Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[marko]

Evening all

Well, that was a pleasant surprise. It's been a while since we got new toys to play with.

I won't have time for a deep dig into it until this weekend, maybe next...

First observations...

The keyboard combo should really be global so that the thing can be popped without having to maximise MC, otherwise, what's the point?
Maybe an "Always on top" setting is needed? Currently, it appears that any interaction with either MC or the popup causes the popup to close.

I had a quick once over of the xml file for the 'Control' skin
Seems straight forward enough. I see it takes the control buttons from the skin itself. This needs attention. Try it with the "Z" skin, for example.

One of the (many) beauties of the original was, that you could create a background image of any shape or size, with or without transparent regions, and then place text and image items upon that image. Is it, or will it be, possible to create a skin in a similar fashion? One that references images held in the skin folder? No pressure, but, assuming the answer here is "Yes", can we also get to specify "Mouse Over" images too?

Tooltips?

(We'll push for FTP later )

Nice work Craig, hope you're happy too

 

[Awesome Donkey]

Having a global hotkey may be hard, most of them on Windows at least are claimed in some way. Would have to do a search and see if Ctrl + I is taken by anything else. It may have to be a three-key global hotkey if that's the case.

And my general feedback about the new, integrated Now Playing support...

I wonder if it'd be possible to get transparency working, inherited from skin assets that use it? Might look really good, IMO.

Would it be possible to get a setting to disable display of ratings? I don't use them at all so they're just kinda wasted space there. Having some sort of scrolling of long titles would be kinda neat too.

Nice work Craig! I never used the original Now Playing plugin (I actually didn't know about it until after I migrated to x64 MC and couldn't try it) but I can see why it'd be important to so many.

[EnglishTiger]

I've found a few Snags

1 - The Size of the Control Skin is too narrow to accommodate this line -
<ContentItem Type="text" Name="Details" X="100" Y="61" Width="195" Height="15" Text="[pn_position] of [pn_count] - [Duration] - [File Type] - [Bit Depth]//[Sample Rate]" />

2  - For any Standard View Skin that does not have Perfectly Square Control Button Images (the majority) the buttons end up being distorted on the form - unfortunately unless there is a way for the PN PopUp to resize the control buttons based on the size of the images it's getting from the Std. View Skin I doubt f anything can be done about it.

3 - The Basic and Control skins are both using MJPS version="1.0" whilst every Standard View Skin I've encountered uses MJMS version="3.0"

4 - Unlike the Player Bar the PN PopUp only displays the "Play" button for a track that is currently playing.

5- Although it's nice that the PN PopUp puts in an appearance when the MC Window is not Visible it can cause problems. It popped up while I was typing this posting and anything I typed while it was visible got redirected to MC.

6 - I got this to happen a couple of times - Switching from the Basic to Control Skin and then pressing the "Show Button" caused MC to Crash. N.B the Window that displays the current skin needs to be a bit wider as the left end of 1st letter of the "current" skin is being cut off.

[TheShoe]

Is there another place the "popup settings" can be accessed?  When I clicked on "Setting", it showed a dialog that was cut-off, so I could not see/configure any settings.

[cncb]

Yes, it can be accessed from the Options as stated above.  The dialog should be centered on the screen.  At the very least you should be able to move it into view.  Do you have some OS scaling going on?

[marko]

Now, we have two threads on this subject and I'm not sure what should go where

Anyhoo...
The attached archive contains pictures of 30-odd skins I created for the old plugin. The slim ones were great coz you could just specify a ridiculously long 'show' time, and you had everything you needed right there across the top of the screen while you worked and listened.

Everything is functional. Being able to rate the previous track was extremely useful to me in the past. Each object was able to have its own customised tooltip derived from either plain given text (why would you?) or, from any combination of existing MC library fields. The bottom line of text in my signature image here is derived from an expression based field I called [info].

