MiniPlayer - size and layout like Windows 7 Gadget

[cncb]

I took a very rough stab at creating a skin (based on Vitreous) with a MiniPlayer that has a size and layout like that of a Windows 7 Gadget so I can place it on my desktop at the side of the screen with other gadgets. The only problem is I have very limited skills in skin creation and Photoshop. I hope someone who does could take this and do it right...



Skin download:

*Removed*

[Pman]

I took a very rough stab at creating a skin (based on Vitreous) with a MiniPlayer that has a size and layout like that of a Windows 7 Gadget so I can place it on my desktop at the side of the screen with other gadgets. The only problem is I have very limited skills in skin creation and Photoshop. I hope someone who does could take this and do it right...

How about this:



I don't know how to use Photoshop and im quite amateur at the Theme Editor but thankfully most of the above was done through the ini file. What do you think?

[cncb]

I don't know how to use Photoshop and im quite amateur at the Theme Editor but thankfully most of the above was done through the ini file. What do you think?

Nice! I like it and not just because you did a screenshot with the same song . I couldn't quite figure out the "frames" and "stretching" in the theme editor to rearrange the volume and progress backgrounds correctly - you did exactly what I wanted to do. Thanks for tackling this. Are you willing to share?

The only other things I would want is multi-line text for the track details (I suspect this might not be possible) and the remaining/total track time text somewhere as in the "Glided" MiniPlayer.

[Pman]

I don't know how to use Photoshop and im quite amateur at the Theme Editor but thankfully most of the above was done through the ini file. What do you think?

Nice! I like it and not just because you did a screenshot with the same song . I couldn't quite figure out the "frames" and "stretching" in the theme editor to rearrange the volume and progress backgrounds correctly - you did exactly what I wanted to do. Thanks for tackling this. Are you willing to share?

The only other things I would want is multi-line text for the track details (I suspect this might not be possible) and the remaining/total track time text somewhere as in the "Glided" MiniPlayer.

Haha, just another Porcupine Tree fan like yourself.

You didn't actually need the theme editor for anything other than adding the FloatPlayer background image which you did. The theme editor is mainly just adding the required buttons/seekbars. For the sizing/shaping/positioning you use mainly the ini file, but it's very much trial and error to get it perfect and to get the pixels correct can take some time.

That's no probs...Yes I am willing to share, but Im not sure if im allowed to post it up here on the forum. I've asked the skin's creator, nohitter151, for his permission to do that. I've PMed you the link so you can use it straight away.

I was thinking the same with multi-line text however there's no more space (believe me i tried many combinations of the button layouts and still couldn't find a nice looking way of adding multi-line text). The only other option is to increase the size of the player but then it's going to look less like a W7 Gadget.

The remaining/total track time is fully possible. I wanted to include this in the ini file, however MM4 has a bug which doesn't show the remaining time. What you would see is " <empty space>/total track" which is completely useless. I heard that the devs know about this major bug so they should be fixing this for MM4.0.1 (hope one of you devs are reading this!!!)

Hope you enjoy!

[cncb]

Thanks, Pman. This is great.

Multi-line text: If you resize the text area will it actually wrap? If so, maybe the player could be changed to allow resizing vertically to allow the text area to resize and be multi-line if the user has room for it? Most of the MiniPlayer skins seem to allow horizontal resizing so it seems like this might be possible.

Track Time: This seems to work for the Glided skin. Are they doing something special? I think the time text might look good placed inside the time progress bar?

[Pman]

Thanks, Pman. This is great.

Multi-line text: If you resize the text area will it actually wrap? If so, maybe the player could be changed to allow resizing vertically to allow the text area to resize and be multi-line if the user has room for it? Most of the MiniPlayer skins seem to allow horizontal resizing so it seems like this might be possible.

Track Time: This seems to work for the Glided skin. Are they doing something special? I think the time text might look good placed inside the time progress bar?

With multi-line text, unfortunately it will only increase horizontally as setting the text in the ini file is set to a specific height/width, but that idea of wrapping it to another line would be an awesome thing to have.

Yes track time on the Glided skin works perfectly fine because it's in a seperate text block and not part of anything else. The bug relates to when the track time is embedded in the seekbar which is unfortunate since it is exactly what both of us were thinking. In fact if you look at the normal Viterous skin, on the seek bar for the miniplayer there's no text embedded, however if you look at the settings file, nohitter actually intended to have just track time on it.

Once this bug has been resolved (anyone care to share the bug link?), i'll update the mini player for you and add the current track time/total track time to it.

[cncb]

There seems to be a bug in MediaMonkey where it always lines up the bottom left of the Now Playing list opened by the MiniPlayer with the top left of the MiniPlayer. This causes most of the Now Playing list window to be displayed off-screen when you have the MiniPlayer positioned at the far right of the screen (where I have all my gadgets). Even if I drag the Now Playing list window to a different location it keeps re-opening to this undesirable location. Is there any way to avoid this?

I was also wondering if there is any way to display the current Now Playing position and count as text within the MiniPlayer (e.g. '3 of 35'). If so, maybe the MiniPlayer height could be increased slightly and this text could be squeezed in above or below the player controls? Thanks.

[Pman]

There seems to be a bug in MediaMonkey where it always lines up the bottom left of the Now Playing list opened by the MiniPlayer with the top left of the MiniPlayer. This causes most of the Now Playing list window to be displayed off-screen when you have the MiniPlayer positioned at the far right of the screen (where I have all my gadgets). Even if I drag the Now Playing list window to a different location it keeps re-opening to this undesirable location. Is there any way to avoid this?

I was also wondering if there is any way to display the current Now Playing position and count as text within the MiniPlayer (e.g. '3 of 35'). If so, maybe the MiniPlayer height could be increased slightly and this text could be squeezed in above or below the player controls? Thanks.

Now Playing Position:

Hmm, i think i know what you mean, the NP window is right above the Miniplayer window with the left edges aligned. Looking at other MM miniplayers they do this according to how the miniplayer resizes (by the top/bottom or left/right edges). This sounds like a bug in MM which I can't really help with, sorry!

Playlist Count:

Now this I can do, i've stuck it above the Artwork in smaller text because that for me looked the best place to put it without resizing. If you want it somewhere else and/or if you want the text bigger then show me a quick screenshot and I can do that tomorrow for you.

I've PMed you the new link!

Enjoy!

[cncb]

Looks great. Thanks again.

[Pman]

Here's the official release:



This is based on cncb's request for a Windows 7 gadget for MM4.
The skin is using Vitreous default skin for MM4 and when you change to miniplayer you can get the W7 Gadget.

Thanks cncb for the good idea and subsequent touch ups and thanks nohitter151 for using your skin!

Download At:

Vitreous W7G.mmip

[rovingcowboy]

good here. on xp

but its only mm 3 skins in mm 4 i have issues with on xp cpus.

[cncb]

The MiniPlayer keeps "forgetting" its position for me. When I minimize the main window to put it into the MiniPlayer "mode" it periodically shows up at the top center of my desktop rather than the right side where I had it before. It seems to forget its position after a reboot. Anyone else see this behavior?

[cncb]

Pman,

The file no longer seems to be available for download at the link provided. I just rebuilt my PC so is there somewhere I could get it? Thanks.

[abe10@mystvpn.com]

Pman,

The file no longer seems to be available for download at the link provided. I just rebuilt my PC so is there somewhere I could get it? Thanks.

Hello
Same here facing the problem in downloading from the provided link.

[KhalifaaSheikh]

I'm using Aspire 8.007 on Windows 10 64 bit I download the Gear Gadget but just get an empty box when installing any ideas please