I've made progress in my new skin project for the songlist, so now i can show a little screenshot...

Another screenshot, during an edition.

Nice work, pirk! I gotta ask you one thing, though? Have you designed the background image specifically for this screengrab, or have you actually come up with a way of making the album art turn into background graphics, like i once dreamed of?

I even made a mock-up: http://www.audiosoft.net/forums/viewthread.php?tid=161

My background image is a static image unfortunately... it don't change according to the current album. But i agree with you, that would be a dream to have a such feature!

Another general view with a compilation album, this time.

Pirk, have you experimented with the new transparency + scrollbar colours of the new eJ version yet? I (and i am sure i speak for Fishy as well) am eager to play with it, yet i'd rather mess around with the graphics at the moment, as you two seem to have a good hang of the .dis file.

Hum... no junk, not yet! Unfortunately i can only do that when i have enough free time... sometimes i must work a bit to earn a crust too!
Last week i've tried to make new header and top graphics, but nothing very nice. An attempt for a new "showarrow" too. Concerning the design, i'm not so creative than you... I like very much your own audio3on/off graphics: keep up your good work junk!! Me i just "torture" the current graphics in Photoshop... Even so Photoshop is the right way, because filters applied directly in the .dis file slow down too much the mouse reaction...

I've also tried to inlay a LARGE image into the songlist, which change according to the "now playing" song. And that work!
I just would like the songlist be automatically refreshed each time the "now playing" song change, as i request here: http://www.audiosoft.net/forums/viewthread.php?tid=707&page=2#pid3427

I think that could be very interesting if we could toggle the songlist in a "album show" mode which would constantly display the album corresponding to the "now playing" song. Great animation, no? Even maybe that could work like a screen saver which start automatically when you don't have touched eJukebox since a moment...

Thanks for your compliments towards my messing around with the eJ graphics... it can be great fun, i have to admit that.

How did you make the songlist background change according to the "now playing" song? I have an idea, but i'd like to know how you pulled the trick anyhow. My guess would be using a specific BMP from your temporary internet files folder, which always is the current song played, but i haven't looked into this at all, though.

And by the way, when you click an artist in the song list, why are the albums listed alphabetically and not sorted by year? This is an old request, i know, but i just had to spill my guts on this one more time. To have the year, genre and ratings colums clickable and sortable seem like an obvious function

Well, that was another digression. But, on your suggestion - yes - i'd like to have this as an option. I remember iTunes skipping its songlist to whatever track it was playing, and at first i found it confusing, but after a while it made sense. So... why not? And, like you say, it would make a good "screensaver"-like thingie.

I use a winamp plug-in: http://maxxdelphisite.free.fr/htmlcover.htm
Normally this plug-in display a large cover in the Winamp mini-browser, but as it generate a temp cover here: Crogram FilesWinampPluginsgen_nowplaying_tmp.jpg, it's easy to put this url in the .dis file... What is good with this plug-in is you can change the image contrast (darker for a "night" look...) of the image editing its own html file. Unfortunately the image become black&white, but when it's a very dark background...

Concerning the album year sorting, as i always put the year in front of the album names, i don't have this problem... But yes it's a very very old request! And your idea to have the year, genre and ratings colums clickable and sortable is good too.

Thank you for your support concerning my suggestion for the song list animation. Yes, i think that could be an attractive animation, like a game which turn into the "demo" mode when you don't play any more...

For some reason, the site you refer to isn't available. [edit: It works fine, don't know what went wrong] But i look forward to messing around with it when i get the plugin.. i guess this program has a number of different possible uses, and i especially liked the contrast settings.

By the way, if Audiosoft makes a function that copies the selected album's image (if you click on an album in the artist list) to a specific filename, we could also achieve the "selected album as background" effect.

Aah? my link is right for me! curious...

With this plug-in you can display either the original colour image or a negative image! And if you want to change the contrast, you have to choose 2 colors: one for the dark colors and another for the bright colors. Depending on the 2 colors chosen you can obtain a very dark or a very light image... Or else a normal contrast, but a blue or red or green... image!
Normally it's also possible to resize the image, but that seems to not work in all the case. They say "when available" (?)


Otherwise your idea of a function "use selected album as background" is interesting too!

Ok! I will check this out later on... (too drunk now).

Well, the function is interesting... but i know that Audiosoft allready have some kind of internal routines (tile album image as background), so i would be more pleased if the integrated it somehow.

Okay, junnk!
Well, now the resizing function seems to work good... for my part.

Hic Hic... hiccup!

Pirk, is your songlist still a bit buggy, or did you get it fixed? Anyhow, i still want it... think i'll steal some tricks from it to use in m and Fishy's arctic design.

OK... In fact these last weeks i've tried many combinations between different graphics, .dis files and winamp plugins! And last i've installed v3.75 which have overwritten my skins... I have some backups, but it's a bit shambles. I'll be glad when the skin menus comes! I will try to send you something... if i can gather things again. Even so i don't drink!

I will share my skins from the next eJukebox version since the skin menus will be added...

Another variant:

Pirk,

Really like the look of your last screenshot! Any chance you will be adding a skin.zip of your own to the skins download section? Perhaps based on this last screenshot but with a static songlist background image... The transparency over the artist column and the colors look great.

Thanks, you are nice! But, as you guess, i must say my skin is a bit stranded since this screenshot... And now, after the lesson teached by the Nordic designers!...
But when i will have enough time, and motivation, i think i will take it again!

OK, well remember that if you don't have the time to create a full skin... you can always just put the songlist.dis files in a zip to make a skin that only changes the songlist.

I'd sure like to see your songlist available as well. Just because we nordic designers have too much spare time on our hands doesn't mean you shouldn't go forth and spread your work!

It's just that i fear my current work will don't have a big interest for others now... contrary to my first "HTPC skin" which was a kind of pioneer, in its time! I hope i've at least contributed to launch an idea so necessary...

I will try to offer at least some diversity, for lack of good quality!