Can XLV2 support embedded buttons in music track category?

[Marbles_00]

Okay, I'm a little confused...or maybe I'm just tired...but I have one question. How do you make the database test disappear from the added categories? I copied and pasted the cats...everything is functional, but the database is showing. Now I oversized the text and that makes it disappear (larger than what can be displayed) but is this the way your doing it?

One other thing, when I'm queuing or selecting songs to play, I seem to have to press the button twice. Example: I've selected a song to play now. I go select a song to queue, and it becomes selected to play now. I press the queue button again and then it queues the song. Weird.

[scottw]

Okay, I'm a little confused...or maybe I'm just tired...but I have one question. How do you make the database test disappear from the added categories? I copied and pasted the cats...everything is functional, but the database is showing. Now I oversized the text and that makes it disappear (larger than what can be displayed) but is this the way your doing it?

What I did was under the Category-General tab in the skin editor where you set the "Text Columns" is to set the Display to %display% and the Width to 10%. Then by making the Category size small (width that is, mine is set to 51 I think) you don't even see the 10%.

One other thing, when I'm queuing or selecting songs to play, I seem to have to press the button twice. Example: I've selected a song to play now. I go select a song to queue, and it becomes selected to play now. I press the queue button again and then it queues the song. Weird.

I had this issue also and was able to get it to work but only for a touch screen...maybe Baddabing has a better idea. I have the Categories "Enter Event" set to m3u-delete so what happens is when you use the TS and click on the X button is sets the "mode" to m3u-delete and then selects whatever song you have clicked on. Ok that was even confusing to me I think my pic shows the Enter Event (work is blocking photobucket )
What is happening to you Marbles is you are running 2 events at the same time, one to set the m3u-delete and the second is when you are actually clicking on a song from the CAT, this is happening whenever you are clicking on one of the new playlist cats. It sounds like the clicking on the song is happening first and then the m3u-delete is being triggered which is why you have to click twice. I am sure once you understand what is happening you will be able to figure out a fix, and will share it with the rest so we *cough* I *cough* can set ours up the same way
I am going to play around a little to see if I can come up with something.

Hope that helps!!!!

Edit: My method seems to work fine for the playlist stuff but for queuing/playing songs it gets a little crazy. Everytime you hover over a queue or play button it does that command, which it is supposed to...still working on it.

[Rab1967]

Now let me ask you a question, what did you think of the skin installer? good-bad-indifferent? Any areas that need clarification? Thx!

I thought the installer was a great touch mate, it wasn't long ago I was messing with implementing downloaded skins from here for the first time and thought how great it would be if there was an installer. Takes the work out knowing all the locations for images, fonts, etc.

Only one small gripe and that was that even though I have Xlobby in the "Program Files" folder of my PC (which I could enter in the installer), it still puts the plugins in "C:\Xlobby\Plugins" folder.
Not a huge issue and your skin most likely requires them there, it's just that I'm sure some people get a bit fussy about where programs are stored on there systems.... like me.... lol.

On a more topical note, I think I might have developed a way to embed icons in a category to allow me to perfectly line them up with music track listings.
I kinda fudge this a little by using the method explained above by Scottw to create multiple categories, but I make sure that the "Playing Now" Icon is set before I copy the category. Then when it is pasted, it has an icon view that I can manipulate in the category display setup. Then by manipulating the displayed items a little, I can achieve the same as above, but without the need to create and place multiple button images.

Another benefit is that you dont have Add and Play icons showing next to lines with no track info.

I haven't quite mastered skinning yet and I'm still ironing out some things, but when I do get it looking the way I want on XLv2, I'll post a more better step by step guide and see if anyone has done it this way before.

.Rab fae Scotland

[Marbles_00]

Thanks Scott. I implemented the text mod last night and it seemed to work.

Rab, I'm going to look into your button setup...seems pretty cool.

[scottw]

Glad I could help.

I am going to try his suggestion as well...would be alot cleaner that mine.

[Marbles_00]

One other thing, when I'm queuing or selecting songs to play, I seem to have to press the button twice. Example: I've selected a song to play now. I go select a song to queue, and it becomes selected to play now. I press the queue button again and then it queues the song. Weird.

