Features for the best front end

**red green** · 12-07-2006, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by 2k1Toaster

...Dual Monitor support. Most importantly, gps on 1 screen, and the rest on another...

Yes! Only I'm thinking of it for rear-seat entertainment. I'm imagining one of the tabs on the left reading "Rear Seat" and when you click on it you get a list of the available rear seat media (different directory than front-seat media). The ini file could be used to name the secondary devices (sound card & video card), and a second instance of mplayer could control what's playing. I currently use ZoomPlayer, and it's OK, but on every video change the control bar pops on top of Freeway and it's just not as integrated feeling as I'd like for it to be.

I would like to be able to browse by genre or make smart playlists. I use the genre tag in all my files to mimic XM station names, and when I used to use FrodoPlayer, I would select the playlist named "The Joint" for example, and all the reggae tunes would start. Any way to achieve this end result by other means would mean a great deal to me.

Audiobooks: A separate list with AAC (.m4b or .m4a) playing and bookmarking. I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and it's a pain to use yet another piece of software (in my case, XMPlay) just so that it will save my place when I take a break to listen to music.

Windows sound control. The ability to change levels on Front ,Rear, Center, & LFE and mute/unmute each one. Oh, and of course, an EQ. I'm still using your Winamp version just to have the EQ. My system sounds like *** without it.

To me, those are the biggies. I don't want the software to become bloated, either, so maybe each module could be turned on/off like a plugin. I personally don't care about gas price lookups, weather forecasts, movie showtimes, or even picture viewers. I do, however, care about the things I listed above, and I suspect the list is different for each of us. RR is attractive to the masses because you can just ignore the things you don't want, but it would be better if you could turn off the things you don't want.

And when you feel like opening up the project to contributors, let me know. I may not know much, but I'll help with anything I can.

Best Regards,
Mike

**a-ten** · 12-07-2006, 01:55 PM

You can already access files off of a USB stick, etc

Ah, clearly haven't explored standard freeway enough!

Andy

**MadDash** · 12-07-2006, 04:38 PM

the option to embed external programs into freeway ultra

**Pishaa** · 12-07-2006, 07:30 PM

1) Get rid of the menu on the left, Thats why I hate centrafuse!

Why does this menu should consume precious screen space!??
When listening to music for example, you could put visualizations there instead, In GPS mode every inch is important and the map should consume as much as possible of the screen!
Finally, You can put a 'menu' button somewhere in the skin that brings you a fullscreen sized menu with music/video/pics/weather/shutdown etc in it.

2) Add seek bar.

3) Add fullscreen mode with nothing but visualization/video screen shown.
when touching anywhere on the screen, it brings you on the bottom of the creen the controls menu with extra button to exit fullscreen mode and also seeking bar, also on the top of the screen it would show the filename and playing time .
The menu should auto hide after few seconds.
Take a look at FrodoPlayer to get the idea.

4) Add the ability to choose the startup screen when freeway starts: music/video/pics/weather or the last one that was used.

5) Add support for loading a DLL by freeway, just like the concept of general plugins in winamp.
This could ,for example, load the phone integration fo instance when freeway starts.

And when you feel like opening up the project to contributors, let me know. I may not know much, but I'll help with anything I can.

I would also luv to contribute.

Thanks for this great software, It has a great potential.

/Me.

**unlfrank** · 12-07-2006, 09:57 PM

Browse by album art would be great, but only if it can be done quickly. The RR implementation of this is so slow that it is unusable for me. The picture files may have to be stored or referenced from some sort of precompiled database or something like that to make it possible.

**fixinstuff** · 12-07-2006, 10:37 PM

I havent tried Freeway yet but I have been watching it. Still in its infant stage, but looks like it will have some potential.

A good file transfer feature is something that all the front ends need. A good example is the way Adobe Photo Album transfers pictures. It doesnt matter how big the directory tree is the program will find the photo on a memory stick and import it into your photo directory. It would be great to see this done for media files. True plug and play capability.

Keep up the great work on the source code.

**2k1Toaster** · 12-07-2006, 10:47 PM

On the transfer topic, I would really like to have a "sync" button. That button when pushed would send out to find a remote computer's folder and check to see what is in there and stream it to a sync folder on the carpc.

So on your home PC, you have a server side piece of software from FreeWay, that setups a folder. This folder contains shortcuts to anything on that computer. Then on the carPC, it looks in that folder, transfers all the files that are linked to, and deletes the shortcuts after they are transfered.

I would like that!

**fixinstuff** · 12-07-2006, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by 2k1Toaster

On the transfer topic, I would really like to have a "sync" button.

I agree having a sync button is a must. I currently have mine hidden in my logo on the main screen for RR. This is only because I like to keep things neat and dont like a bunch of buttons for people to mess with.

**oeri** · 12-08-2006, 09:08 AM

Originally Posted by Pishaa

1) Get rid of the menu on the left, Thats why I hate centrafuse!

Why does this menu should consume precious screen space!??
When listening to music for example, you could put visualizations there instead, In GPS mode every inch is important and the map should consume as much as possible of the screen!
Finally, You can put a 'menu' button somewhere in the skin that brings you a fullscreen sized menu with music/video/pics/weather/shutdown etc in it.

I am going to add skin support for a drop down menu.

2) Add seek bar.

3) Add fullscreen mode with nothing but visualization/video screen shown.
when touching anywhere on the screen, it brings you on the bottom of the creen the controls menu with extra button to exit fullscreen mode and also seeking bar, also on the top of the screen it would show the filename and playing time .
The menu should auto hide after few seconds.
Take a look at FrodoPlayer to get the idea.

Both of these are already in the latest version.

4) Add the ability to choose the startup screen when freeway starts: music/video/pics/weather or the last one that was used.

I will work on this, good idea.

**oeri** · 12-08-2006, 09:08 AM

Originally Posted by 2k1Toaster

On the transfer topic, I would really like to have a "sync" button. That button when pushed would send out to find a remote computer's folder and check to see what is in there and stream it to a sync folder on the carpc.

So on your home PC, you have a server side piece of software from FreeWay, that setups a folder. This folder contains shortcuts to anything on that computer. Then on the carPC, it looks in that folder, transfers all the files that are linked to, and deletes the shortcuts after they are transfered.

I would like that!

Good idea, I will keep this in mind.