Font/color modifications for now playing & notifications

[choncie]

So I recently migrated from foobar2000 to musicbee - overall, I'm EXTREMELY pleased by the functionality mb is delivering, it's really quite amazing & I'm only sorry I didn't discover it sooner.

That said...    

One thing I really liked about f2k was the so-called "title formatting" syntax:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Titleformat_Reference

Not that mb necessarily needs to geek out to quite that level, but it'd be nice to be able to at least resize text, change fonts, change colors in the customizable panels (now playing, notification, etc.) and maybe be able to use a few of the logic functions as well.

Of course, if any of this capability exists already & I'm just missing it, please administer the appropriate clue-bat. BTW, am happy if these things can be added to the skin XML instead of "inline" in the customize panel dialogs, I don't really care about the how (within reason...).

Thanks for listening!  

[Steven]

see rotemKs skinning guide for modifiying skins
for customising fonts and layout see the various settings in the Layout preferences tab - now playing panel and popup notification, along with other panels can be customised

[choncie]

Hi Steven,
Thanks for the reply - understood there's some customization already possible, I am just looking for a bit more 

Example: in the now playing panel, I'd like per-line size/color control for the data, eg, make the song title 12pt bold yellow, artist & album 10pt white, genre 8 pt white, or etc etc. There does not appear to be that level of control. In fact, for the first line it seems always to be bolded as long as it's just <Title> but otherwise not (even if it's something like: <IsNull(<Title>,NO TITLE!,<Title>)>. And the font size is fixed to one size for all lines.

Another (esoteric) example: I have a custom tag "<swearing>" so I can create auto playlists that don't have excessive cursing in them when the kids are around  In f2k I had a conditional line shown in red (Swearing!!) if that tag exists - don't see a way to do that in mb (I have the line there but it's the same font & color as the rest, it doesn't jump out).

Re: the notification dialog, same kind of thing, there's some amount of customization, just looking for the next level. Eg, you can change the font & font size but not the font color. And you're limited to just one tag displayed per line and no conditional stuff (ifnulls & such). On a side note, would also be nice if this popup "auto-scaled" to the longest line, up to a max width threshold (an option available in toaster for f2k).

Here's the kind of thing I was doing in f2k for now playing info:

'[size=14]'$if(%artist%,%artist%,'<'No Artist'>')'[/size]'$crlf()
$if(%performer%,'[size=12]'%performer%'[/size]'$crlf(),)
'[size=14]'$if(%title%,"%title%",'<'No Title'>')  %length%'[/size]'$crlf()
'[size=12]'$if(%album%,%album% ,'<'No Album'>')$if(%discnumber%,',' Disc %discnumber% of %totaldiscs% ,' ')'[/size]'$crlf()
'[size=12]'$if($stricmp(%album artist%,%artist%),,%album artist%$crlf())'[/size]'
'[size=12]'$if(%genre%,%genre% )$if(%date%,'('%date%')',)'''[/size]'$if($or([%genre%][%date%]),$crlf(),)
'[size=12]'$ifequal(1,%swearing%,Swearing!$crlf(),)'''[/size]'
$if(%tracknumber%,Track $num(%tracknumber%,0)', ',)$if(%tracknumber%,$ifequal(%play_count%,0,never played,)$ifequal(%play_count%,1,played %play_count% time,)$ifgreater(%play_count%,1,played %play_count% times,),$ifequal(%play_count%,0,Never played,)$ifequal(%play_count%,1,Played %play_count% time,)$ifgreater(%play_count%,1,Played %play_count% times,)) $if(%isplaying%,'('e: %playback_time% | r: -%playback_time_remaining%')',)$crlf()
$if(%last_played%,Last played on $select($substr($date(%last_played%),6,7),Jan,Feb,Mar,Apr,May,Jun,Jul,Aug,Sep,Oct,Nov,Dec) $if($greater($substr($date(%last_played%),9,10),9),$substr($date(%last_played%),9,10),$substr($date(%last_played%),10,10))', '$substr($date(%last_played%),0,4) at $select($substr($time(%last_played%),0,2),1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12)$substr($time(%last_played%),3,5) $if($greater($substr($time(%last_played%),0,2),11),pm,am)$crlf(),)
'[size=11]'''%bitrate%Kbps %codec%, %channels%'''[/size]'

[cartman005]

Another (esoteric) example: I have a custom tag "<swearing>" so I can create auto playlists that don't have excessive cursing in them when the kids are around  In f2k I had a conditional line shown in red (Swearing!!) if that tag exists - don't see a way to do that in mb (I have the line there but it's the same font & color as the rest, it doesn't jump out).

Not sure about the rest, but for something like this, maybe you should consider using a virtual tag which you can set to a certain value whether it was explicit or clean. iTunes uses a similar tag http://help.mp3tag.de/main_tags.html#rtng.

I thought about doing the same thing myself but I don't want to take the time to go through everything right now.

[choncie]

Hi Cartman - thanks for the reply, but to clarify, I have already added a custom tag for this, which works great - it's just that if the tag is present I want a bright red text line in the now playing & notification windows that I can quickly see, versus it being the same color & size as everything else right now...

[cartman005]

I understand. I can see that being useful.