Audiosoft,



Finally you would have lost!!!

Audiosoft,

Do you know they try to reintroduce some bears in France?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4931838.stm

But maybe it's a bit out of the topic..

Otherwise, have you worked a bit on the pop-up feature?
Me YES!!

I think the pop-up could work like this "other" one:

When eJukebox is not in focus, 8 seconds before the end of the now playing song, a first pop up fade in (including all the song informations)...

...Then as the next song begins, the first pop up is replaced by a second one (without any fade out/in effect) and displays the new song informations during 8 seconds again, before it fade out:

Made some major progress on the popup!

I decided to go in another direction and give it some functionality so it is more than just a regular popup. The << || >> buttons will appear when you put your mouse over the popup. It uses PNG images for the border and stars for a really nice alpha blended transparent effect. You can even click thru the alpha blended border and select the window text underneath. Drag the popup by dragging the cover image. Below is screenshot of how it looks on my screen right now. It only pops up (actually slides out from the right side of the screen right now) if eJukebox is minimized or does not have focus and the song changes....or whenever you mouseover the EJ tray icon. Let me know what you think.

Here is the PNG image that makes up the border (which actually goes ontop of the cover image). It will be pretty easy to make some really great looking skins for the popup by changing the PNG border image and stars. Plus you will be able to change the font, size, color, shadow width and reposition the stars, cover, and text so you can make it look totally different if you want.

What do you think? Should popup skins be separate zip files or be incorporated inside full skins?

Audiosoft, I think you have made some excellent work! I like a lot the alpha blended border. It seems it is inspired from C.... t. soft... ? I'm right?

Concerning if it should be incorporated in full skins or separate: no matter for me, as long as it is skinable..
Will it be possible to change the image size? I mean the border would be zoomed with the cover image.

I'm longing to test it!

I will try to get something up for you to play with soon. I am working on setting up how the postioning will be skinned. I want to make it so you can totally change the shape and resize the cover but it is going to take some work. The good news is all the coding of how it loads data and slides out is done.

OK for the visual possibilities.. I know that, on texts, it's just a matter of css filters!
I think it's a very good idea you added play controls, that will be very handy. Maybe could you add a volume bar as well?

Otherwise you can take your time to polish up the pop up features.. I think that's worth it!

Thanks.

Actually the popup text will not use CSS since the text is drawn different using alpha blending. You will be able to set the font, size and color and probally shadow depth.

The play controls are nice to quickly pause or go to the next song. I forgot to mention you can use the mouse scroll wheel for the volume.

It works really nice right now. I am thinking about maybe putting this up and then adding the possibility of skinning the things other than the PNGs. It is going to take allot of work if it allows the positioning of the different elements.

Ah.. that's true, I've already experimented that: transparent PNG images don't like css filters! Or else it would need the text zones be separeted from the image zone..

OK for the volume controlled using the mouse scroll wheel. Perfect!

I'm ready to test any version, even if it is not fully skinnable, and report my feeling to improve the pop up, if need be!

Thanks.

OK. Here ya go

Replace the ejukebox.exe over the old one and download and extract the zip in the next post.

Note: The ejukebox.exe download has been updated. You can grab the new one a few posts down.

The files in this zip should be extracted so they are in "Crogram FileseJukeboximagesalbumpop".

You can then edit the popcase.png to try some different looks.
Let me know what you think and please post any popcase.png's you come up with.

You can Minimize eJukebox and then mouse over the EJ tray icon to force it to reload the png graphics and popout.

Wow! Thanks a lot Audiosoft!

It works already very good indeed! Nice work on the play buttons: they pop up too, inside the pop up!!
I just needed to check the EJ tray option to admire it a bit more during the song play.. Would it be possible to have a option to pin the pop up on top of others non-eJ windows, at least temporarily?

Also, there a small malfunction: if eJ is not reduced but it is just behind another active window: when the song changes, the pop up appears normally, but eJukebox comes back on top too.. Logically it should not, since at this moment you was working on another program.

