Archive for February, 2007
February 26th, 2007
I’ve been hard at work improving the reported bugs and adding new features and today I am proud to release the fourth version of this configuration. New features include a white theme, style image folders, more options. This new release uses the latest PanelsUI for the $eval function, I repeat – you need the latest PanelsUI version.
The most reported bug with the last two versions were image loading problems – please, the first thing you should do when loading this configuration is double-click the titlebar, go to settings and update the pvar “dir” to the correct folder, without any trailing slashes (‘/’).
Version 0.4:
- Updated all maths from $sub, $add etc. to the new PanelsUI $eval function
- Bug fixes
- Made changing button text and panels easier, fixed centre-ing issues
- Added “fave track” image to track display when %RATING% exists
- Option to place artwork on right of SCPL (0 = left, 1 = right)
- Added optional spectrum analyser atop of album art on Now Playing (off by default)
- Tweaked track display text positioning to adapt to screen size – not enough space: text shifts up, if still not enough space crops line by line.
- Song Details track display added to Now Playing tab
- Added Theme Selection (0 = black, 1 = white)
- Refined background image display code, still needs some fixing
- Added white images for white theme
- Moved more options into configuration section, SCPL options mainly.
I am sure there will be bugs with this version, mainly with the white theme. Please post them in the comments. Something to note, many panels do not allow multiple instances, for example the search bar and the album list panel. For these sections you will have to manually change the colour settings, but that takes all of 2 seconds.
Screenshots after the break… Read the rest of this entry »
February 25th, 2007
I am of course referring to 3rd party component development. With Terrestrial’s recent developments the foobar aesthetic capabilities have increased dramatically and we are all seeing some great design ideas. But I want to ask you now, what do you think is the next step in 3rd party development? What should be the next step? What features do you feel foobar still sorely lacks?
I personally would love to have some sort of web interactivity – the ability to scrape or download information from the web, for instance a wiki entry for each artist I am listening to.
(Feel free to post some article requests in the comments also – this platform is open for anyone to make a post once they have registered here.)
February 24th, 2007
Not a lot of people seemed to have noticed this so I will bring it to your attention here. As of PanelsUI 0.6.1 beta (Feb 16th), Terrestrial has included a maths evaluation function, $eval.
Valid operators are + – / * @(modulus) {} (instead of parenthesis)
Here are some simple examples:
$eval(1+2*3), outputs 7 – multiplication performed first.
$eval({1+2}/3), outputs 1 – example of parenthesis
For a progress bar example of width 100:
$eval({%playback_time_seconds%*100}/%length_seconds%)
February 22nd, 2007
An update to the code, the changes include:
- Added global settings variables on PANELSUI code section to make setting up easier (image sources, images directory, colours, fonts, etc.)
- Added a Full screen mode (make sure to set your resolution)
- Added option to scale album art with window on Now Playing mode
- Added Playlist Dropdown menu to the bottom menu (though it is buggy… PanelsUI or component bug)
- Added rudimentary buttons for those that use them (I personally don’t)
- A refined “more” configuration track display panel.
I have also included the artist download executables in this package, they’re only small.
This new version requires you to have the Playlist Dropdown menu component.
February 21st, 2007
Cover Art downloaders that utilise Amazon or another large online shop’s database of images are fairly well know and there’s a number of them to choose from. Artist images however are not so easy to come by. With Hydrogen Audio member Chronial’s help I set about creating a web based service that anyone can use as simply as possible to grab any artist’s picture and place it anywhere… whether it be through batch file downloading, foobar or elsewhere on the web.
The result is the aptly titled “Artist Images” site, located at http://artists.trivialbeing.org.
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=ARTIST NAME
This page displays the artists thumbnail image and some information on how to use it, check out http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie for instance. Maybe you want a bigger image, thumbnails too small? Simply append the URL with &imgs=large, for example http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie&imgs=large.
This is all well and good for browsing but what’s the URL for including artist images either in a URLdownloader script or to include on forums etc.?
For a thumbnail, http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/blondie.jpg
For a full size image, http://artists.trivialbeing.org/bigpic/blondie.jpg
This URL will always return an image, if the file is not in the cache it will locate it, download it and still show you. Only a few results will return a “no artist” image result.
Now, the exciting bit. How do you integrate this into Foobar2000? Up until now I have been recommending URL2File, a command line downloading application that you need to first install and then script. There is now a better more succinct way using AutoHotKey. You can install this and run a .ahk if you want, or you can download a standalone compiled executable (i.e. I have done the work for you).
Download Large Artist Images .exe
Download Thumbnail Images .exe
The AHK code contained within is simply:
#NoTrayIcon
SetWorkingDir, %A_ScriptDir%
UrlDownloadToFile, http://artists.trivialbeing.org/bigpic/%1%.jpg, %1%.jpg
exit
Place these in any directory you want and pass the artist name as an input parameter to them. The file will be downloaded as a .jpg file to the folder that the executable is in.
e.g. running C:\artistimagethumb.exe “blondie” via the command line will download blondie.jpg and save it in the root C:\ directory.
To integrate this into foobar you will need Foo_Run. Under the Run Services option add a new service, call it what you like, make sure the path to the executable is correct. Now you need to add the parameter, e.g.:
“C:\artistimagebig.exe” $replace($replace(%artist%, ,+),&,and)
This passes the selected artist to the executable to be downloaded. If “system of a down” is selected it will be changed to “system+of+a+down”, all & characters will be replaced with “and”. Please note: \ / : * ? ” < > | are all characters that cannot be used in file naming, as a result any artists containing these characters will be upset to find out they won’t be getting a profile pic.
Now assign this to a keyboard shortcut and you’re there.