Taskbar player idea

[Benn]

Hey everyone, I am just wondering how possible it is to make this work:



Very simple, just a long, thin bar displaying the track and artist in the taskbar. Maybe with the text centered to make it look neater. There could be buttons, but personally I normally use the mouse gestures over the tray icon. Thanks for any help.

Benn.

[DreadM]

Greetings

This can be done withe a very long micro player

[Guest]

this has been done already in the form of the mini player that you can move around the screen.
the task bar player is just a simple basic tool not meant to display every thing the other players do.
but just a few of the items with controls, it will fill up the task bar if it does all the other things.
that is why in their wisdom the developers have made the mini player, it can be made to any shape
you want.

[Dreadlau]

@guest

I don't agree
Personally I think I would adopt immediately a large microplayer. With controls, seekbar, ... and other infos in the micropopup(a 3.1 feature): album art, access to playlist, ...

"Why?" ,You will ask.

Because:
1) In the taskbar: If u use "grouping of tasks" and configure it to show only the "vital tray icons", you have often plenty of unused space in the taskbar. That's especially true when u use a 16:10 or 16:9 wide screen ( which you see a lot these days ).

2) When u listen to music while making other things with your PC (for example browsing Internet), you want to use as much of the screen space as possible.
That's possible with the microplayer. With the miniplayer it's not possible cause you have to reserve space for it.


@DreadM
You're right, I could make one if i knew how to...
Someday I should learn to skin! Though right now I'm busy with studying.

[rovingcowboy]

yep i can see what you are saying guest wants it to be small for easy use.
and more likely uses the pop up for the info.

and you want to put the info in the player.
which will be good on large screens.

i am wondering though why the need for the pop up on the micro player i have not used
the pop up in so long that i don't remember if they took it out but when i go to the micro player
i got the popup before. that i think was because i close monkey out to the system tray. so that would keep it working with the popup i believe? but if they stopped that from happenin' i guess they would need a popup on the micro player.

[Benn]

Dreadlau, that's exactly why I would find it useful. I am very busy over this festive period but when I get time I will try to make one.. hopefully one of the very talented skinners out there could give me a few pointers.

[DreadM]

What you think about this?

Its simpel and got just 3 entries in the ini file ,

[Dreadlau]

Looks cool DreadM.

[Benn]

That looks great DreadM,tidy and simple. Would it be possible to post the code?

[DreadM]

Greetings

Would it be possible to post the code?

Ok here it is:BennMicroPlayer.zip

MicroPlayerH.mskn:
It based on the Eclipse Micro Player, i change the backround image to black
with Eclipse border 170,26 pix,this you can change in the theme editor, with
an image from your taskbar to match better withe it.

microPlayerH.ini:
the player is also resizable in the lengh, this you can edit in the
microPlayerH.ini the default size is 170,26 at moment it is Size=400,26.
you can also edit the textmask or FontColor from [songtitel] check wiki
Skinning Reference for Usable Masks.

enjoy

and let us see what you creat

[Benn]

Thanks DreadM, I'm working on it now. So far I've realigned the text to the right, resized the "player" and changed the font to white to match the Vista theme. (Does anyone know which font Vista uses for the taskbar?) I'm having a little trouble with the background: I've tried to replace your eclipse image with a paste of an area of my taskbar so the colour's match, but it still seems to be coming out darker than my taskbar, any ideas?

PS, this is fun

[DreadM]

Greetings

Make a screenshot from your taskbar,open a image editor like Paint.net ,select the area from taskbar you want to show(170,26), save as bmp or png.Now open theme editor select images / add image and load the image you save before.
Now open Objects / playerbackround / Frame / left......and replace the bitmaps (on right side top)and save, normal thats all.
The fonts i don't know.Nohitter use [Segoe UI] in his VitreousBlue skin

[Benn]

A new taskbar is born! Find it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ozmidlmzhhd - just add the two files to any .msz skin of your choice!

Screenshot:


It's based on the default Vista theme, with the player size restricted to 500, although that's easy to change if you have very long song titles.. (it does scroll them if it's too long).

Many thanks to DreadM for all his help

[rovingcowboy]

you seem to like making single player skins that are part of the whole skin sets.

so now that you know how its done whats wrong with making one for the members skinning project.

[Benn]

Excuse me? I've made this (my first ever "skin") because it was something I wanted, and have shared it so others could also benefit; what on earth is wrong with that?