Topic: MC Vista Sidebar Gadget v2.0 (Read 98131 times)

cncb · « **Reply #100 on:** November 25, 2008, 09:29:27 pm »

Quote from: BullishDad on November 25, 2008, 06:54:03 pm

I would like to try this, but I can't seem to install it. I've been using a Google Sidebar. Does that have to be replaced with the Vista Sidebar?

This only works with the sidebar built into Vista.

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #101 on:** November 25, 2008, 09:41:40 pm »

goto desktop make new folder, open new folder goto tools folder options, view uncheck hide extensions for known file types,hit apply ok MC.Gadget will turn into MC.Gadget.Rar then right click MC.Gadget.Rar and choose rename then just delete the .Rar.. and it will turn into MC.Gadget

also i suggest (going back to tools folder options, view uncheck hide extensions for known file types,hit apply ok) once its turned into a gadget, go back and change it to hide.. if ya want to hide your extensions.

Hope This Helps.. and like cncb said it works with vista sidebar.

BullishDad · « **Reply #102 on:** November 25, 2008, 09:56:45 pm »

Thanks cnbc and xtacbyme. I had a feeling the Vista Sidebar was required, but I wouldn't have figured out the uncheck hide file extensions part without some help.

Got it installed and played around for a minute. This looks like nice. Just what I was looking for.

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #103 on:** December 12, 2008, 10:07:11 am »

np BullishDad.

cncb.. one thing i'd like to edit if possible?

can i edit the expressions for playing now text to show my ratings? i'd like to be able to see my stars cause alot of files are already 5 star'd and being i have alarge library hard to remember if 5 star'd or not yet.. if it would be visible in playing now text i wouldnt have to click text to see if it was rated or not!

is there an expresssion i could put in to see the ratings at all times?

Ty

mesue · « **Reply #104 on:** December 12, 2008, 10:44:40 am »

You can use [rating] but it will show it as a number and not stars. My expression looks like this:

Code: [Select]

<font face="st gothic cond" size="2">If( IsEqual([Media Type],Audio), [Name] /([rating]/) by <b>[Artist]<//b> from [Album] /([Date]/), [Name])</font>

Sometimes it chops off the album name, but it's good enough for me.

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #105 on:** December 12, 2008, 10:55:11 am »

thanks fo reply mesue..

is there a way to show stars?

and if not... would i just copy and replace your string over the string that is in there already?
ty

mesue · « **Reply #106 on:** December 12, 2008, 11:08:31 am »

Don't know about showing stars. You can either replace your code with mine, or edit yours to add [rating] in there somewhere. Play around with it. I would keep a copy of what you have before replacing it, in case you don't like it.

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #107 on:** December 12, 2008, 11:11:31 am »

ok...ty

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #108 on:** December 12, 2008, 11:45:52 am »

ok i been playing with it

looks good

is there a way to add color to words? example rating and stars could be in black, red, yellow etc... text?

If( IsEqual([Media Type],Audio), [Name] /([rating]/) Stars by >[Artist]<//b> from [Album] /([Date]/), [Name])

ty

mesue · « **Reply #109 on:** December 12, 2008, 12:14:55 pm »

if you wanted the whole thing in red, you would add

color="red"

inside the tag.

If you want only parts of it in color, add and put the parts you want in color in between the ><

Color codes here: http://webdesign.about.com/od/colorcharts/l/bl_colors.htm

It's all basic HTML: http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmltags/p/bltags_font.htm

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #110 on:** December 12, 2008, 12:20:36 pm »

ty mesue yet to learrn tml.. thanks for html link as well

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #111 on:** December 12, 2008, 01:59:50 pm »

well im doing something wrong here.. i can get and keep the song name white and turn the (5) Stars gold but it turns everything after (5) Stars gold too i have tried it like this but no go..

If( IsEqual([Media Type],Audio), [Name] /([rating]/) Stars by >[Artist]<//b> from [Album] /([Date]/), [Name])

If( IsEqual([Media Type],Audio), [Name] /([rating]/) Stars by >[Artist]<//b> from [Album] /([Date]/), [Name])

mesue · « **Reply #112 on:** December 12, 2008, 02:19:46 pm »

Try this:

Code: [Select]

<font size="2">If( IsEqual([Media Type],Audio), [Name] /<font color="#ffcc33">([rating]/) Stars</font> <font  size ="2" color="white">by <b>[Artist]<//b> from [Album] /([Date]/), [Name])</font>

I think the forum was eating some of the code. Hopefully putting it in code tags will prevent that. I took out the font face attribute since you would need that specific font on your system for it to do anything, and I can tell from your screen shot that you don't have it.