And if I manage to make a PNG border, I will post it..

Glad you like it. I realise it needs a way to pin it on screen.

Also, the popup does not steal focus from the window you are working in when it pops in and out. It only steals focus if you mouse down on the popup. I realize eJukebox comes to the top when eJukebox is not minimized and you click on the popup...For some reason the windows OS makes it do this...I spent over 4 hours trying to stop it from doing this the other night and gave up cause I needed some sleep. Hopefully there is actually a way to stop it from doing this. If not... atleast you can change the song using the popup when eJukebox is minimized without it showing the eJukebox window. It is a good idea to minimize eJukebox when using other programs anyways since you can mouseover the EJ tray icon to show the popup.

Wow, thats terrific Audiosoft! Is there a way to put an option in to specify a custom time interval for the popup, or a way to show it constantly when eJukebox is minimized? That would be awsome. I'll see if I can find some time to come up with more frames.

I have come across one problem , not just limited to this feature, but others also. I run a dual monitor setup and eJukebox wrongly assumes I am always displaying it on the primary monitor. For example, when eJukebox runs on the secondary monitor and I click the tools button, the options box appears on the opposite (primary) screen and not the secondary. It just floats out in the middle of no where on the other screen. With the popup, instead of sliding in from the right edge of the secondary monitor, it first appears on the far left of the secondary monitor and slides left onto the primary monitor. When eJukebox Opens its default position is half on one screen half on the other which is the most annoying thing about it. It looks kind of funny when these things happen.

Diagram of my setup:

Primary monitor - Break in screens - Secondary Monitor


Also thanks for the sticky on that remote profile I setup. It works really well aside from those two buttons that don't currently have the hotkeys. I posted it up on the forums for that remote to so hopefully more people will learn of eJukebox.

Pirk have you had time to look at the new home page lately?

rllercstr7

Here's my stab at the new frame. This one has a wooden bar on top which I wish could be higher to fill the entire background area behind the stars.

And without the bar, which seems to look better with the height restriction at the moment. What do you guys think?

An Arctic one might be in the progress too. I support the idea to make the popup totally skinnable. Would be great to be able to make it smaller, or bigger if one wants too.. But it looks good in its current shape! Good to see new functionality! Otherwise we would have nothing to complain about.

Ej 4.0 works great, and most of the bugs I've complained about are fixed, so you'd better introduce some new ones soon

Thanks a lot again for your patience and continous line of updates Audiosoft!

OK I have updated this download to Beta 4. The download has moved to the 2nd page of this topic.

There is now a right click option on the popup to Pin or AutoHide. PIN will keep it onscreen and remember where you positioned it. AutoHide will use the default pop in and out behavior.

There is also now options for: "Show on eJukebox Minimize" and "Hide on eJukebox Restore".

I had to change the mouseover EJ tray icon behavior because it was causing problems. You can now right click that icon to force it to popout.

The skinning is currently setup to use the files in /images/skinname/albumpop/ if they exist otherwise it will use the files in /images/albumpop/. That way you can include the albumpop folder in your skinname.zip if you want.

Hi Audiosoft,
The pin feature works for me, but this update did not fix any of the multi-monitor issues. Thanks!

Thanks for the quick update Audiosoft.

Here is my popup skin: I've frosted the one of Audiosoft!


rllercstr7,
Your skin looks very good!
Homepage.. I've worked a bit more on my skin, the new homepage is in abeyance.

The same with a reflection effect:

Nice work Pirk!

Thanks Audiosoft.

My popup in action..

eJukebox is Vista ready..

I think I have found a small bug with this feature Audiosoft. When eJukebox is maximized on the screen and you open another application on top of it eJukebox steals the focus (the whole eJukebox window appears on top of the other application) whenever the popup appears. It is great to have the popup showing even when eJukebox is just hidden behind other applications, but it doesn't seem like it should steal the focus.

