ET xxxx – TrackInfo. and ET xxxx - Classical TrackInfo
The Track – Album Info Page.
This is the default page, the one you see when MC starts playing a new track.
It Uses 3 Columns: -
Column 1 – The Menu Bar + CoverArt
Column 2 – The Track Info
Column 3 – The Album Info
Unlike the MC Tag Window which can show you everything that MC does, or does not, know about the Track currently being played and the Album it is from, this page presents some of that information in a more logical and readable way.
Although the number of fields/tags and the order in which they are presented does vary in the “TrackInfo” and “Classical TrackInfo” variants they use the same logic to determine if a field/tag and its content is to be displayed.
The copy of the plugin you downloaded may list fields/tags that do not exist in your database/library, or ones that you don’t use. However, since this page was designed to only show you what does exist those non-existent and unused fields/tags are not a problem because, other than fields/tags that are considered “essential”, this page only displays the Name and Content of those fields/tags that Exist and Have Content.
In this set of images the 1st image shows all the tags the “TrackInfo” Track – Album Info page has been scripted/programmed to look for whilst the 2nd shows what actually gets displayed for that track.
The 3rd and 4th images show all the tags the “Classical TrackInfo” Track – Album Info page has been scripted/programmed to look for whilst the 5th shows what actually gets displayed for that track.
https://pix01.jriver.com/gallery/F9555BD5-69F7-4CF4-AE7C-C7452A4346FA/ET_TrackInfo_Page/
The Lyrics Pages.
They Use 2 Columns: -
Column 1 – Column 1 – The Menu Bar + CoverArt + “Basic Track Info”
Column 2 – The Lyrics – in up to the number of columns specified in the chosen option, the scrollbar will only appear for tracks where the amount of lyrics to be displayed exceeds the available space.
The “Basic Track Info Tags” displayed below the Album Artwork on these pages and the Tags page, for Classical Music are: - Composer, Composition, Album, Name, Artists, Rating; and for Non-Classical Music they are: - Name, Artist, Rating, Album, Genre.
For most of us the ability to display lyrics inside MC was welcome, but almost everybody can, and often do, criticize the way they are presented.
They never use the full height of the Display Panel, instead it concentrates, usually badly, to balance the distribution of the lyrics across the page. The font-size varies from track to track and can even change from page to page in the same track and all too often the user has to change the number of lines per page to stand any chance of the page change happening at the right point in the track. I’m getting fed up of trying to work out what word or of words have been replaced by those ellipses they insist on using plus I’ve seen countless instances where there has been no discernible gap between the words in one column and those in the adjacent column. A set of problems that could have very easily been avoided.
Regardless of which of the 4 ways of displaying the lyrics you select you will always see all of the lyrics all of the time in the same consistent format and size.
But don’t be surprised, especially if you select one of the multi-column options, if the lyrics are not using all of those columns; to try and keep scrolling to a minimum my plugins concentrate on filling the columns Vertically not Horizontally.
In this set of images the 1st 4 show the lyrics, for the same track using each of the 4 options:- 1 Column with Vertical Scrollbar, 1 Column with Horizontal Scrollbar, 2 Columns with Horizontal Scrollbar, 3 Columns with Horizontal Scrollbar. whilst the 5th dhows them when MC's ArtWork + Lyrics option is used.
https://pix01.jriver.com/gallery/F9555BD5-69F7-4CF4-AE7C-C7452A4346FA/ET_Lyrics/ (https://pix01.jriver.com/gallery/F9555BD5-69F7-4CF4-AE7C-C7452A4346FA/ET_Lyrics/)
The Tags Page.
It Uses 2 Columns: -
Column 1 – Column 1 – The Menu Bar + CoverArt + “Basic Track Info”
Column 2 – The Tags in a single scrollable column.
Just like the Tag Window the primary purpose of this page is to inform the user what MC does and could know about that Track.
However, unlike the” Track – Album Info” page where only those tags/fields listed in the associated HTML file that are present in the database/library and have content are displayed this page will display the Name of every field/tag listed in the associated HTML file, plus the content of that field/tag if it exists and has content
All the Fields/tags from the General, File, Classical, Image and Advanced sections of the MC Tag Window are displayed in the order they would appear in an unmodified Tag Window.
But unlike with the MC Tag Window all the Field/Tag Names/Labels and Content are always displayed in full.
The visible/obvious differences between the Tags Window and the Tags Page are: -
For every field/tag the Field/Tag Name/Label and Content are displayed in Full on the Tag Page,
The Image Tag only reports the Location and Size in pixels of the CoverArt Image,
For some very obvious reasons the Lyrics tag doesn’t even get a mention,
The Amazon ASIN tag is also absent – at present it is “locked” and therefore can’t be used,
Unlike the Tag Window, which only reports Channels as a number, on the Tags Page for tracks with 1 to 8 channels: -
Instead of just displaying 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 – it displays; 1 (Mono), 2 (Stereo), 3(2.1), 4 (Quadrophonic), 5 (Surround), 6 (5.1 Surround), 7 (Surround) or 8 (7.1 Theatre Surround),
These Fields/Tags are displayed on the Tags Page but not in the Tag Window: - Complete Album, Date Created, Date Modified and Mix Album.
In this set of images the 1st 3 show all the tags, for the same track, the 4th and 5th show parts of the the Tag Window and Tag Page for comparison purposes.
https://pix01.jriver.com/gallery/F9555BD5-69F7-4CF4-AE7C-C7452A4346FA/ET_Tags/ (https://pix01.jriver.com/gallery/F9555BD5-69F7-4CF4-AE7C-C7452A4346FA/ET_Tags/)
ET xxxx – Ultimate I TrackInfo.
While Wer and I were designing the Classical TrackInfo Variant we had an idea/dream of one day being able to create a single plugin that could detect if either a Classical or Non-Classical track was being played and automatically switch between displaying the fields/tags in either Classical or Non-Classical Order/Style.
“Ultimate I TrackInfo” is the realisation of that idea/dream; if the genre of the track being played is “Classical” it switches itself into “Classical Display Mode”, if it isn’t it switches itself into “Non-Classical Display Mode”.
ET xxxx – Lyrics.
As anybody who has ever created/designed something using HTML and CSS knows one of the HTML files has to be named “index.html”; sometimes referred to as the default or initial page, the one the user sees every time MC starts playing a new track.
For all the other variants/versions that page is the “Track – Album Info Page”, but neither that page nor the “Tags Page” exist in the Lyrics Only variants/versions, so I had to pick one of the 4 Lyrics Layout pages to be the one to be named “index.html”.
After hours, even days, of switching between lyrics display formats while listening to my music collection it became obvious that one format tended to overflow less than the others.
So, every time MC starts a new track the lyrics will be displayed using the “2 Columns with Horizontal Scrollbar” option.