Announce: Material Skin

[Ron F.]

devel is in sync with master - so a bug in master is probably gonna be in devel too. As above, pull latest changes and try again.

Pulled devel again, and now it appears to be working - volume shows up correctly immediately after a refresh.

Very minor issue: I noticed that when running devel material/desktop on my laptop, that if I open "Other Music," that the vertical scroll bar is activated in the browsing panel, despite there being a fair amount of room left at the bottom. It does not matter - it just seemed to me, that it activates just a bit too much on the conservative side. I have pinned a lot of apps to my home page, which made this happen.

[Ron F.]

Sorry, I didn't mean to mislead you, but (AFAIK) HiFiCast cannot be used in that manner. I originally use dit to play to Chromecast Audio - as it was the only method that supported gapless. I no longer actively use it or Chromecast. Just its UI is nicer than BubbleUPNP (whose UI seems to have got worse since the last time I used it - years ago).

I started with zero knowledge of UPnP and I had to resort to watching UPnP traffic using Wireshark, (an essential tool,) to begin understanding how it works. I was very ignorant and just naively assumed that all UPnP apps worked pretty much the same! I found that Hi-Fi Cast does not respond to SSDP:discovery packets, the way BubbleUPnP does so nicely. My interest in UPnP stems from my thinking about purchasing a new modern doohickey streaming DAC, and unless I get a Raspberry Pi + HAT DAC, it probably won't have Squeezelite available. So, if I want to continue using LMS and use material as my dashboard with such a device, (and I do,) then UPnP is the alternative. I wanted to see how difficult it is to get it working, before I purchase anything.

It was a bit more difficult than I had expected and included some issues with my server's firewall, indicated by the need to bring Wireshark to the table.

[cpd73]

Very minor issue: I noticed that when running devel material/desktop on my laptop, that if I open "Other Music," that the vertical scroll bar is activated in the browsing panel, despite there being a fair amount of room left at the bottom. It does not matter - it just seemed to me, that it activates just a bit too much on the conservative side. I have pinned a lot of apps to my home page, which made this happen.

Early on, Michael reported that the list would not fully scroll to the bottom, and an app was partially hidden. This was on an iPad, or iPhone. So I added a workaround by adding some padding to the bottom of the browse and queue lists. Materiel does not control when the scroll bars appear, this is handled by the toolkit. But this extra padding is probably the cause of what you are seeing.

[rgdawson]

Odd that I don't see this. Anyhow, can you update, refresh cache, and try again? Should be fixed. If not, then I'll just remove this code. I added because "stream.mp3" does not have a volume control. However, this "stream.mp3" does not work very well for me.

I confirm this fixed it.

R Greg Dawson

[dolodobendan]

I like how I can see which player is on in Material in the selection popup. Would it be possible to display if the players are actually playing something (with a blue play symbol, for example)?

[cpd73]

I like how I can see which player is on in Material in the selection popup. Would it be possible to display if the players are actually playing something (with a blue play symbol, for example)?

No, sorry. The serverstatus command used for this does not give this info. Use the 'Manage players' dialog to see the playstate of all players.

[dolodobendan]

No, sorry. The serverstatus command used for this does not give this info. Use the 'Manage players' dialog to see the playstate of all players.

Will do, thank you!

[cpd73]

0.9.7 Release

Main changes:

1. Refresh favourites list when rename a favourite.
2. If a player does not have 'power' attribute, then always assume its on.
3. Only show volume control if player reports 'digital_volume_control:1'
4. Add 'hasAlbums:1' to years query.
5. Remove arrows from browse headers, and elide titles to indicate collapsed.

I'm working on what will be 1.0.0, and this will have; favourite folders, presets, re-layout of 'Home' screen ('My Music' will be a list entry like other items, and you will able to pin an item from here (e.g. 'Albums') to the home screen). If you are interested, this is in the 'devel' branch - but it is not complete, nor fully tested. I'll keep the 'master' branch for fixing any bugs until 'devel' is ready.

[rgdawson]

Main changes:

1. Refresh favourites list when rename a favourite.
2. If a player does not have 'power' attribute, then always assume its on.
3. Only show volume control if player reports 'digital_volume_control:1'
4. Add 'hasAlbums:1' to years query.
5. Remove arrows from browse headers, and elide titles to indicate collapsed.

I'm working on what will be 1.0.0, and this will have; favourite folders, presets, re-layout of 'Home' screen ('My Music' will be a list entry like other items, and you will able to pin an item from here (e.g. 'Albums') to the home screen). If you are interested, this is in the 'devel' branch - but it is not complete, nor fully tested. I'll keep the 'master' branch for fixing any bugs until 'devel' is ready.

You are a rock star! Thanks SO MUCH. I just tried out the devel branch with the new home screen layout and it is great!

R Greg Dawson

[Ron F.]

Great Work...

I pulled today's update from the devel branch - looking good! I think we are at the point now where I would not consider any streaming device that could not be controlled using LMS & material.

I have a feature I would like to propose for consideration: would it be possible to add the ability to move pinned apps up and down in the home page, so I could order them the way I would like? In other words, could the "Move" menu item that is available for presets also be added to the overflow menu for pinned apps?

[cpd73]

I have a feature I would like to propose for consideration: would it be possible to add the ability to move pinned apps up and down in the home page, so I could order them the way I would like? In other words, could the "Move" menu item that is available for presets also be added to the overflow menu for pinned apps?

Currently the list of pinned items and other items are two separate lists, just drawn as one. I plan to combine these, and allow drag'n'drop reordeing of the combined list. Therefore, no need for 'Move'. This is there for presets, as you want to 'move' these to a particular button.

[frankd]

I just discovered a potential bug.
When playing a song on a device and I use the context menu option (more) "Send this track", I see my other devices, and I can click onto them but nothing happens.
The same approach in an app or Windows app (Squeezecontrol) works, thus I assume that there is a problem with the last selection of the device and the command is not executed or other issues...
To be honest, I am not sure if this command is standard in LMS or was added by another plugin since my installation has been ported during several years with several plugins...

[cpd73]

When playing a song on a device and I use the context menu option (more) "Send this track", I see my other devices, and I can click onto them but nothing happens.

Which addon is this from? I see no "Send this track" entry.

[Ron F.]

"Manage players" display

I might have found something that needs to be fixed, in material/desktop when using "Manage players."

I had been streaming to my phone: LMS -> SB Player, but not doing that now. SP Player is no longer shown in the player selection menu in the material desktop or mobile displays, nor is SB Player shown in the "Manage players" list on my phone. However, it is still appearing in the "Manage players" list on my laptop using material/desktop! It cannot be selected successfully, but it is still appearing in the list. So, there is an inconsistency.

I am currently using BubbleUPnP on my phone, and controlling that using material; I am mentioning this just in case it is involved in the behavior I am seeing.

[rgdawson]

I just tried out today's updates from the devel branch with the fully customize-able home page. This is so awesome! I love it. I love being able to sort and select what appears on the home page. Now I can pin my couple of apps and not even show the Apps icon. Best thing since sliced bread! Great work, thanks!

R Greg Dawson