I wait for your replies... Audiosoft, in particular!

ha! looks like i forgot to make the play/pause button state link to the actual play state. i will see if I can get that working correctly. Also I will keep trying to stop it from stealing focus...but if I ultimately can't maybe I should make it only popup when eJukebox is minimized.

Is that a screenshot of your eJukebox skin i see? looks nice

I don't know if this helps at all Audiosoft, but If I have for instance IE open on my primary monitor and ejukebox on my secondary, eJukebox will not steal the focus from internet explorer (I can type a sentence as it changes songs and nothing happens to interrupt it), because it is being displayed on the secondary monitor. (An application on one monitor can't steal the focus from an application currently in focus on another) If you could trick windows into thinking eJukebox was really being displayed on an imaginary monitor when it was in the background then it wouldn't behave as it does currently. I just thought that information might be valuable to your dificulties.

Bravo Audiosoft! Thanks if you can fix that.

I hope you will solve the focus theft bug, because that would be a shame if the popup doesn't pop up when eJ is not focused.

Yes, it's a small part of my skin..

And the time is way overdue for a release of your skin Pirk. It is able to move and talk on its own now, let go

Fishy, I plan to drop my baby over the world only at his voting age!

Here is v4.1 Beta 4.

Make sure to grab the albumpop.zip on the first page of this topic if you have not done so yet and want to try this beta.

Beta 4 Updates:

-Popup no longer steals focus when eJukebox not minimized
-Popup no longer brings eJukebox window to the top when eJukebox not minimized
-Text and Stars no longer flicker when updated
-Play/Pause button on popup now shows the correct state

The only time it will bring eJukebox to the top is when eJukebox is not minimized and you access the popup's right click menu.

Great Audiosoft! It works like a charm now. I appologize for posting about that bug when it had already been reported. I totally missed the blurb in the bottom of Pirk's post about it.

Thanks Audiosoft! All works good now.

rllercstr7, don't worry about it. I think a bug reported twice has more chance to be fixed! Especially as my English leaves a lot to be desired... So I'm relieved when someone else than me report bugs!

I found one more issue I don't think anyone has mentioned with the pop-up. If eJukebox is running and the screen saver comes on, the pop-up shows over the screen saver as songs change which is really nice. However only the frame appears and there is no album cover in it. Its like it is being hidden by the screensaver. The song name aslo has a tendency to run off the edge of the screen if it is to long.

Not much I can do about long titles other than allow the font to be made smaller. I could also make there be a limit to how long the titles can be and add "..."'s but it would probally be better just to leave the full title so you can move the popup to see the rest. Also there is the possibility of making the titles right aligned with the screen when they are too long...but that would like kinda weird with the current center alignment of everything.

And why not to use a scrolling marquee like in the nowplaying panel? In case of scrolling the popup would remain displayed the supplementary time necessary to have a complete scrolling of the long title or artist name.

Yeah I will look into scrolling text. I just fear it will eat up too much cpu since it is drawn with alpha blending.

Just an idea, but what if the text on the pop-up only scrolled when the cursor rolls over it. This way you can see more of the title if you wish to, but won't miss anything at the begining of the title caused by an automatic scroll.

Just a uick question on the popcase. I have been playing about with this and have created my first popcase based on my Favourite Football team (motherwell FC). I don't know if i have created the png properly as I can;t get e-jukebox to load it! I have read through this thread and it says to force the popup to load then click the icon in the system tray, but I don't have an ejukebox systray icon!!! I have tried re-loading the ejremix skin and tried closing, re-opening ejukebox, but I always get the original popcase. I am saving it in this location -

Crogram FileseJukeboximagesalbumpoppopcase.png

is that correct?

Thanks

Crogram FileseJukeboximagesSKIN-NAMEalbumpoppopcase.png

Make sure the png has transparency in the middle otherwise it will cover up the album cover.

Tools->Options->Display tab->check Minimize to Tray then you can right click the EJ icon to show the popup.

Ah! got it now sorted the transparency and changed the look a little bit. At least I know how to do this now!! Thanks Audiosoft, your support is fantastic!