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GridStream Player 5.3 in development

PostPosted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 9:57 pm
by Gridfan
GridStream Player (windows desktop) will be getting a update.

These are the currently planned changes:
  • + Showname and info/location not updating or displaying, cause known and will be fixed.
  • + New GridStream Player program icon, color choice decided by GSP forum votes (a year ago). Thanks peeps.
  • * The GridStream Webplayer let you choose stream/codec, it's only fair that GridStream Player should also have this feature.
  • ? Support for PNG and JPG artwork similar to GridStream Webplayer, but will only show artwork for the current track.
  • * Change the Auto volume to use only previous track for calculation, simplify code, hopefully get rid of the "inexplicable volume reduction" bug.
  • * Add color choice for player backgrounds similar to GridStream Webplayer, might possibly add a RGB selector instead.
  • * Put Info and Stats and Preferences in the tray icon menu
  • * Remove double click on VUMeter and allow opening of menu using a left click instead.
  • * Documentation lacked info about Alt+F4 closeing the active window of the player, and Alt+F4 on the VUMeter quitting the player.
  • ? Put Status/Info/Record into taskbar thumbnail button row.
  • ? Remove popup menu, Preferences window will open instead. Info and Stats window will be toggled on/off in Preference. Manual and Website buttons will be added. Mute toggle added
+ = Finished. * = In progress. ? = Being considered.

If anyone has any feedback or suggestions, now is the time to make them. I'm hoping to fast track this hand have something ready by the end of the month.
The things under consideration may not happen as they might involve more work than I'm willing to put in right now. If they aren't added to v5.3 they will be added to a "Wishlist" of features I'd like to see added some day.


Regarding the preferences window and moving menu stuff into it. Some stuff would make sense being moved there while others not. The player does not have a "main" window that can have the mute button etc. So this is a design conundrum.

In a similar fashion the album/song artwork is a issue, the info window is not convenient to have a image slapped into it for each line. Text wrapping and scrolling is a issue here. Just current artwork could be shown.

Muting by clicking the vumeter is something that would be cool (it existed a long time ago), but due to the way single and double click detection works this may or may not be practical to do in a reasonable time.

Regarding adding artwork to info window and moving popup menu into preferences... Would there be a point in doing that. The player having a tiny vumeter is it's key feature. I am probably the only one that have the stats window open when using the player, I'm also probably the only one that have song details enabled for the info window. Moving things around/streamlining stuff that people rarely use is not a good use of time. I use mute/unmute a lot in the menu (forgetting that it is also available if i hover the mouse over the taskbar icon).

At some point goes the line between tweaking and a full redesign, and a redesign is not in the cards currently.


But I digress.

Please take a gander at the list above, if you have some ideas/suggestions, maybe there is a small quirk you don't like and would see fixed, please post here and I'll see what I can do in the next days to implement it/tweak it.

Re: GridStream Player 5.3 in development

PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 10:31 am
by Jezebelle
The less clicks it takes to open the info window and disappear it again, the better. I normally keep it closed because I'm using both of my monitors and only occasionally want to check a song title, or show location (except that isn't there recently). Clicking the second monitor to reveal the taskbar, clicking the taskbar icon to reveal the vumeter, clicking the vumeter to reveal the popup window, and then clicking info in the popup was already a bit much. Changing that to preferences and then clicking again to enable the info window in preferences is not the direction I'd like that particular process to go.

Of course, if there were shortcuts to flip the info and stats and such on and off, taskbar > vumeter > preferences > checkbox would be fine as a long path to look up what the shortcut is again. Like VLC's media info page; press Ctrl-i to open it, or dive into the menus to find it and there's a reminder of the shortcut there.

I pretty much only use stats and details when something sounds hinky. Getting those through preferences, I don't have a problem with. It just seems like stats should get a shortcut if info does, for consistency.

Other than that it all sounds good, but I have one question... if clicking the vumeter is the mute control, what opens the preferences window? Left click to mute/unmute and right-click for preferences? Or do we right-click the taskbar icon for that? Right-clicking the app for a preferences /window/ doesn't exactly jive with the default Windows context menu paradigm. But that's probably more pedantic than anyone cares about. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Re: GridStream Player 5.3 in development

PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 2:54 am
by Gridfan
Jezebelle wrote:The less clicks it takes to open the info window and disappear it again, the better.

I could put Info and Stats and Preferences in the tray icon menu?

Jezebelle wrote:Other than that it all sounds good, but I have one question... if clicking the vumeter is the mute control, what opens the preferences window? Left click to mute/unmute and right-click for preferences? Or do we right-click the taskbar icon for that? Right-clicking the app for a preferences /window/ doesn't exactly jive with the default Windows context menu paradigm. But that's probably more pedantic than anyone cares about. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Currently right click or double click opens the menu. In the past this menu was a normal context menu. It was basically the tray icon menu.


