'd recommend the HA wiki to learn about the components and foobar in general. Bachi-Bouzouk also has an excellent manual which you should look at:


playcount is the official playback statistics component. It stores information like last played, first played and play count in a database (you can make it write the tags to a file if you want).



Again, check out the wiki for more detailed descriptions of the components.




i think the root of your confusion is that "panels" can be used in two contexts: it could refer to panels (like the album art thing you're using) in Column UI or it could refer to Panel UI. Panel UI is another user interface, and allows you to customize the looks a lot. But it isn't exactly noob-friendly (although importing other's settings is pretty straightforward). Most of the "beautiful" (subjective) foobar layouts you've seen are probably done in PanelUI.




What do you mean change the look? do you want to change the layout or the appearance? the layout can be changed by going to Preferences -> ColumnUI -> Layout. As far as appearance is concerned, you can change the button appearance but not anything more. PanelUI allows you to change the look to your heart's content.




that's about as nice as it gets if you use Column UI. If you use Panel, you might be able to do niftier things (i'm not sure- i don't use panelui)




The "image" buttons are for PanelUI. The FCBs are for Column UI. You're currently using ColumnUI so those images don't necessarily work.



Link? But you can use trackinfo to get a nice title/song display, and use one of the many visualization plugins to get the desired effect.




foo_uie_quickfind

Thank you very much for all this valuable info. Things are much clearer now.

I think I need panels UI, if I want a nicer appearance and a different layout.

One last question: are columns UI and panels UI compatible or do I need to remove one to use the other?

I had a look at some of the layout people use and it's amazing what you can achieve.

and now that I know that, I can just download their -how do you call it? - design?

There is one called Dark 5.1 which I'm very tempted by.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=53703

But it looks like it requires a lot of installations and tweaking so maybe I should start with something more humble.

Ah and I can't remember where I saw the nice song and title display visualization but now that I know that it's called a'visualization plugin' I'll know what to look for.

The newbie problem is that we know what we'd like but we don't know what it's called.

Foobar for dummies would be welcome.

This player is so great though!!!

Thanks again.

PS: just had a look at the guide and it's just the thing I was looking for. simple and step by step!