wow I usually lurk but this release is AMAZING
it might take a bit till the DefaultUI is as pretty as some of the Panels/ColumnsUI stuff (which i think most are pretty gaudy, cluttered, and not very ergonomic anyways) but this release is soo elegant, fast, and intuitive!! I already like my new 0.9.5 + facets component layout better than my old buggyass Panels UI config which I've been using for about a year!

THANK YOU DEV TEAM THIS THING FUCKING ROCKS

Damn, this is so mighty!
Thumbs up for your work!

Nice changes, setting up a nice usable UI is a lot simpler now. But it still needs some polishing, especially those oversized element borders are ugly as hell, an option to turn them off (better) or make them only 1px thick would be nice. Also a setting for minimum/maximum size of UI elements/elements position locking would be useful, same as an option to disable albumart upscaling (looks ugly).

Locking the size of an element is already possible, although the option is somewhat hidden.

Activate the Layout Editing Mode (menu View, Layout), right-click on a splitter, that means on the frame between two elements, and choose between "Lock Left Pane Width" and "Lock Right Pane Width" (or top and bottom height, respectively).

Impressive work, folks, really. You've taken the one major hole I've seen in this program (a lack of an easy and effective out-of-the-box setup) and plugged it effectively, and with style.

It crashes in my Columns UI config, but that's probably due to the redundant components I've got installed. I haven't had a chance to play around with the new Default UI very much, and will probably not switch to it immediately, if at all (at least until/unless I can get the same or better functionality to the setup I have now) (so I'm still using 9.4.5 for the moment), but it's still a remarkable piece of work.

I do hope you folks won't completely throw customizability out the window; making it *unnecessary* (as it seems you have) is certainly the right way to go.

I felt satisfied very much with the changes~~~
Thank you~~~

Hi foobar 0.9.5 is really good but i have some question

Is there a mean to add a panel to see artist image ?

Is there a mean to focus the album art panel only on the current playing song and not on the selected ?

Thanks by advance for your help

the default ui is really impressive.

I appreciate all the work that the developer of ColumnsUI has put in, but realistically, the basic ColumnsUI functionality is something that always ought to have been in the default program. Not to suggest the Foobar developers are wrong for not doing this sooner, or that the ColumnsUI developer was wasting his time. The Foobar developers started with whats arguably more important, making sure it plays music efficiently. Meanwhile, the development of ColumnsUI has been an excellent stop-gap while we waited.

At any rate, 0.9.5 beta 1 is precisely what I've always wanted Foobar to be. All I need now is a UI element equivalent for the Show Lyrics Panel (the one that grabs lyrics from an on-line database).

It's been so long since changes this big made for foobar. Looks like I have to spend this weekend on foobar instead of bioshock hehe.

I've been using foobar for quite some time with ColumnsUI set up. The changes in this new beta version are a real improvements as well as a time saver. Great works dev team!

@nbv4: do you have your wine set up to function as Windows XP, since this new beta requires XP and above? run 'winecfg' if you're not sure.

yes it is. if I set it to Win2000 or something, it'll bring up a popup window saying "this only works in XP [OK]"

I would just like to say WOW, very please by the changes and additions in the new beta, seems like 9.4.5 only just went final and now we get a great new version to play with. I think one thing everyone in here is guilty of is loving new releases to find all the awesome work that Peter and Co have put into the music player... best ui designer - even my mum could make a custom design and this is the way it should be, not over the top programming language to learn and I think you for that. Out of the box Foobar is pretty much a complete package now, there are very few extra components one would need. I can start culling now to run a smaller footprint.. nice work once again

I signed up just to say that in my opinion, your customizable UI system is revolutionary: I've never seen anything this convenient and efficient before. I wish all UI-driven programs could be customized this way.

One small bug: Setting the interface transparent in the preferences dialog doesn't 'stick', ie. the window only remains transparent while the prefs dialog is open. Fresh install running on Vista with only 1 extra component, Facets.

Aside from that (and who needs transparency anyway) this release is absolutely incredible, foobar2000 now actually lives up to it's reputation as most configurable player - and the configuration can be done in a matter of seconds using only one hand (ie. the mouse).
Drag and drop support is awesome, building playlists is effortless and completely intuitive.

