LiL Front End (alpha 0.3)

I mentioned this project in other .Net thread a while ago.
I've been developing this slowly during summer. Actually been using it myself several months but until now I havent got anything worth to show completed.

So here it is. Another .Net based front end.
Reasons why I started developing this where mainly coz most free and commercial softwares have somehow so goddamn complicated music handling system, especially playlists. That's why the main goal was to make this one simple and user friendly.

http://sniiki.net/garage/vw/pc/LFE/v03_1.jpg'

http://sniiki.net/garage/vw/pc/LFE/v03_2.jpg

http://sniiki.net/garage/vw/pc/LFE/v03_3.jpg

I didn't have any plans to share this at first but then thought that maybe someone really can use this, so I've gonna release it soon as I get music & playlist browsing screens polished.

Main features it has so far:
-Ability to open other apps in it (navigators, browsers etc.)
-WMP based player with playlist handling, real shuffle, playlist sorting, search etc.
-Apple-like smoothly scrolling playlist
-Dimming feature for day/night mode
-Transparent objects (on main screen so far) for background image switching.

I'll try to get it done for upload during this week.

Alpha 0.3:
-Dimming redone (also dimms Windows in background)
-Very simple song queuing (simply click song, click queue)
-Cursor can be hidden from settings menu
-Resumes playing song after hibernate/standby
-Playlist scrolling a bit better
-If you use PC Navigator, check the checkbox in settings menu, otherwise uncheck it. This make some changes how the chosen navigator is opened and also lowers down the music volume when the Navigator is speaking (this needs some tweaking as I think it wont stay deadened long enough some times).
-I can't recall how the playlist loading was on 0.2 version, but atleast now it's quite fast, even on my 1.0ghz 0.5gig carputer. It loads the song files first so you can start playing almost instantly, then it starts to load the ID tags in background. If user jumps to other part of the list, IDs for visible songs will be loaded instantly and backgroundworker then continues to load the rest of them.
Sorting is done with the loaded ID information, so sorting wont be currect untill all of the ID tags are loaded.

Alpha 0.2:
Quickupdate with new:
-Dimming
-Playlist control
-Songlist handling time improved, yet much to do
-loads of more, cant remember..

Alpha 0.1b:
-Dimming bug should now been fixed
-as well as Loading media -screen
-If music album directory contains several pictures, the biggest one (in bytes) is chosen

Alpha 0.1:
-Requires .NET Framework 3.5 !
-Dimming feature doesn't seem to work on TinyXP (atleast on my install).
edit. problem isn't TinyXP, it must be the integrated SiS grahics in Intel D201GLY2 motherboard. Tried to install Normal XP Pro on it and the problem still exists. Then again on my laptop, that also has SiS graphics, everything works ok. Problem occurs also on "loading" screen that pops up when users is loading music.
-List scrolling by draggin it and letting it continue scrolling seems a bit jerky
edit. if you get any errors about filepaths, try deleting the settings.ini from app folder
-sorting the playlist is slow atm. and doesn't show any progress state. Will be fixed soon.
-resuming from hibernation bugs (wont start playing until there's some action ie. mouse is moved). Also wont resume the last position of the song.

Quite looking forward to this since you have pc navigator embedded!

There you go.
Beware, it's very very UNfinished.
Playlist load, and music search screens are still raw versions as well many other things. Most likely very easy to make it crash too.

Please post any bugs here!

Has anyone with D201GLY2 mobo tested this if the dimming bugs and actually kind of shades the form white?

edit. Issue wasn't the graphics driver either ;)

I redid (again) the scrolling list from scratch and it should now be A LOT smoother and lighter.
If someone want's to test, here's a simple version of it (the list alone).
Please comment.

http://sniiki.net/garage/vw/pc/LFE/SniikiList_v12.rar

*I noticed that the setting form of the current version doesn't work (browse buttons doesn't do anything). Sorry about that. You can write the settings your self in the settings.ini file, just create it by going to settings form and clicking 'OK'.
*Also the dimming is still crappy. Have to figure another way to do it.
*Sortin, Loading, searching etc. actions of the playlist is way too slow, big improvements coming to that area.

i have a suggestion for the dvd button, add vlc in with the program and use it to play dvds which it will play through the same way your doing the navigation, also can you remove the cursor and make it full screen.

I like the frontend so far though

Hey,
Yes indeed it can integrate other applications too.
There has been tons of upgrades, but haven't been updating the project here as there wasn't any interest towards it.

So, I've been mostly developing it for my own needs but I'm going to redo the UI in WPF in some point so it will be resolution independent.

I can post the most recent version here but I have to first tweak it a bit as it now assumes that PC Navigator is always used and has some hard coded stuff for it (tcp communication etc.).

Some functional stuff that I recall that has been added:
-song queuing
-cursor can be hidden
-playlist scrolling redone again (still sucks tho)
-dimming redone again (now also dimms everything in background so even if the LFE is minimized, windows will have dimming overlay)
-song will resume after hibernate/standby

0.3 uploaded
I added a checkbox to settings that should be unchecked if PC Navigator is not used as navigator.
It should work now ok.

It's still only fixed 800x600 res, sorry.