New Compact Player Layout

[psychoadept]

Since the  wavebar does not show for the streaming music.. is it possible to have the progressbar be populated when streaming?  Like right now I have an addiction  to the wavebar, so the progressbar is not visible..... but when streaming, there is no progressbar or wavebar.

+1

A general comment related to the "modern" compact player and skins: I think, given the limited amount that skins affect the compact player, that it needs to be skin independent, or somehow skinning needs to work differently with the compact player.  Certainly everything except for the border and player controls should be matched to the rest of the player, like the sidebars/pop-ups.  Maybe skinning could just be optional for the compact player.

If people really want a specific skinned look for the compact player, there's still Theater Mode.  Otherwise, I think people will be discouraged from using colorful skins that may clash with the ever-changing compact player.  I stopped using Darknight Blue in favor of a neutral-colored skin for exactly that reason (well, and the fact that with the spectrum visualizer already skin-independent, it took away the biggest attraction of Darknight Blue, the firey-looking visualizer).

[redwing]

A general comment related to the "modern" compact player and skins: I think, given the limited amount that skins affect the compact player, that it needs to be skin independent, or somehow skinning needs to work differently with the compact player.  Certainly everything except for the border and player controls should be matched to the rest of the player, like the sidebars/pop-ups.  Maybe skinning could just be optional for the compact player.

If people really want a specific skinned look for the compact player, there's still Theater Mode.  Otherwise, I think people will be discouraged from using colorful skins that may clash with the ever-changing compact player.  I stopped using Darknight Blue in favor of a neutral-colored skin for exactly that reason (well, and the fact that with the spectrum visualizer already skin-independent, it took away the biggest attraction of Darknight Blue, the firey-looking visualizer).

Sounds like I lost a big fan to new compact player You made valid points, but I think still there's a plenty of room for colorful skins to fill with new compact player layout. I tried all different kinds of skins for the compact player, and each gives a different look and feel via border color, player background color and wave bar color.

[Steven]

Hooray!  Thank you redwing, thats done the trick.  Very glad to have the problem solved but that is pretty convoluted.  Hopefully this can be made a little more straightforward at some point.

it was a bug thats now fixed

[Steven]

i have added "Player.Wavebar.Inner" to override the colour of the inner part of the wavebar where you set fg and fg2 like the "Player.Wavebar" element. Its in the next update

[jistme]

i have added "Player.Wavebar.Inner" to override the colour of the inner part of the wavebar where you set fg and fg2 like the "Player.Wavebar" element. Its in the next update

That is indeed working now in Compact Player, but it has no effect on the wavebar in the Now Playing panel in the main window.

[VX]

The only reason why I go back to Main Player view is to choose what to play.

if anyone has any further suggestions about reducing the need to go back to the main player then i will consider but as mentioned i am not planning on putting in full library navigation from the compact player as the layout can be too small

IMHO, a full library navigation (or filtered folder navigation at least) could be added to the compact player the same way as Now Playing List but with auto-hide option enabled by default.. That wouldn't clutter the GUI, yet allowing for an easier navigation.

Just enable album and tracks and auto-hide options for now playing list in compact player layout preferences and have a look how comfortable it works.
I'm sure a Library navigation implemented this way would be very comfortable too.
I guess wide-screen monitors and resolutions are more and more popular these days, so it seems worth considering.

A later thought about this:
Solving the problem as it was described above would be a good idea if modern Compact Player view is allowed in a full screen view.

If not, what about enhancing a Quick Track menu from the tray icon 
It could be more usable not only for Compact Player.
When you select Artist, Album or Genre from there, now playing list is cleared, but perhaps an option to append tracks/albums form there to the current playlist would meet most user's needs when Compact Player view is used 

[Steven]

this should speed up reloading an artist picture on resizing, tweaked the colour picker so it should be more consistent with picture resizing (and faster) and a couple of fixes:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip

i do plan to look at creating a progressive wavebar for web-files, although i am not sure what could be done for radio streams that dont provide any notifications. I might look at an option for having no window borders.
after that i think that will be it with this new player for a while

[Bee-liever]

tweaked the colour picker so it should be more consistent with picture resizing (and faster)

Thanks Steven
Seems to be working great, with much less colour changing on resizing
but the visualiser seems to have lost the bright colours again and has gone back to being predominately grey shades  

[redwing]

i have added "Player.Wavebar.Inner" to override the colour of the inner part of the wavebar where you set fg and fg2 like the "Player.Wavebar" element. Its in the next update

I noticed this element is now working and gives plenty of room for customization. Is this the only new skin element regarding new compact player, or you are planning to add or adjust some more elements for skinners?

[Bee-liever]

@ Alexis
That was quick! I was just replying to you and your post disappeared 

Would you please check your Rod Stewart view to see if still have the blue visualiser, as I no longer get the red one with Linda Ronstadt

[Steven]

but the visualiser seems to have lost the bright colours again and has gone back to being predominately grey shades  

nothing has been changed with how it sets the visualiser colour in relation to the chosen background colour and in my tests i dont see much difference

[Bee-liever]

@ Steven
My mistake. I think it was from the previous change to the blending of the track info area and I didn't notice it. Linda's picture now doesn't extend behind the info area, so I'd say MB doesn't read the same part of the pic it did before to get the red. No problems.

@ Alexis
Thanks for checking. No need for the image as I understand why your still getting the blue and I don't get the red

[redwing]

this should speed up reloading an artist picture on resizing, tweaked the colour picker so it should be more consistent with picture resizing (and faster) and a couple of fixes:

Great improvement in resizing! No annoying spinning icon any more.

Not sure working on volume control is still in your to-do-list, but I noticed whatever actual volume level is, the volume icon looks the same even when volume level is zero. It's consistent with the current flat-layout main player, but now the bar is hidden so it can be misleading at times.

Edit: Actually the problem is deeper than that. The following pics of volume control for both modes are all wrong.



So it seems currently volume icon responds only to clicking on it for mute function, but not to any move of slide bar.

[VX]

Thank you very much for the improvements and fixes  Version 2.1.4834 works really great!

I'd like to mention that MB retrieves different Artist Pictures depending on how the same Artist (Album Artist) name was filled: 'Name_Surname' gives different results than the same 'Surname_Name' (tested with Artists' names written Cyrillic though).

How about using both variants at once  That would be useful for auto-tagging as well!

[Steven]

http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip

- reverted to the old colour picker algorithm as i dont think the new one was working as well overall
- wavebar box is displayed for web streams
- wavebar is reloaded on resize