As this gathers momentum, I'm hoping to be able to recreate some of these to work with this new built in feature

-marko

[TheShoe]

Thanks.  Didn't read closely enough where it's located

No, I am not doing any OS scaling.  However a reboot is likely in order as randomly I have had trouble with Windows and applications suddenly having their font size impacted.  This usually occurs after remote desktop sessions into the box.

[cncb]

Sorry, I didn't see this thread until now.

Background transparency is on the To Do list.

You can use your own images in the skin directory with Source="./image.png".  Multiple images can be separated by ||, e.g. "/normal.png||./hover.png||./pressed.png". Documenting this is on the To Do list as well.

[cncb]

Expressions for Tooltips are possible.  See the Next button tooltip in the Control, for example.

[marko]

Brilliant info. Really looking forward to getting into this. I seem to have less time now than I had back then. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

[cncb]

The Control skin was a little difficult to create using the Standard skin items.  I tried to make it look decent with most of the default standard skins but it will probably still have to be customized for some.

[bytestar]

A really good idea, but could you make the popup a bit bigger or even customisable in size?

[thecrow]

Hi, I am using a 15" laptop screen, with a resolution of 3456x2160 and an OS scale of 200%.
I have MC set to a view size of 110% and everything normally looks good and is readable.
Unfortunately, the PN popup doesn't appear to be using the OS scale of 200% and so is too tiny to read.
Screenshot attached.

[cncb]

I was considering adding a separate scale setting just for the popup, but I could just use the MC scale if you think that is more appropriate.

[thecrow]

The way I have my laptop setup, it is the OS scaling (200%) that is important to me, not MCs scaling (110%).
I recognise that different people will have different setups and different needs, so a separate scale factor would better cover all bases.

[marko]

I think I'll have to wait for documentation. I had a go at porting the Logo skin this evening, and it's just not happening for me

Getting somewhere now... Exciting, Logo skin is coming on, looking good and, working, yay

Feedback
The popup has to be independent of the main MC window. Is that going to be possible?

It needs to be "Always On Top" of all other windows, and display interactively whilst the main MC window is minimised. Possible?

Also, regarding "Moving" the popup...
OK, so you right click, and choose "Move", and you can drag it to where you want it... but when you let go, it doesn't revert to the popup display. You have to click inside MC to make the popup close, then activate it again. This feels 'clunky'? The old plugin handled this by allowing a 'left-click and hold' on any inactive background area, then drag/drop the thing wherever you want it, and there it stayed.

Craig, you OK with me firing feedback like this? I don't mean it to sound ungrateful or forceful. I just type it as I come across it

[marko]

To give you an idea of where I'm coming from...

The attached screenshot shows the previous post, covered by the Logo skin running on the old plugin...

As I read it, the 'popup gets in the way, so, I just click on the little tab on the south-east corner and drag it out of the way... see what I'm getting at?

[leezer3]

It needs to be "Always On Top" of all other windows, and display interactively whilst the main MC window is minimised. Possible?

Optional please....

[mattkhan]

These seems like an audio only feature to me so having it popup for video changes or IPC as the default behaviour seems suboptimal.

[cncb]

It needs to be "Always On Top" of all other windows, and display interactively whilst the main MC window is minimised. Possible?

Also, regarding "Moving" the popup...
OK, so you right click, and choose "Move", and you can drag it to where you want it... but when you let go, it doesn't revert to the popup display. You have to click inside MC to make the popup close, then activate it again. This feels 'clunky'? The old plugin handled this by allowing a 'left-click and hold' on any inactive background area, then drag/drop the thing wherever you want it, and there it stayed.

Craig, you OK with me firing feedback like this? I don't mean it to sound ungrateful of forceful. I just type it as I come across it

Yes, I have it working now to be displayed over all other windows.  I will make this an option that is on by default.  It still grabs focus when displayed so I have yet to figure that out.

I will try to improve move a little bit.  Maybe just add a "Done" button that will revert back to the normal popup display.  I see your use case, but I think most will find a good location once and keep it there (of course I could be wrong).

You feedback here is fine.  I have only cried a few times .