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #113 on:** December 12, 2008, 02:24:29 pm »

Amazing.. ty it worked... ok time to study the diffrences here and play.. ty for your help

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #114 on:** January 02, 2009, 03:02:17 pm »

Curious if there is anyway to add keywords checking ability to the sidebar gadget?

ty

gappie · « **Reply #115 on:** January 28, 2009, 12:02:49 pm »

since i was always on xp i could not try this gadget. but i have windows 7 now on a machine, and this works great on it..
nicely done.
thanks

gab

cncb · « **Reply #116 on:** January 28, 2009, 12:11:18 pm »

Quote from: xtacbyme on January 02, 2009, 03:02:17 pm

Curious if there is anyway to add keywords checking ability to the sidebar gadget?

Sorry I missed this before. It is possible to list keywords in the tag flyout but being able to change (add/remove) them would take a bit of work (like what was done for playlists). Sorry, I wouldn't use this feature so I won't be adding it at this time.

cncb · « **Reply #117 on:** January 28, 2009, 12:14:24 pm »

Quote from: gappie on January 28, 2009, 12:02:49 pm

since i was always on xp i could not try this gadget. but i have windows 7 now on a machine, and this works great on it..
nicely done.

Thanks - I'm glad to hear that it is working in Windows 7. I read somewhere that they removed the ability to dock the sidebar on the side of the screen (with it always on top) and that the gadgets now have to float somewhere on your desktop. Is this the case (I hope not as I always want to be able to see the gadgets)?

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #118 on:** January 28, 2009, 01:16:35 pm »

ok. just thought i'd ask.. thanx for the reply.

gappie · « **Reply #119 on:** January 28, 2009, 02:34:29 pm »

Quote from: cncb on January 28, 2009, 12:14:24 pm

Thanks - I'm glad to hear that it is working in Windows 7. I read somewhere that they removed the ability to dock the sidebar on the side of the screen (with it always on top) and that the gadgets now have to float somewhere on your desktop. Is this the case (I hope not as I always want to be able to see the gadgets)?

there is indeed no side bar. you can place the gadgets where ever you want. and can set per gadget if it should be always on top. as a test i have your gadget flaoting above ie while typing this the other two are hidden. not to bad, i guess.

gab

cncb · « **Reply #120 on:** January 29, 2009, 01:41:48 pm »

Quote from: gappie on January 28, 2009, 02:34:29 pm

there is indeed no side bar. you can place the gadgets where ever you want. and can set per gadget if it should be always on top. as a test i have your gadget flaoting above ie while typing this the other two are hidden. not to bad, i guess.

Well, that is pretty disappointing to me. One of the main reasons I use the Vista Sidebar instead of the Yahoo Widgets, etc. is that the gadgets can always be visible on the side of my widescreen monitor and maximized windows are not obscured by the gadgets and vice versa. I really hope they will have an option to still use the sidebar.

ThoBar · « **Reply #121 on:** January 29, 2009, 05:49:22 pm »

Quote from: cncb on January 29, 2009, 01:41:48 pm

Well, that is pretty disappointing to me. One of the main reasons I use the Vista Sidebar instead of the Yahoo Widgets, etc. is that the gadgets can always be visible on the side of my widescreen monitor and maximized windows are not obscured by the gadgets and vice versa. I really hope they will have an option to still use the sidebar.

Windows 7 has it's peek feature which is very useful. Placing gadgets on the desktop, yoiu only need to mouseover the right hand side of the task bar for the desktop to become visible. Moving your mouse away from this hotspot returns your desktop as it was ... no clicking, nice and easy, and no loss of screen-estate for apps.

marko · « **Reply #122 on:** January 30, 2009, 01:37:12 am »

Quote from: confishy on January 29, 2009, 05:49:22 pm

Windows 7 has it's peek feature which is very useful. Placing gadgets on the desktop, yoiu only need to mouseover the right hand side of the task bar for the desktop to become visible. Moving your mouse away from this hotspot returns your desktop as it was ... no clicking, nice and easy, and no loss of screen-estate for apps.