I love everything in the new UI EXCEPT
1. The Seekbar is kinda ugly with the white empty line inside, IMO doesn't feel native because all other windows apps have seekbars like the one in 0.9.4
2. The new icon, I think adding the gloss effect over the icon kinda ruined it...it was perfect before

Not a bug (and not new either I think). The transparency is only applied to the main window when it is not active.

Sorry if this is a stupid question .... but how can I remove a UI element in layout editing mode?
For instance, when I add a splitter I can "cut" the UI element in it but did not find any way of removing the splitter itself.

Replace the splitter itself or paste another element in its place. Right-click on the splitter's separator line to do so.

Waouh !
What a change.
Nothing during years, and now... BOOM.

It's far from Panels UI, but it's a pleasure to see developers consider the GUI at last.
Thanks.

I personally find it a bit harsh to dismiss Columns UI as a stop-gap. While it is true that Peter neglected the Default UI while he focused on the backend, there are features in Columns UI that he does not wish to include in 0.9.5 and possibly not even in later versions. Examples for this are extended formatting capabilities in the playlist view (tab and color rendering found in the status bar and in old versions) as well as configurable UI Element borders. We do hope that 0.9.5 and beyond will decrease the need and desire to switch to another user interface, but I don't think it will completely replace Columns UI.

I hope musicmusic is not too annoyed because we prepared all this in secret. It would be sad day for the community to lose a capable developer who has been creating good components for so long. So cheers to musicmusic: I hope you prove me right that Columns UI is more than a "stop-gap"! It is always good to have some competition.

There wll be now two standards for writing panel plugins: ui panels and ui elements. Will it be possible for a component to be both without having 2 versions of the DLL (which would be very messy) ?

I know you guys needed to do your work in secret but seriously I think everyone could of benefited if you guys worked with Musicmusic, I am not saying the work on default ui is making his component redundant but I think if you all worked together on one solution we would have something twice as good, so Musicmusic is just adding the finishing touches to the default rather then writing from scratch.

Either way everyone benefits with the latest version, I just hope musicmusic doesn't feel slapped in the face, the least you guys could of done is tell him early or something surely..?

I have been using 9.5 not for a long stint and not come up with any errors, so lookins pretty rock solid.

I remember of some people criticizing Panels UI for his complexity but this interface is also complicated if we want to customize...

What about having a directory in components directory called "UI Element" ? Because there will be a lot of panels in some time and it will be complicated to find which components we have.
It looks like Album Art Viewer is very limited (1 preference in advanced option ?).
"Facets" is a very nice idea, but if we don't have a well-tagged database, it's not so powerful.

For panels developers, is it simple to allow UI Element compatibility ? Or do they have a "How To" ?

In any case, congratulations for such an improvement.

For those who do not use tags, there is a Folder Structure view.

If your folders are not properly organized either, I'm afraid there is not much you can demand from a library viewer.

Since foo_uie_album_art source code is available someone will convert it to an UI element sooner or later...

My folders are well-organized, or at least I find them well-organized. With Folder Structure, you only see directories, and problem is... sometimes you have directories AND files.

The ideal is to have a well-tagged database, but I would need one year to be the case.

I just would like to express my gratitude towards the developers for such an amazing music player! And their continuous effort for making it better. Finally a real random function! Hoooraaay!

Just to make sure that there are no misconceptions. Musicmusic did certainly know how to get access to the alpha builds ever since the early 0.9 branch if he wanted to. He has access to one of the development channels if he chooses to and we certainly never actively tried to hide anything from him. We just happened to not be in contact for quite some time now.

As far as I know it was his choice to keep developing columns UI on his own. In no way I hold this against him since decisions like this are entirely up to the developers themselves. I do hold musicmusic in the dearest respect, since he has done a lot for this community and I have been an avid columns UI user myself before Peter started developing the new UI. We also by no means made the new UI to drive columns UI out, but simply started it because we felt there was the need for a new user friendly and easily configurable UI and never saw this as direct competition to columns UI.

Columns UI and the new default UI where developed independently simply because things took a turn that way and certainly not because of any hostilities, secrecies or anything the like.

I just want to make sure that this is clear before any rumors spread again that we actively try to drive away developers. It seems that some developers are a bit over sensitive to critisism (and by this I don't mean musicmusic by any means). Now if these developers decide to leave the fb2k community this certainly isn't our responsibility either and entirely their own decision.