I'll consider your hotkey suggestion. Issue is though that the player is kinda there all the time unlike VLC or other media players which you only use for a few hours at most. I'm not a fan of global hotkeys, and hotkeys that only work if the player is the active window only makes sense if you change a lot of things (volume, skip forward, frame by frame etc) so Id' rather avoid having to add those. Customizable would also mean redesigning the preferences window and adding new gadgets to set shortcuts. hotkeys could conflict with other programs or games (or prevent such from working in games). If I create a more generic player some day I may add support for hotkey configuration though.

I could add some extra buttons to the taskbar icon, but there is a limit to how many can fit there (I seem to recall max 5 or something), and the tray icon meny would be equally many clicks but no practical limits, and submenus are less of a hassle if it come to that.

I could add support for play/stop media keys and use that to pause/unpause the player, but you would need the player to be the active window and if I get click to mute working satisfactory then that is more practical anyway.

As to the location/show name not updating properly, I forgot to mention this but I'm aware of it and it's on the ToDo list so that will be fixed.

Re: GridStream Player 5.3 in development

PostPosted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:48 am
by Jezebelle
Gridfan wrote:I could put Info and Stats and Preferences in the tray icon menu?

Sounds good to me.

Gridfan wrote:Currently right click or double click opens the menu. In the past this menu was a normal context menu. It was basically the tray icon menu.

Yup. You are correct, of course. Left-clicking the vumeter just once doesn't do that. And that's still what I do. Every time. Then I right-click it and click the info button. Something about that menu just doesn't click for me as a right mouse button thing.

Gridfan wrote:Issue is though that the player is kinda there all the time unlike VLC or other media players which you only use for a few hours at most. I'm not a fan of global hotkeys, and hotkeys that only work if the player is the active window only makes sense if you change a lot of things (volume, skip forward, frame by frame etc) so Id' rather avoid having to add those.

Maybe I'm weird, or use too many weird programs all at the same time or whatever, but that's what I'm used to. Select a window and send one key event to it and go select another and do something else. Global hotkeys would almost certainly be more trouble than they're worth, so yeah, maybe let's skip the keys. It was just a thought.

Gridfan wrote:Customizable would also mean redesigning the preferences window and adding new gadgets to set shortcuts. hotkeys could conflict with other programs or games (or prevent such from working in games). If I create a more generic player some day I may add support for hotkey configuration though.

Yeah, that's way more than I meant. Just putting the most frequently used functions on the tray icon and/or taskbar icon should be fine.

Most frequently used... I don't know much about Windows UI programming, but WIn7 has this feature I like for pinning applications to the taskbar, then pinning frequently used documents to the taskbar icon. Is there some easy function for that to pin our own most frequently used functions to the icon, or does that only work for opening files? Probably just files. Just a thought, again. Shouldn't be hard to get a consensus on a short short list of the most frequently used functions.

Re: GridStream Player 5.3 in development

PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 7:19 pm
by Gridfan
Jezebelle wrote:Left-clicking the vumeter just once doesn't do that. And that's still what I do. Every time. Then I right-click it and click the info button. Something about that menu just doesn't click for me as a right mouse button thing.

I'll make it open the menu on left click, there might be a short delay while it "waits" for the double click. Or I may just remove the double click and have it react instantly (I kinda prefer that).
One concern is drag'n'drop, I gotta make sure "left click" does not trigger during that you "press the button then later let go" this counts as sa click. Windows should send different info the the window/program when it's moved so it does not count as a click but I can't recall if there is something special I need to do. I'll test this and find out obviously.

Jezebelle wrote:Maybe I'm weird, or use too many weird programs all at the same time or whatever, but that's what I'm used to. Select a window and send one key event to it and go select another and do something else. Global hotkeys would almost certainly be more trouble than they're worth, so yeah, maybe let's skip the keys. It was just a thought.

Ok. In that case I'll see about add support for window (or rather in focus window of the program) hotkeys. I won't grab volume. I'm unsure if play/pause would server much purpose. I'll check to see if there are any standard Windows program key combos for stuff like "Info" or "Status". I guess I could just use Alt+I and Alt+S etc. if there is no standard, and then list. Alt+F4 already works (as it's part of the OS) and will close the active/current widow of the player (using it on the VUMeter will quit the program), I need to add this info to the documentation.

Jezebelle wrote:Just putting the most frequently used functions on the tray icon and/or taskbar icon should be fine.

Most frequently used... I don't know much about Windows UI programming, but WIn7 has this feature I like for pinning applications to the taskbar, then pinning frequently used documents to the taskbar icon. Is there some easy function for that to pin our own most frequently used functions to the icon, or does that only work for opening files? Probably just files. Just a thought, again. Shouldn't be hard to get a consensus on a short short list of the most frequently used functions.


If you (Win7+ ? I forget which OS introduced this) hover the mouse over the taskbar icon you'll get the program preview/thumbnail, at the bottom you have mute/auto/preset1/preset2. I think there is room for two more buttons for a total of five (or possibly six), I'll look into this. Info and Status could be put there and maybe Record?

Planned changes list in first post updated.