[cncb]

These seems like an audio only feature to me so having it popup for video changes or IPC as the default behaviour seems suboptimal.

It makes sense to be audio only.  I will make it so.

[marko]

Thanks. We call it a pop-up, but with the flexibility, it can be either a pop-up, show, and go affair, or, with an outrageously long show time, can behave like the old MC mini skins we used to have. Anyone remember those? It's always there because the show timer would reset on each track change.

[leezer3]

It makes sense to be audio only.  I will make it so.

I'm not so sure.

I currently use Rainmeter on a second monitor for (approximately) this.
Video controls on a second monitor make sense. Similarly, popping up something with description for the next queued episode might also be interesting.

Don't limit yourself

[Hendrik]

It makes sense to be audio only.  I will make it so.

I also noticed that it seems to always pop-up when starting MC with nothing playing. Not sure if intended or just something happening due to testing.

[mattkhan]

For TV episodes, I would think the use case is more to tell you what is up next, by the time it is next seems too late to me. For films and ipc I can't think of how that would ever be useful.

[dtc]

I also noticed that it seems to always pop-up when starting MC with nothing playing. Not sure if intended or just something happening due to testing.

Similarly, I closed down MC and got a pop-up saying Nothing Playing with MC gone from the screen. This only happens sometimes, not every time. I have not looked into what circumstances cause this.

[marko]

A little bit more...
That's the MC logo popup working as things are atm.

The attached image shows the the old on the left and the new on the right. The new won't be properly ready until we get transparency, so I'll go quiet-ish after this while we wait.

Observations:
The popup does not display the "Pressed" image until the mouse button is released. It needs to show that on left button down, not up.
As the mouse moves from item to item, it leaves the previous item in 'mouse-over' state so you have two buttons showing mouse over at the same time.
Tooltips: They're weird, and I've only just noticed, this is all over MC, not limited to the popup... The tooltip displays, then, flashes off, then on again a few pixels offset to the initial showing.
In the new, something has taken a bite out of the left side of the stop button that is not apparent in the old. Both are using the same image files.

All pretty good really, coming along very nicely indeed.
I've also attached the Logo popup skin if anyone wants to try it as-is atm..

-marko

[kensn]

Ok why do i not see the option for 3-Track control?

I can only chose basic and control.

Ken

[EnglishTiger]

I had a go at creating some PN Popup skins and discovered a couple of extra problems:-

The dreaded white flash, that used to happen when a TrackInfo Plugin was loaded, until Matt fixed it, is happening when the pop-up loads.

The pop-up is not adding the space behind the ; in semi-colon delimited list type fields/tags

Plus I've got a couple requests:-
Could the "Align" command/instruction used in Standard View Skins be added,
Can we please have the ability to Specify the Font Size.
If possible it would be nice to be able to add a "Tooltip" to text lines to display the full content of fields/tags that are too long to fit in the window.

The ones I've created (see attached images) are:-
ET Basic and ET Control customised for use with ET Skins
ETC Basic and ETC Control customised for use with ET Skins when playing Classical Music.
MC Logo - A skin that uses Marko's amazing variant of the MC Logo as a multi-part button

[cncb]

I also noticed that it seems to always pop-up when starting MC with nothing playing. Not sure if intended or just something happening due to testing.

It was for testing but I also was not sure if people would want to see that on startup anyways.

[cncb]

Ok why do i not see the option for 3-Track control?

The next build has that skin.  Not sure when that will be available.

[cncb]

The dreaded white flash, that used to happen when a TrackInfo Plugin was loaded, until Matt fixed it, is happening when the pop-up loads.

Plus I've got a couple requests:-
Could the "Align" command/instruction used in Standard View Skins be added,
Can we please have the ability to Specify the Font Size.
If possible it would be nice to be able to add a "Tooltip" to text lines to display the full content of fields/tags that are too long to fit in the window.

The white flash will hopefully be resolved when transparency is working.

