Print

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

[RhinoBanga]

I'm *very* close to getting a test version out for you guys to play around with. There will be loads of things missing (e.g. the db creation wizard) and a few graphical issues but you will be able to see your artwork and play albums.

I've just finished implementing tooltips and boy it looks cool even if I do say so myself:




Tooltips work in the treeviews and listview so you can at any point see the artwork and tracks for an album.

Things to note:

1) There will be 4 treeviews ... the entire library ... albums marked as new ... albums marked as favourites and completed albums only. In each treeview an album is placed in the global album list, the album/artist list and the genre list.

2) AV currently internally creates 3 images per album cover ... a 16x16 image for the Album Details listview report mode, a 32x32 image for the small icon and list mode and the full blown image for the icon mode. I think I am only going to allow the choice of 4 sizes for the full blown image (small - 75x75/medium - 100x100/large - 125x125/extra large - 125x125) as I doubt anyone used anything bigger ... but I may be wrong.

3) I'm dumping the report screen that was in the old version. I am just providing a listview save facility so you can export all the data I have and play around with it as you will.

4) I am not going to implement internal images ... I can't be bothered with the nightmare they represent. Instead I will port over my image extraction facility from the previous version of AV.

5) I am allowing you to select your own "missing" artwork image if you don't like the MJ one.


Finally I am in two minds as to if I should embed the artwork into my own database. The benefits of embedding it is that it saves around 100 milliseconds on my machine when filling/painting the listview and that for people who archive to CDROM everything is self contained. The downside is that the database will be megabytes in size. What I may do is disable it and if anyone complains that displaying artwork is slow then I'll re-enable it.


I'm off now ... been programming since 5am (it's 1pm now) and it's sunny outside ... I need a beer


Listening To .... ohh wait a minute the album has finished.




P.S.  I hate rebars.

[Dragyn]

Looks really good.

Not trying to change the subject but where can I get your extension thingy for explorer? I downloaded it but I reformatted since then and can't find it again. I'm really unorganized around here.

[cdrmaker]

This Should be awsom!!
I have a question. I have most of my album covers saved in MP3 files, Will AV be able to see & display them?
Let me know.
Joe

[RhinoBanga]

Dragyn:

Check out www.jda-ltd.com


cdrmaker:

I've decided to put it in ... but it will only look at the first album's track for the artwork.



I'm in the process of writing the wizard so when that's done I will release the test version which should be tomorrow.

[cdrmaker]

Thanks, I Look Forward to seeing and playing with tne new and improved AV.

Thanks again
Joe

[nila]

Hey dude,
sorry I didn't reply to the e-mail but I'm currently on a job and so dont have my normal access to the internet.
It works great though and I cant wait for your test version to be released.

keep up the great work
cya

Nila

[nila]

Hey Rhino
Are you gonna implement your own 'Album Rating' so we can rate albums?
It'd be a nice feature.

Keep me posted with the updates to test, I'll try my best to check them and give you feedback but just recently it's been a bit flaky with my access to the net.
Love the plug-in though.

cya

Nila

[RhinoBanga]

Nila,

I'll put support for it in the database now but there won't be a UI hook just yet as I am trying to get a version to test out today.

Good news is though that I have the DB creation wizard, user definable artwork search directories and *internal* image support up and running now.

Not too long to go.

[Frank]

I love the idea of scrapping the internal images, and everything about the new version sounds awesome.  I also love the fact that you are making everyone wait in anticipation for the new version.  Is the paypal account for donations still up?

[RhinoBanga]

Hi Frank,

Well I'm eating my own words as I have put internal images back in ... but they are a last resort as AV only looks at the first album's track to get the image if it cannot find an external image.

I nearly got the test version out the door last night but I found a problem on W2K so I am fixing that this morning.   I am hoping it will be out today.

Also I forgot about the paypal account ... I'll get that sorted out soon.

[nila]

Hey Rhino,
Any rough time as to when your hoping it'll be out by? I wanna know when to check back here to download the version.

I cant wait. Once you have the shell done you can then start working on features that will be accessible through right click etc.
It's gonna completely overhall MJ in an amazing way. I probably wont go back to the Media Library type View for a while.

Keep it up dude.
Good luck (and feel free to just release it when it works on XP and dont worry about those antique 2k users (just joking)!)

[RhinoBanga]

Nila,

It will be later tonight now as I have to go out today and I haven't had time to fix the bug.   The fact that I have had to go back to VC6 hasn't helped either ... that wasted 2.5hrs of my time this morning

Here's part of the msg I composed last night just before I found the bugs:


This version is almost-but-not-quite alpha and has the following issues:

1)  Cannot mark an album as a favourite/new
2)  Cannot rank an album
3)  Horizontal splitter does not always align properly
4)  Cannot exclude albums
5)  Graphics glitches when MJ skinning is enabled
6)  No detailed track information shown in the bottom right of the screen
7)  Sometimes the ballon tips truncate the text
 Sometimes when you exit MJ crashes ... I think this is an MJ issue as the stack trace does not show any AV2 code at all ... but I have to confirm this with J River.
9)  The README.TXT file is out of date


The first thing you'll want to to is create an AV2 database ... do this by clickin on the 2nd toolbar icon.   Then follow the on-screen instructions.


To play an album you have to double-click on it in the listview where the images are shown.   Note that if you have MJ skinning enabled your screen will probably go white ... just minimize MJ and maximize it.   I believe this to be one of the MJ skinning issues I mentioned earlier.

Also note that by default I move the word "The" to the end of an artist, so "The Beatles" becomes "Beatles, The".   I'll make this an option later.


Things I am planning for later versions:

1)  Fix the issues above
2)  Add right-mouse menu items for listview/treeviews
3)  Add overview screen
4)  Add an options screen.
5)  Add tooltips to the toolbar
6)  Sort out the rebar ... I hate rebars (



We are that close to release!

Anyway I'm off to Brighton to walk along the beach and throw the kids in the sea

[nila]

Sounds like quite a pleasant day.
Enjoy your trip down to the beach, it should be nice.

Cant wait till the whole thing is fully fixed and final or RC1, it's going to be sooooo nice