Interesting...
Any idea if that still works if you use a desktop extended to a second monitor (TV) on the right-hand side?

lynott · « **Reply #123 on:** February 07, 2009, 06:56:56 am »

If the playlist gets too large, the playing time gets cut in half. Would be nice to have an option not to show playlistinfo (See to the right of the coverart, beneath "playing" in the attatched image)

cncb · « **Reply #124 on:** February 07, 2009, 10:51:53 am »

You can reduce the font size of this text so that it will fit. Open up the following file in Notepad (replace USER with your Windows username):

C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\MC.Gadget\en-US\css\jrmc.css

Change the 'font-size' in the #STATUS entry to something like this:

Code: [Select]

#STATUS
{
   font-size:11;
   overflow:hidden;
   text-align:center;
}

Save the file in Notepad and reboot. The text should now fit within the area.

lynott · « **Reply #125 on:** February 08, 2009, 07:55:08 am »

That worked just fine. Thanks a lot

ThoBar · « **Reply #126 on:** February 08, 2009, 10:07:30 pm »

Quote from: marko on January 30, 2009, 01:37:12 am

Interesting...
Any idea if that still works if you use a desktop extended to a second monitor (TV) on the right-hand side?

Yep, it does. (sorry for the slow reply)

gitcheye · « **Reply #127 on:** February 19, 2009, 10:53:12 am »

I can't find a place to download the vista sidebar gadget. Can someone send me an active link?

gappie · « **Reply #128 on:** February 19, 2009, 11:15:12 am »

Quote from: gitcheye on February 19, 2009, 10:53:12 am

I can't find a place to download the vista sidebar gadget. Can someone send me an active link?

its in the first post as an attachment. you must be logged in to see it, i guess.

gab

dlmax63 · « **Reply #129 on:** April 08, 2009, 05:46:34 pm »

cncb,

Thank you so much for this gadget. I've only now installed it and I think it's great.

I use the "full/hover small" display. Is there a way to change the position of the hovering 'play control bar' which appears when I roll over the gadget? I'd like to change it to display the 'play control bar' at the bottom so that it wouldn't cover up text when I hover. I also noticed that if the size in increased, hovering moves the displayed info to the top. Perhaps if the non-hovering image is at the top, I could set the size to be that of 130 + the height of the 'play control bar'. I could then create a background image which is the same color as my sidebar. It would then appear like the space the 'play control bar' occupies pops-up when I hover.

Thanks again!

cncb · « **Reply #130 on:** April 08, 2009, 08:20:23 pm »

Hi,

You can move this by editing the following CSS file (replace USERNAME with your current Windows user name):

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\MC.Gadget\en-US\css\jrmc.css

If you look at the 'div#bar' section and increase the 'top:40px' entry it will move the control bar towards the bottom. You will have to restart the sidebar application or add a new MC gadget to the sidebar to see the changes.

dlmax63 · « **Reply #131 on:** April 09, 2009, 06:58:13 pm »

thanks, cncb. I'll give it a try

Marty3d · « **Reply #132 on:** April 27, 2009, 02:11:37 am »

Just found this by accident!

My first question: The playback overlay, you use a default one, right? Seem to recognize it from the Slide show gadget. Is it possible to have one with "real" controls, like instead of the "fullscreen" icon, have a more "connectish" one, and perhaps adding volume control to it?

Anyways, thanks for a great gadget! It would be...the second one you actually have some use for

cncb · « **Reply #133 on:** April 27, 2009, 09:10:34 am »

Quote from: Marty3d on April 27, 2009, 02:11:37 am

My first question: The playback overlay, you use a default one, right? Seem to recognize it from the Slide show gadget. Is it possible to have one with "real" controls, like instead of the "fullscreen" icon, have a more "connectish" one, and perhaps adding volume control to it?

Yes, the popup controls were "borrowed" from the built-in slideshow gadget. It should be easy to change any of these icons by just replacing the appropriate image files in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\MC.Gadget\images\. Adding some new controls would take quite a bit more work. Does using the volume control in the taskbar not work for you?

Marty3d · « **Reply #134 on:** April 27, 2009, 10:22:34 am »

Sure it does

I like the ability to change MC's volume only, not system wide. But, it's only a small request, just ignore me if no-one else wants this

cncb · « **Reply #135 on:** April 28, 2009, 07:00:33 am »

Quote from: Marty3d on April 27, 2009, 10:22:34 am

I like the ability to change MC's volume only, not system wide.

This may not be what you are looking for but if you click on the volume icon in the taskbar and click on "Mixer" I think you can adjust just the volume of MC.

Marty3d · « **Reply #136 on:** April 28, 2009, 08:03:50 am »

I know, it's just laziness...one click instead of three

Skeet · « **Reply #137 on:** May 05, 2009, 12:29:03 pm »

This gadget looks great, but I can't get it to work at all. The gadget just shows "Not connected". Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

dlmax63 · « **Reply #138 on:** May 05, 2009, 07:14:58 pm »

For me, if MC is not running, I position my pointer over the gadget until the control bar appears. Then, click on the connect button which is on the right side of the bar which appears.

