Toaster 0.7

[shaneh]

Woot.. after a bit of work, the RC1 of Toaster 0.7 is here:
Quite likely to have a few bugs and missing features, but it seems to be working ok to warrant a release candidate.

Some highlights:

MSN Title personal message updates! (v7 0.604+ only)- Currently leaked heya: (http://www.jcxp.net/)
Volume change fix for http streams.
gen_ff crash with docked playlist fixed
Dynamic width adjustment - aligned left,right,center
Ability for centered text in the toast
Outline for text
Constant hold - slide the slider all the way right
Turn off msn toast semaphore
Instant on/off animate effect
Maintain aspect ratio for cover images
Forced 'animate out' on toast change
Improved cover file ATF handling
Filters non-file characters in folder images to "_" (can change with "FilterCharacter in .ini).
File locking on folder.jpg etc fixed
Improved Font name selection
Anti-alias settings for font
..more?

I think Toaster may be the first winamp plugin to change the new MSN personal messages which is pretty cool. Let me know how it goes.

[billyvnilly]

bug? cannot adjust width. the slider moves, but the toaster does not adjust, its on the min(i guess) setting.

[shaneh]

Try disabling dynamic width under extra settings.

To calculate the dynamic width, I check the size of each format line, and set the width to the smallest width necessary. Unfortuantly this doesnt take into account lines on the left AND right overlapping each other.

During testing, the only time I had text in both the left and right column of a single row was when I was using only small amounts of text (ie, playcount, length etc) so I didnt encounter this problem.

I will make the required fixes. For now, either turn off dynamic width or set your format options so that one of your single lines is the always biggest line.

[billyvnilly]

thanks shane.

[VooDoo`]

nice, but I found a bug
if I use a custom skin and enable "dynamic witdh adjustment" but disable "stretch custom skin" then my skin would not shown. you should also add a minimum value for the dynamic adjustment, because on very short track names it's too smal and the left text overlays the text on the right side.

[shaneh]

Thats expected as you cannot have a dynamic sized custom skin that is not stretched yet. Currently I disable the dynamic width setting if you have custom skin set and not stretch set. This check is only done at a couple places, but I will work out something a bit better later. Just dont enable dynamic width if you dont want your custom skin stretched.

As I posted earliar, the minimum width check doesnt take into account overlapped strings. I already have a fix for this, but its still not perfect. The dynamic width stuff is pretty much experimental at this stage. It will include dynamic 'height' hopefully at some stage too.

I also have a fix to clear the msn now playing text when you close winamp.

[Jase912]

found a huge bug, i dont know why it does this but it shows boxes in the contact list :S

[shaneh]

@Jase912. This doesnt sound like a bug with Toaster. The only thing Toaster does to MSN messenger is send a message with an updated song title information in unicode.

If youre codepage is weird on windows perhaps this might be causing the problem. As the conversion results in those strange characters if the original characters arent ANSI or your codepage/language isnt typical. Please bear in mind that both msn7 and toaster 0.7 are beta software.

[Jase912]

Ill post a screenshot soon

[Jase912]

any idea's

[shaneh]

Is Toaster displaying the correct info in its popup? Are you using an English version of msn/winamp/windows? Is the song title standard ANSI?

[Jase912]

i am using winamp 2 is that the problem, btw check your PM.

[shaneh]

Yes that is a problem. Use winamp 5+. I checked my PM, but there is no need to add you to my personal MSN contact list. The problem is you are using Winamp 2.

[Jase912]

so u cant make it compatible to winamp 2?

[d3x7r0]

Very Very nice

[shaneh]

RC2 fixes a few small bugs:

filter "Buffer" http titles fixed
dynamic width now lets you set a minimum % to shrink to
dynamic width takes into account both left and right aligned text
clears msn title status on winamp exit
slight tweaking of appearing/disappearing behaviour


Note that animate out first on change and dynamic width options are currently a bit broken particularly combined with the slide/clip animate in/out effects. Its a bit of a difficult problem to solve as a toast could change size mid-appearance etc and its difficult to handle that situation.

@Jase912: Nope, it requires features of Winamp 5, which is an upgrade to winamp 2. Search the forums for the many discussions on winamp 5 vs winamp 2 rather than discuss it here.

/EDIT: quick recall. will fix it in a mo.

[Jase912]

well works fine in the new winamp great plugin i might ask a friend to add it to the stuffplug addon for msn messenger if thats ok with you?

[shaneh]

Ok I fixed it up at least a bit better than it was before. Using anything other than the fade effect is going to cause you all sorts of trouble if you also use the dynamic width option.

Still a while to go with it, some things are still a bit broken, I'll get to them when I can.

/EDIT: @Jase912, is that a plugin pack or something? Toaster is more of a plugin for winamp than messenger. Id rather people just link to the plugin site for Toaster than include it in packs etc, as I update it fairly regularly. eg, it is currently still in RC stage and will be another few days *at least* before its release worthy.

