Thread: Roadmap for Neon Boombox

Im on the fence on FINALLY swapping my Pioneer HU for a Mac Mini.

I never, ever, ever wanted to go anything but OSX and a front end always kept me from spending money...on my car...in "this economy".

Originally Posted by NeonDev

BTW did I fix your problem with the control bar backing not scaling properly? I think I did but I don't remember and don't feel like reading through old threads or searching... I'm to entranced by working on Neon Boombox!

I have not seen it recur since 1.0, so it looks like we're all good. Thanks.

Originally Posted by NeonDev

the music module does remember what playlist/artist/etc you are in when you leave and comeback...

You're right! Sorry I restart a lot due to the loss of sound following sleep or after sleeping while in the radio module. In those cases I end up back in the Artists list. I wrongly assumed it was the default behavior for switching between modules as well.

The new theming engine looks great!!

Thanks,

Sean

no worries. I wish I knew what to do about to occasional loss of audio on wake. hope I figure it out...

ok I have some very EXCITING news (IMO)

NBB v1.1 will include 3 additional very awesome visualizers as well as some spit and polish to the existing ones.

firstly I stumbled upon an iTunes visualizer called aSTARick. I asked the developer and he said I could include it in NBB. if you like the visualizer i suggest you donate a small amount to him here.

second I will be changing the guts of the visualizer engine in NBB to be compatible with itunes. (if anybody ever made an attempt at their own visualizer this means you will have to change your inputs)

With that said the door will be opened for many of the apple iTunes visualizers to run in NBB (can anyone say jelly and sitx!!!!????)

so legally will I be able to package a copy of apples visualizers with NBB? or will I have to link to them or have you guys copy them into the directory?

While IANAL, here is my two cents.

Don't include the stock Apple visualizers. If it is compatible with the iTunes visualizers (eg correct inputs), then simply providing instructions for use should be considerably safer.

On a personal note, I've been tinkering in Quartz Composer for the past few days to create my own Visualizer...if I can get it to the point where I won't be embarrassed, I may submit it to you.

While thinking about visualizers, since modules are now a "simple" install, perhaps a feature request might be a simple visualizer install method. Maybe something even as simple as an "Import visualizer" option in NBB, with a basic finder browser to select it from.

Jumping back a few posts...would it be possible to adapt the theme to allow for a "select logo" option, and the selected image is a simple overlay? That way people could create/share easily...

Also..and this may sound silly...
What about an "About" entry? Something to show the current version and loaded modules. As this gains steam, it seems like something that will become helpful when troubleshooting versions..

Oh, and a "Usability" feature request:

Scrolling through lists, in my experience, is wonky at best with a touchscreen. Would it be possible to add a scroll bar? Or perhaps some other method for quickly jumping around a large list?

Scrolling through lists, in my experience, is wonky at best with a touchscreen. Would it be possible to add a scroll bar? Or perhaps some other method for quickly jumping around a large list?

I updated the tips section of the users guide with how to enable scroll bars. I will look into creating some customized scroll bars that will be optional.

On a personal note, I've been tinkering in Quartz Composer for the past few days to create my own Visualizer...if I can get it to the point where I won't be embarrassed, I may submit it to you.

just make sure when you use the "music visualizer" template in QC since that is what v1.1 will use. I updated the visualizer creation guide as well.

While thinking about visualizers, since modules are now a "simple" install, perhaps a feature request might be a simple visualizer install method. Maybe something even as simple as an "Import visualizer" option in NBB, with a basic finder browser to select it from.

yeah the way I will do this in the short term is allow NBB to accept opening files of all types then for non .module files lookup each installed modules info dictionary to see if a module will handle the file type. if it finds more than one module that will handle it it can present a dialog to allow you to choose which module to use...

Also..and this may sound silly...
What about an "About" entry? Something to show the current version and loaded modules. As this gains steam, it seems like something that will become helpful when troubleshooting versions..

that doesn't sound silly at all. I agree completely and will have it in 1.1 as a new "page" in the main app prefs.

Jumping back a few posts...would it be possible to adapt the theme to allow for a "select logo" option, and the selected image is a simple overlay? That way people could create/share easily...

the themes are just a precursor to a much more robust and extensible skinning engine. I will post a mock XML file that will be used to specify to the skinning engine what images to override since I am moving all my custom controls to use [NSImage imageNamed:] that will make it easy for the skinning engine to simply explicitly set the specified image to override the one in the bundle.

I will try my best to have this image substitution ability in the skinning engine for v1.1 since it is not that difficult (in theory)

on a side note a while back I was playing with leopards objc garbage collection but went back to manually managing memory because of stability and performance issues when using garbage collection. It seems that i forgot to "autorelease" some table view data when I went back and 1.0 has many small memory leaks that will add up quite a bit over time. these among others have been patched in v1.1 and as such NBB now uses about 10% less memory.

right now all the skinning engine can do is the control theme and image replacement, but it is very extensible so it will eventually do more. Im just gonna post a picture from the property list editor used to create skins and if you have any questions about what does what just ask.