Align and Font Size are already available (eventually will be documented).  Examples:

FontSize="13"
VAlign="top"
HAlign="center"

Tooltips for text items is available in the next build and is used for the name and artist text in the 3-Track skin.

[marko]

Evening Craig, been thinking about the mouse over detection I've experienced...

The original does not have this issue. Is that because of transparency?

When the MC popup handles transparency, will it just ignore those areas, effectively fixing the mouse-over image border detection thing?

-marko

[cncb]

Evening Craig, been thinking about the mouse over detection I've experienced...

What are you experiencing?

[marko]

Have a go with that logo skin I attached above...

Move the mouse slowly from, say, the "Prev" button to the "Stop" button... As you leave previous and enter stop, both buttons are in a "mouse over" state. My thoughts on this figured it was to do with the inevitably overlapping transparent areas of the images?

-marko

[EnglishTiger]

Have a go with that logo skin I attached above...

Move the mouse slowly from, say, the "Prev" button to the "Stop" button... As you leave previous and enter stop, both buttons are in a "mouse over" state. My thoughts on this figured it was to do with the inevitably overlapping transparent areas of the images?

-marko

I was experiencing the same thing with the one I derived from marko's logo skin. I put it down to it needing the 5th Button state that is used to define the target area within an image canvas that contains untextured (transparent) areas.

[marko]

Possibly, could be one solution, but the original plugin behaves perfectly in this regard without needing a defined target area.

[marko]

I opened a new thread to discuss only the skinning aspects of the popup...
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,139241.0.html

[Awesome Donkey]

Okay, here's my pipe dream idea... would it possible for the Playing Now notifications to use the native OS notification system instead of using MC's (with whatever skin you have it set to use)? Windows 11's notifications would work pretty well here, I think. Apps like Thunderbird do this (with options like custom notification length) so it should be possible, yes?

[cncb]

Okay, here's my pipe dream idea... would it possible for the Playing Now notifications to use the native OS notification system instead of using MC's (with whatever skin you have it set to use)? Windows 11's notifications would work pretty well here, I think. Apps like Thunderbird do this (with options like custom notification length) so it should be possible, yes?

What would the OS notifications give you that you couldn't do with a custom popup?

[Awesome Donkey]

The native look and feel. I've been on a bit of a native kick as of late as I've grown a liking towards the Mica/MicaAlt aesthetic in Windows 11. I've also been messing around with a newer Modern Cards skin with the aim being a more native look (though can't go too far due to broken glass transparency for skins in MC32/MC33).

[JimH]

... due to broken glass transparency for skins in MC32/MC33).

We'll try to fix that.  Bring it up in the build threads in a couple weeks if it isn't fixed.

[cncb]

The native look and feel.

You can customize much of the popup so I think you can get something that looks very close.

[gappie]

wow
i like this being back, and i agree that the shortcut should be global. i guess one can change that oneself.
this forum is a bit hidden. 

congrats on a new version.

 
gab

[Striker]

I was a decades paid user of the original PlayingNow plugin.

One critical feature was the ability to configure it to write out a text file (user defined format) on track change/status, AND then call a user configured program on track change/status.

I used that methodology for my Home Automation system to know of the MC state and track info for display on my HA monitors around my home.

Will that functionality be returning?

Eventually I stopped using the PlayingNow plugin to create any popup or graphics files... I only used it as describe above.

I've since given up on the old PlayingNow plugin so I could go to the 64 bit version of MediaCenter and ended up writing my own program to poll MC using MCWS for that info.  I have always an preferred event-driven solution over polling.

If that old functionality returns, that would be a great reason for me to upgrade from v32 to v33.

[mrboonmee]

I am trying to grasp the "playing now popup" I guess I'll see when I most likely upgrade.

The one thing I would like is the ability to skip a track or pause from the tray. Every other player I have used does this easily, unless I am missing something?

I use Audio Only mode.

[jkauff]

Will a future build enable the popup to use Windows display scaling settings?

[JimH]

Closing this now.

Please use this thread:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,139415.0.html