What's Playin : A now playing gadget for WMP11

By BajiRav
in Tips, Tweaks & Customization

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Grand Master

BajiRav

Posted
Posted (edited)

I made a gadget that shows WMP song information in the sidebar.

This gadget needs the song signature plugin. Once you install the winter funpack, you can delete all other crap that comes with it. Make sure the plugin is enabled in WMP.

Docked View:

post-62693-1175664879_thumb.jpg

Undocked View:

post-62693-1175664893_thumb.jpg

Download from Windows Live Gallery

I have submitted this to Gallery.live.com. But it's not available yet.

Known Issues:

1. The artwork will work only if you have folder.jpg in each album folder.

2. If folder.jpg is not present, it will show generic icon (same as what WMP11 uses).

3. It does not read artwork from the files itself. (I am working on it, but WMP API is seriously screwy on this.)

4. Long song/artist/album names will be trimmed.

Future Plans:

1. Better background graphic

2. Larger undocked view

3. Rating display

4. Artwork from files or may be amazon.

Lastly, I have used two images from WMP11. They are ? Microsoft.

Any feedback is much appreciated.

Edited by dhan
Grand Master

Doli

Posted
Posted
3. It does not read artwork from the files itself. (I am working on it, but WMP API is seriously screwy on this.)

I tried looking for that in the WMP 10 SDK using "player.currentMedia.getItemInfoByType(name, language, index)" to find out that if was left out on purpose I guess its the same for WMP 11 SDK.

Grand Master

Doli

Posted
Posted
Hey did you have any problem using the gadget ? The Live gallery team rejected my submission saying it won't install. :o

I think i might know the reason why. Did you select the folder and made it a zip file before renaming it from ".zip" to ".gadget"?

When you do that the zip file will have a folder inside with your files, what you want is to just have the files.

Zip -> folder_Name -> Files

Just highlight the files and right click Send To Compressed (zipped) folder so you get a nice .zip file like this

Zip -> files

Now you can rename it to a .gadget and send it to Gallery.live.com.

Grand Master

BajiRav

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)
The Live team is correct, it does not install normally, I had to extract it and place it the gadgets folder manually. Looks good for a first attempt, one thing I would like it see it do is scroll the text if the title is too long and such.

I fixed it. The scrolling text part is on my things to do this weekend. :)

I tried looking for that in the WMP 10 SDK using "player.currentMedia.getItemInfoByType(name, language, index)" to find out that if was left out on purpose I guess its the same for WMP 11 SDK.

I tried that. Somehow I keep on getting errors with getItemInfoByType. Also the player context, I can't connect it to the current song without creating another instance of wmplayer, which also starts playing the same song!

I think i might know the reason why. Did you select the folder and made it a zip file before renaming it from ".zip" to ".gadget"?

When you do that the zip file will have a folder inside with your files, what you want is to just have the files.

Zip -> folder_Name -> Files

Just highlight the files and right click Send To Compressed (zipped) folder so you get a nice .zip file like this

Zip -> files

Now you can rename it to a .gadget and send it to Gallery.live.com.

Oh damn, you are right. Fixed it. Thanks. :)

Edited by dhan
Grand Master

Doli

Posted
Posted
Also the player context, I can't connect it to the current song without creating another instance of wmplayer, which also starts playing the same song!

"<PARAM name="autoStart" value="false" />" this should help, I found it in the WMP 11 SDK.

&lt;object id="Player" height="0" width="0"&lt;BR&gt;		classid="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6"&gt;&lt;BR&gt; &lt;PARAM name="autoStart" value="false" /&gt;&lt;BR&gt;	&lt;/object&gt;

Veteran

HistoricalNeowin

Posted
Posted

Hey, if you would like i can implement a better album art system for you. I currently have a gadget that takes your now playing song, queries the music brainz database for the album name, and then queries amazon for the album art. If you drop me a PM i'd be happy to let you use the code in this gadget

Grand Master

BajiRav

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Hey, if you would like i can implement a better album art system for you. I currently have a gadget that takes your now playing song, queries the music brainz database for the album name, and then queries amazon for the album art. If you drop me a PM i'd be happy to let you use the code in this gadget

I thought about connecting to amazon but personally I have many albums that are not listed anywhere. But I think I can follow this sequence.

1. Look up folder.jpg (just because it is faster)

2. Look up the mp3 file itself.

3. Look up amazon and so.

Veteran

HistoricalNeowin

Posted
Posted

Could do that, i've created a second version of my now playing gadget to work with this winter api that retrieves the album from amazon. If you wanna drop me an email at [email protected] i can help you put the Amazon code into your gadget as a secondary source.

Grand Master

Doli

Posted
Posted
I thought about connecting to amazon but personally I have many albums that are not listed anywhere. But I think I can follow this sequence.

1. Look up folder.jpg (just because it is faster)

2. Look up the mp3 file itself.

3. Look up amazon and so.

I got it

Player.currentMedia.getItemInfoByType("WM/Picture", "", 0).URL

Just needed the ".URL" to get the album art url instead of trying to get the MetadataPicture object. It will look something like this:

vnd.ms.wmhtml://localhost/WMP309efcb0-fe0d-409a-9b44-4408a8e68546.jpg

but it did display the album art for a web page i used to test it.

Grand Master

+Fahim S. MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted (edited)

This has the potential to be the gadget I have been looking for, but...

Doesn't seem to work for me.

It displays the track name and album name but for some reason not the album art.

I have the folder.jpg in the folder where the music is...

Any ideas?

<edit>

I fixed it.. changed the code to find the folder.jpg to read this:-

oSourceUrl=oWsh.RegRead("HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\MediaPlayer\\CurrentMetadata\\SourceURL")
oPos = oSourceUrl.lastIndexOf("\\")
oArtwork =oSourceUrl.substr(0,oPos) + "\\folder.jpg"
var FSO = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
if (FSO.FileExists(oArtwork))
	imgArtwork.src = oArtwork
else
	imgArtwork.src = "images/artwork.png"

It now works by finding the current track path in the registry, finding the last backslash (\) and chopping up to it and then adding folder.jpg to the end

:D

Edited by L0KI
Veteran

HistoricalNeowin

Posted
Posted

Good idea there Loki, i was working on getting myn to take the path, work out the filename length and then remove it from the string therefore putting you at the backslash, but your idea is much better :)

Btw, i'm not related to this gadget, i'm working on something else

Grand Master

+Fahim S. MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

Sorry to hijack the thread.. but I just finished my own customisation of this gadget... I'm loving it.... :D

I ripped the background for the iStat wireless gadget.. so can't share this until I have permission for the code for media player and the background...

post-11693-1176497101.jpg

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
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