[Jase912]

well it works fine, for me.. and its for stuffplug its a add on for msn plus http:\\www.msnplus.net we are just going to find out how you did it and add it to the plugin for msn.

[Jase912]

is there a way to make it artist - song not song - artist >,<

nevermind, found the fix.

[d3x7r0]

NICE!!! That transparent is gr8

How do I do it?

PS: I can get it transparent but not as preaty as that in the preview :S

[shaneh]

You mean the one in the screenshot? Just set the skin to no-skin and the size of the font fairly large. Put text outlining on too if you want it. Also use dynamic width and a large window.

[d3x7r0]

ok just noticed a bug (or at least a change from the behaviour of previous versions): When I stop the song and start changing track constantly to find a new one I like (pressing next) the window does change the track BUT it starts fading out. In 0.6 and before it would stay visible untill I stoped pressing, I believe it renewd the timer at each song change and now it doesn't :S

PS: I had an idea: make some sort of pressets that allow one to change the style of toaster without tweaking all the options manually

[shaneh]

To support the 'fade out on change' Toaster now does Toasts in two different modes - allow animate out, and disallow animate out. For example, when chaning the ratings Toaster should not animate out with every change, and hopefully it should work like that.

I will fix it up so that track changes while winamp is stopped dont do an animate out. OTherwise, if you disable the 'forced animate out on change' option it should work ok. Its another things that needs work on though, expect to experience a few bugs.

[Jase912]

how do you make the text transparent and white and stuff i cant seem to do it, i think its in the formatting area but then what?

[d3x7r0]

Originally posted by shaneh
You mean the one in the screenshot? Just set the skin to no-skin and the size of the font fairly large. Put text outlining on too if you want it. Also use dynamic width and a large window.

That's how

ok I see now shanneh, I'll wait to see if you fix it (I use my keyboards hotkeys to command winamp, I have it almost allways in the system tray so toaster is very usefull to me ).

[shaneh]

@dextro: Yes presets are something I will probably do. I initially was going to just have some typical settings in the installer to choose from, but I think a 'preset' tab which even lets you save/load cutom presets may be a good idea.

@Jase912: Its in the window settings. Set the skin to "no skin", set the 'cusotm colours' option, set the forecolour to white. In the formatting tab just increase the font sizes for whicher line you like.

Also set the alpha value for the text outline/shadow to 255 if you want a more intense outline.

[adam_tomlinson]

Shaneh, this plugin is amazing man. Great job. Is there anyway you could add an option to have a single pixel black border around the cover art?

[Jase912]

your tutorial you gave makes my toast look anything like it

[shaneh]

@adam_tomlinson: I should be able to add that in ok, I had actually slated it for inclusion somewhere along the line but it got omitted. There is actually a setting for setting the alpha value for the cover individually too, but its not .ini/properties page configurable yet.

[shaneh]

@Jase912: You probably want the text in the right aligned column too. Just copy this toaster.ini into you winamp directory overwriting the old one. Be sure to close winamp first and rename it to .ini.

[adam_tomlinson]

That would be great, cheers mate.

[Jase912]

weird there is no toaster.ini in the plugins directory :S

and that did nothing still looks ugly and the fonts yuk... i dunno somhing is wrong here :S

[shaneh]

Into your winamp directory, not plugins directory. where winamp.exe is stored...

[JerryJ]

This plugin is awesome. I don't really use the popups, but its great for MSN7 .

I'd just like to configure it so it doesn't display any pop-ups, but it just sets the MSN status...

Is this possible?

[Jase912]

ok that helped, now i need to know where to put the cd covers, and where to get them.

[shaneh]

@JerryJ: Cool, you can quite easily disable the toasts if you want. You can just have the popups on hot keys only if you want too.

Toaster really isnt as 'bloated' as it might appear, it is written in mostly stragight C, and I have optimised it as much as possible. If you aren't using a particular feature Toaster takes any shortcuts it can to avoid running any unnecessary code.

@JAse912: Try getting the 0.6 version of Toaster:
http://www.winamp.com/user/view.php?...ow=submissions
And reading the gen_toaster.htm that is installed. It should help a fair bit. There is also a Toaster 0.5 thread in this forum with a bit of help.

[JerryJ]

Originally posted by shaneh
@JerryJ: Cool, you can quite easily disable the toasts if you want. You can just have the popups on hot keys only if you want too.

Toaster really isnt as 'bloated' as it might appear, it is written in mostly stragight C, and I have optimised it as much as possible. If you aren't using a particular feature Toaster takes any shortcuts it can to avoid running any unnecessary code.

@JAse912: Try getting the 0.6 version of Toaster:
http://www.winamp.com/user/view.php?...ow=submissions
And reading the gen_toaster.htm that is installed. It should help a fair bit. There is also a Toaster 0.5 thread in this forum with a bit of help.

Thanx, awesome plugin!

[Bladerunner]

Awesome, works perfectly.

[Maffeww]

hey , fekin great plugin , is there a way i can make it so when it says the song im playing , it says the artist and then the song instead of the other way round ?


Cheers