Announce: Moose 0.60(squeezecentre/slimserver frontend for windows)

[Dr Lovegrove]

Just uploaded Moose 0.60 to http://groups.google.com/group/moosenews
and normal website.

Mainly been sorting out the cover chooser and thumbnail system.

Oh, I've also added Pandora coverart support - let me know asap if
this doesnt work as my pandora trial ends this friday..

Here's a full list of changes:

* Cover Chooser - Text drawn for cover circles
* Cover Chooser - Fixed spacing algorithm a bit to make things feel better
* Cover Chooser - Scroll bar added and covers scroll off left and
right when being un-shown
* Cover Chooser - Fixed the context menu so it works
* Cover Chooser - The hilighted item now clips correctly to the edges
* Now Playing - Support added for Pandora album-art
* Now Playing - Hopefully fixed issue with windows 2000 redraw of the playlist
* Now Playing - Removed close and minimise buttons from title-bar and
made minimise to tray the new closing option
* Now Playing - un-minimising from tray correctly lays out the panels now
* Networking - Tweaked the way moose talks to the server - hopefully
this will cure some of the IP address issues
* MySql - Tweaked the way the mysql connector connects to the database
- hopefully this will cure some of the IP address issues
* Thumbnail Scanning - Re-coded the way thumbnail scanning works. It's
now a good idea to keep the 'Update Thumbnail cache after a rescan'
option on - it'll be much quicker and recalculates the hues for the
coverchooser from the cached thumbnails.
* Thumbnail Scanning - Also now requests artwork from amazon if it's
not on the server. A maximum of 50 albums are requested each scan to
save swamping amazon. These 50 albums are chosen randomly on each scan
and 100x100 jpgs stored in the thumbs folder.
* Full screen mode - Menu hidden by default, but moving mouse to top
of screen will show it
* Touch screen mode - Fixed button positions and panel clipping
problems - not fixed text/glyphs in buttons yet
* Options - Now possible to disable tooltips (options->Now Playing tab)
* Options - Greyed out the new connection code option since it causes CPU issues
* Options - Added text about server IP
* Added '\server=xx.xx.xx.xx', '\player=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx' and
'\moofile=file.moo' command line options which allow moose to connect
to a specified server/player
* Probably other stuff..

Enjoy,

--
- Dr Lovegrove
http://www.rusticrhino.com/drlovegrove
http://groups.google.com/group/moosenews

[)p(]

* Cover Chooser - Text drawn for cover circles

Very helpful feature for me, thanks!

peter

[Ramage]

Moose 0.6 looking good doc.

Pandora cover art is an excellent feature and works well.

Moose just gets better and better, I like it a lot.

[atlslim]

Oh, I've also added Pandora coverart support - let me know asap if
this doesnt work as my pandora trial ends this friday..

Good Doctor,

Nice work w/ Moose 0.60 as usual - Pandora cover art works great.

Did notice that the track info. (below now playing) doesn't update automatically on screen?? - I need to refresh (F5) to get details for currently playing song -

Thanks again!

[Ramage]

Good Doctor,

Nice work w/ Moose 0.60 as usual - Pandora cover art works great.

Did notice that the track info. (below now playing) doesn't update automatically on screen?? - I need to refresh (F5) to get details for currently playing song -

Thanks again!

Same here, originally thought it was a SC7 bug but that has now been fixed.

[Philip Meyer]

Nice work - the album artwork scanning sure is a lot faster.

Cover chooser is better. There are still a few issues, but the main things are:

1. There's no button/menu to repopulate the display with a new set of random album covers (previous/next pages are disabled - could put a repopulate button there).
2. When the artwork size is set to as small as possible (using the slider), and in layout mode, it's quite hard to select a specific album cover, as the popup image almost completely overlaps surrounding covers.

I like viewing in layout mode sorted by colour. As the position scrollbar is moved, the artwork shuffles along and new covers appear in the gaps. However, it would perhaps look even smoother if the albums were put into the grid in columns, rather than in rows, as we are dragging horizontally, rather than vertically.