Well, I've figured this one out. If you have the play button for example, you set your "Click Event" to play the track, then set your "Exit Event" to add the track to the queue. To queue the track you have your add track event under the "Click Event" then have the play event under the "Exit Event". Works great so far

[scottw]

What happens when you want to queue one track after another....you have a list of songs and you click one to queue and then another in that list to queue as well.
I have not tried it yet but would the second one play since the exit event was set to play on the first.

Does that make sense???

Edit: Misunderstood a little.....one question, are you using a mouse for this or a remote?

[Marbles_00]

What happens when you want to queue one track after another....you have a list of songs and you click one to queue and then another in that list to queue as well.
I have not tried it yet but would the second one play since the exit event was set to play on the first.

Does that make sense???

I know what you mean, and I can't really explain it, but it doesn't seem to work that way. Maybe it has something to do with priorities...ie the Click Event takes priority over the Enter Event which takes priority over the Exit Event. Can't fully explain it but is seems to work.

Edit: Misunderstood a little.....one question, are you using a mouse for this or a remote?

Good question...I've only tried it right now with a mouse. I have to modifiy my client_screen examples in ZS5 and then try it on my MediaPVR. Then I can answer your question better. I will try and set some stuff up tonight, and let you know in a day or so.

[Rab1967]

Hi Gents,

It seems a mere novice has stimulated some interest in this , so I shall do as I promised and here is a step guide on how I achieved what I was looking for in Xlobby v2. I don't have the time to create a screenshot base setup guide so, it's not very visual and just gives clear steps, but I'm sure you guys know your way about the Skin Editor by now. Sorry to those that really need the visual steps.

For this setup I'll explain how I added a "delete from playlist" button to my playlist screen.

1. Open Skin Editor, then Goto MusicPlaylist

2. Select the Playlist Category ListBox

3. Now copy and paste (general Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) a new copy of the playlist Category and then select and move this copy to a new position on the screen, ideally for my purpose this is directly to the side of the existing playlist category.

4. Now in the Skin Editor rename the "Name:" field (i.e. in Sub tab “Item>>Category>>General") of the newly copied Category box to something relevant, (this is not actually required, but it does make things cleaner to understand) in my case it was "PlaylistDEL", as I wanted to create a “delete from playlist” icon.

5. Now to the important step that had me stumped for a while **Reboot Xlobby** (otherwise when you change any display formatting of the category, you will end up editing both the original list and the new copy list at the same time).

6. Go back into Skin Editor and Goto MusicPlaylist again and then into Sub tab “Item>>Category>>Display”. Now if you click on the “Top Layer” button and then “Image” tab you can add an icon that you desire. If you haven’t already resized the box to suit the icons default size, then you can do it now. There may be underlying text and items showing also in the box. The best way to remove some of these is to go through all the “Display” items and remove any icons or highlight images, Playing Icon, Playing Highlight etc and only leave the "Top Layer" icon intact.

7. To remove any underlying text for track listings all I did was to go back into the “General” tab and remove all entries in the “Text Columns” area, then add just one entry of “%Display% width 10%" and because my new box was only 44 pixels wide, no text would show. You might have to play around with this in your own skins to get the desired effect.

8.Now to enter the action of the icon. In Skin Editor, Goto Sub tab “Item>>Event” whilst you have the new Category box selected and assign your desired action in the "Enter Event". For me this was “Skin>>Music>>m3u Delete>>Select", but you might want to do something else.

9. This should be about it and if you restart Xlobby, you should now have what appears to be embedded icons in track listings, albeit what we have really done is just make multiple copies of the same Category with different icon views, but the benefit is that it all marries up with the existing list, so you don’t need dummy icons sitting under blank categories and you will only get icons appearing next to actual track listings.


Here is a screengrab of my edited default Skin that shows the Playlist of Xlv2 with what seems to be v3 embedded icons.

[scottw]

Awesome work Rab1967!!!!

I just tested it out and it seems to work great.

I was getting stuck at not doing the restart of XL you mentioned. Before when I tried this I was not able to change any of the icons without it changing it on all of the categories. Nice find on the restart

Thanks for sharing this with us...hope to see you stick around

[Rab1967]

Thanks Scott, I am really new to this, so I was quite chuffed with myself....

Weird thing was, I must have accidentally done the reboot when I edited my Music Viewer screen because editting that screen went fine and then when I tried to do the same with the Music Playlist screen, I kept getting the multi-edit issue you talk about and couldn't figure out why ???
The reboot was just p*ssing in the wind, but hey, I got there in the end.... lol

.Rab fae Scotland