Are there any good reason a WYSIWYG layout manager for Columns UI couldn't have been done instead, to preserve plugin compatibility ?

Is it intentional, that the media library is now case sensitive?

We don't blame developers because of Terrestrial leaving. It's just that criticisms have sometimes been a bit rude (not always from moderators besides). When you have Foosion and some users who say Panels_UI is a bad written component, it's difficult to receive. Even if it's the case, you should choose the right words or explain it in PM.

But I don't want to be involved in controversy. I prefer to enjoy this new interface.

Hello all,
I am really happy that you all like this new version. I am very sorry to break the flow of positive comments but new playlist view is inaccessible. People using screen-reading solutions are not available to access playlist content with this new beta.
I believe this can be fixed as the playlist view is perhaps not entirely completed yet. I don't want to criticize the dev team I just would like to discuss accessibility issues properly. I have started a topic here so please look into it if you are interested in accessibility for visually impayred people.

Hello, I am very happy with my current panels_ui config, but I would like to try this out. How would I do that without anything geting lost? I have an external hard drive, would it help to install it there?

It looks like it's impossible to delete a splitter without delete several (or all) UI elements.

@sylla: you won't lose anything. In preferences > Display, just select Default User Interface. And when you want to come back to Panels UI, just choose Panels_UI interface.

Cut the UI Element which you would like to keep, and paste it over the splitter.

Screenshots: 1, 2, 3, 4

Well, what would you expect to happen when you delete a container with several (more than one) elements in it?

Excellent release ! Thank you for this easy to configure layout!

One question though, how do you obtain the playlist shown in the first screenshot http://foobar2000.org/releasenotes-095/ima...nterface.th.png ? I mean, how you changed the font size of the yellow titles ? (or maybe it's set at a slightly bigger font but is not customizable ?)

Also what is the scratchbox for exactely ? Testing out some panels adjustments before cut+paste on the main window ?

Btw highlighted line in playlist has its text in white, I have not seen how to change that is the Colors and Fonts section (screenshot)

how to specify album art covers from folders in advanced option??

Read what Frank has written about it in this thread.

It's for specifying a "placeholder" image for albums without cover art.

The playlist view in the screenshot has grouping enabled. The color of group headers can be changed through the Highlight color.


Exactly.


The color of selected text is either black or white depending on the background color. It is not configurable.

How do you access the scratchbox?

Menu View, Layout, Create Scratchbox.

First kudos to all developers for their efforts!

Second: I'm not sure this is the right place to ask, but... is it possible to add an option in order to get tags from a local Freedb database (as in EAC and Plextools) ?

Thanks.

Wow. A big thank you to the foobar2000 developer team.

Feature request: when album list view is sorted by directory structure can it bemade so folders are added to the list first and files are appended to the bottom?

ntlm_auth error can be fixed by upgrading your samba (ntlm_auth is a part of samba), but unfortunately this does not help to go further with installation (installer just hangs).

Eventually I installed it on WinXP box and copied foobar2000 dir to .wine/drive_c/Program Files/ and it works quite good (though you can simply crash it by pressing unassigned shortcut )

great stuff, tnx.
a. can i get my multiline input field back thought? (window title, status bar..)
b. how do i right align data in custom column?
c. can we have replacable buttons? (load bitmap would do just fine)
d. titleformat_help.html is still missing some basic tags, like: %__replaygain_track_gain%
e. whitecrap still displaying in spectrogram when switched to quality other than low.

Very nice work!

Backwards compatibility with components seems VG; the only components I have "lost" are "panels", but that is to be expected with the new layout.

Lack of Customizable Track Info is my only major "sticking" point for completely leaving 0.9.4; but I am **sure** it is coming (wink, wink)

Does the new default layout allow for third party "panels" ---sorry, I know that term is attached to columns ui, but I hope you get the point? Need to get Lyrics and album art browsing back....

Random rocks!

Facets is very slick.

Now, to try to figure out what my autoplaylist queries were to import them into the filter...

Also, any trick to getting graphical ratings indicators into a playlist panel? None of my code works; currently stuck with 4 / 5 etc. EDIT works (no color choices available ATM, as far as I can tell)

Keep up the good work.

A nice step in the right direction. What I'm missing at first glance is cycling album art through various freely defined filemasks and a lyrics display element.