Phil

[Dr Lovegrove]

On 10/10/2007, Phil Meyer <slim (AT) hergest (DOT) demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Nice work - the album artwork scanning sure is a lot faster.

Excellent.. Should be less load on the server during a scan too, which is never
a bad thing..

> Cover chooser is better. There are still a few issues, but the main things are:
>
> 1. There's no button/menu to repopulate the display with a new set of random album covers (previous/next pages are disabled - could put a repopulate button there).

Ah yes, I tidied some of the buttons up. Repopulate and resize were really
more for debugging stuff..

There's a work-round though.. If you want a new random order, just select
the sort->random again. If you want the same order, but not the ones
currently displayed, use the scrollbar.

I still need to sort the previous/next buttons out a bit - page counts, etc..

> 2. When the artwork size is set to as small as possible (using the slider), and in layout mode, it's quite hard to select a specific album cover, as the popup image almost completely overlaps surrounding covers.

Yup. Not sure what to do about this as it could be quite annoying if
it highlights
other albums when the mouse is over the zoomed highlighted album.. Could have
a key-modifier maybe.. Of course the albums should be repelled to make room
for the growing highlighted one I guess.. Could be quite a nice effect..

> I like viewing in layout mode sorted by colour. As the position scrollbar is moved, the artwork shuffles along and new covers appear in the gaps. However, it would perhaps look even smoother if the albums were put into the grid in columns, rather than in rows, as we are dragging horizontally, rather than vertically.

There is code in there to fill both ways, but it should always be
filling the first
column, row by row, then the second column, etc, so when you scroll
horizontally, the sorting makes sense. Are you seeing it fill the other way,
like a TV scanline ? Might be a bug somewhere if you are.. I was going to add
an option to allow scrolling horizontally or vertically at some point..

--
- Dr Lovegrove
http://www.rusticrhino.com/drlovegrove
http://groups.google.com/group/moosenews

[Philip Meyer]

>Yup. Not sure what to do about this as it could be quite annoying if
>it highlights
>other albums when the mouse is over the zoomed highlighted album.. Could have
>a key-modifier maybe.. Of course the albums should be repelled to make room
>for the growing highlighted one I guess.. Could be quite a nice effect..
>
I was wondering how it might be changed to work.
You could introduce a slight delay before the cover under the mouse pops up. i.e. mouse has to be stationary for n milliseconds before it pops. And maybe if the mouse moves more than a couple of pixels then remove the large cover art.

I think moving other covers out of the way may be a little irritating in layout mode.

>There is code in there to fill both ways, but it should always be
>filling the first
>column, row by row, then the second column, etc, so when you scroll
>horizontally, the sorting makes sense. Are you seeing it fill the other way,
>like a TV scanline ? Might be a bug somewhere if you are.. I was going to add
>an option to allow scrolling horizontally or vertically at some point..
>
Ah, you could be right. It *looks* like it's doing a row by row update, but actually I think it is filling in columns. I was expecting that when I scrolled left-to-right, it would remove a whole column from the left, and bring a new column in from the right. But it actually moves n places up the ordered list, so some n covers are removed, the rest move up the column, and some spill from the top of the next column to the bottom of the previous column. The effect to each column makes it look like a row is being removed from the top and a new row added to the bottom.

Phil

[Dr Lovegrove]

On 10/10/2007, Phil Meyer <slim (AT) hergest (DOT) demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I was wondering how it might be changed to work.

Ok, I've just uploaded a test build Moose060a.zip to
http://groups.google.com/group/moosenews/files

This sorts the dragging of the scroll thumb issue and in layout mode it now
selects covers under the highlighted one. It's actually not as annoying as I
thought it might be, so this might be a good solution.. I've also upped the
rate which it grabs cached covers and optimised a few bits..

This build should also fix the Pandora now playing update issue. If not,
let me know ASAP as Im now on my last day of the pandora trial..

Enjoy,

--
- Dr Lovegrove
http://www.rusticrhino.com/drlovegrove
http://groups.google.com/group/moosenews

[Ramage]

The Pandora update works OK.

I found the Cover Chooser sorting by column rather strange to start with (even if logical).

An option of sorting by row or column as you suggest would be good.