This will start MC and then the gadget will look like this:

You can then hit play (or whatever) and the gadget displays the coverart and info for what's playing.

Hope this helps.

Skeet · « **Reply #139 on:** May 06, 2009, 02:26:53 am »

Thanks very much, that's sorted it out. MC was running but it wasn't connecting until I hit that button.

lynott · « **Reply #140 on:** May 08, 2009, 06:12:04 am »

Hi!

What do I have to edit if I want to dsiplay currently playing track number in stead of playlist placement?

EX: Track # 03 (or 3)
in stead of
1742/11095

cncb · « **Reply #141 on:** May 08, 2009, 07:08:29 am »

Quote from: lynott on May 08, 2009, 06:12:04 am

What do I have to edit if I want to dsiplay currently playing track number in stead of playlist placement?

You can only put this somewhere in the lower Playing Now text area by placing

Code: [Select]

[Track #] in the text string somewhere.

sch phase · « **Reply #142 on:** August 29, 2009, 09:11:07 am »

Running v2.4 but when launching from the sidebar, it tries to open mc12.exe and can't find it as I have moved on to mc14.
If i manually run mc14 then the gadget works, anyone know how to tell the gadget to look for 14 and not 12 ? so i can launch from the sidebar ?

edbro · « **Reply #143 on:** August 29, 2009, 10:28:27 am »

Manually edit jrmc.js with notepad. Replace mc12.exe with mc14.exe.

cncb · « **Reply #144 on:** August 29, 2009, 10:56:11 am »

This gets the current version from the registry so you shouldn't have to edit the .js file. I am using MC14 and it launches it properly. Did you uninstall MC12 properly and then reinstall MC14?

sch phase · « **Reply #145 on:** August 30, 2009, 04:02:53 am »

Thanks Guys
If I had sat and thought about it i could have saved your time, changed mc12.exe to mc14.exe and it works just fine.
As far as I know I had unistalled mc12 correctly, but hey problem solved

newsposter · « **Reply #146 on:** September 01, 2009, 07:25:48 pm »

A couple of thoughts based on recent experience with other gadgets. I must admit that i've not (yet) tried the MC gadget so if I am way off base just tell me to sit down and shut up....

Is there a possibliity that JR could provide a genericaly named 'launchMC.exe' stub that would search for the current or most recent MC instance and run that?

Such a launcher might be able to pre-load (into system ram) as much of JR as possible without actually running the GUI. This could (potentially) make conventional startup much faster as well as making life easier for 'remote control' via gadgets, etc. Think of a middling stage between a full background library server and the full-blown GUI/Skin manager. One could say that this is step towards three-tier client/server with a standard socket/streams interface in between.

Library Server (running in background locally or remotely) - Middleware interface layer (pre-loaded into ram, running on demand only)- GUI/Skins/Gadgets (running in foreground or as a gadget or sidebar app).

Alternatively (as a simpler offering), how about a registry setting or environment variable that could provide a quick path to the .exe for startup.

Lastly: Can MC respond to the generic IWMP API commands?? If not, how about building a shim or enabling an alternate config so gadgets for other player platforms might work with MC? What about having JR adopt the old Winamp Wasabi Open Source project for media player control?

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #147 on:** November 11, 2009, 03:18:09 pm »

Hi cncb.. being windows 7 is out and this gadget has been out for awhile.. any plans for making it play video or visualizations?

Being i work from home and use gadgets would be great to be able to have a nice small playing now in this gadget and when we double clicked it, it would go full screen or when we minimized the video would play in the gadget.

TY

cncb · « **Reply #148 on:** November 11, 2009, 09:19:51 pm »

I looked into it before and didn't really find a way to embed the visualization window in the gadget.

I am also now using Windows 7 and now that there is no physical "sidebar" and the gadgets are free roaming for me it now makes more sense to use a built-in, "skinny" Mini View instead of the gadget. This would also give you the small visualization window and other things you want as well.

HTPC4ME · « **Reply #149 on:** November 12, 2009, 04:26:21 pm »

so you just minimize the display window? what about the cool features of your gadget? 5 starring and add to playlist? hovering etc.. those aren't available with jrivers display view...

Sorry for late reply.. im not getting notifies on this topic and i have it selected to get replies.. will check here periodically to get the replies.

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Author Topic: MC Vista Sidebar Gadget v2.0 (Read 98131 times)