WBAmp & CClock with WB4
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 by grayhaze | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
I've already posted this in the newsgroups, but they seem to get very few visitors these days.
On my continuing quest to re-aquaint myself with the WindowBlinds skinning engine, I've been checking out my old skins with WB4. As all of my skins use both the WBAmp and CClock plugins, I was rather dismayed to see that neither seem to function correctly with WB4.
Firstly, with WBAmp, when creating a song title 'button' with an image background, all that seems to be displayed is a solid black box. The title doesn't even appear over the black. So on all of my skins there is now a horrible long black box where once there was a carefully skinned scrolling song title display!
Secondly, with CClock, the time display seems to only update when the mouse pointer is either moved over or clicked on some part of the window border. This can be seen by setting the clock to display seconds and the display update period to a small amount. Leave the window open and the mouse pointer stationary, and the time freezes. Move the mouse over the border, and the time updates.
What on earth has happened? These skins all used to function fine on older versions of WB, but now I'm finding all sorts of problems. It also makes it slightly pointless trying to make a skin with these features, as they are now practically useless.
Has anyone else noticed these problems? For reference, I've noticed the problem with the following skins - 'dinks', 'metalX' and 'tactile'. Can anyone else using WB4 with these skins confirm that it's not just my system?
[Message Edited]
On my continuing quest to re-aquaint myself with the WindowBlinds skinning engine, I've been checking out my old skins with WB4. As all of my skins use both the WBAmp and CClock plugins, I was rather dismayed to see that neither seem to function correctly with WB4.
Firstly, with WBAmp, when creating a song title 'button' with an image background, all that seems to be displayed is a solid black box. The title doesn't even appear over the black. So on all of my skins there is now a horrible long black box where once there was a carefully skinned scrolling song title display!
Secondly, with CClock, the time display seems to only update when the mouse pointer is either moved over or clicked on some part of the window border. This can be seen by setting the clock to display seconds and the display update period to a small amount. Leave the window open and the mouse pointer stationary, and the time freezes. Move the mouse over the border, and the time updates.
What on earth has happened? These skins all used to function fine on older versions of WB, but now I'm finding all sorts of problems. It also makes it slightly pointless trying to make a skin with these features, as they are now practically useless.
Has anyone else noticed these problems? For reference, I've noticed the problem with the following skins - 'dinks', 'metalX' and 'tactile'. Can anyone else using WB4 with these skins confirm that it's not just my system?
[Message Edited]
MadIce
Reply #2 Thursday, May 15, 2003 12:48 PM
Reply #2 Thursday, May 15, 2003 12:48 PM
It seems that WindowBlinds 4 did break the code of these plugins. I have reported the bugs and I hope that this bug will be fixed soon. It seems to happen with any version of CClock and WBAmp (past and present). At the moment there is nothing we can do but wait until a fix arrives.
Thanks for the report.
Thanks for the report.
grayhaze
Reply #3 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:29 PM
Reply #3 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:29 PM
I've spoken to Neil, and he agrees MadIce. Hopefully the WBAmp problem should be fixed in the next build of WindowBlinds, but the CClock problem is to do with the way it interfaces with WB on WinXP and needs to be fixed in the plugin itself.
grayhaze
Reply #4 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:38 PM
Reply #4 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:38 PM
In the meantime however, I think the 'rough estimate' clock still serves a good enough purpose to include in skins. 
MadIce
Reply #5 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:47 PM
Reply #5 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:47 PM
A weak point is that the plugins are included in the skin itself. That makes it virtually impossible to update plugins. A solution would be to have a central plugin folder, much like DXPLayer, ObjectBar and KeyboardLaunchPad. If WB did have such a folder then CClock could be updated and all skins would be fixed. But I don't see that happen anytime soon.
grayhaze
Reply #6 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:55 PM
Reply #6 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:55 PM
It's been a long, long time since CClock was last updated back in May 2000. I don't even know if the author is still around the WB community. So unless someone wants to code a new clock plugin, I think we're stuck with the problem on XP.
I agree that the 'centralized plugin folder' idea would work well. For the moment though it's not too big a deal to simply update the skin download with a new plugin should one come along.
I agree that the 'centralized plugin folder' idea would work well. For the moment though it's not too big a deal to simply update the skin download with a new plugin should one come along.
grayhaze
Reply #7 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:58 PM
Reply #7 Thursday, May 15, 2003 5:58 PM
I know I'm not alone in hoping a new WBAmp comes along soon with support for WinAmp 3, Windows Media Player and so on. With one plugin to control all of the popular players we could make these 'media controller' skins a lot more desirable to the MSStyles crowd.
MadIce
Reply #8 Thursday, May 15, 2003 8:41 PM
Reply #8 Thursday, May 15, 2003 8:41 PM
Sorry. Currently no support for WA3 and WMP has been planned.
If you want support for WA3 then try this http://www.winamp.com/components3/detail.jhtml?componentId=125421
RM-X should allow you to keep using plugins like WBAmp and DXPlayer. I am not sure it works correctly, because I didn't try it lately.
If you want support for WA3 then try this http://www.winamp.com/components3/detail.jhtml?componentId=125421
RM-X should allow you to keep using plugins like WBAmp and DXPlayer. I am not sure it works correctly, because I didn't try it lately.
MadIce
Reply #9 Thursday, May 15, 2003 10:16 PM
Reply #9 Thursday, May 15, 2003 10:16 PM
BTW: It looks like future versions of WA3 will use the WA2 IPC API. That means WBAmp and DXPlayer will be compatible with WA3 when such a version will be released at the end of the summer or sometime later. It looks like this is good news for plugins like WBAmp and DXPlayer. However, we have to wait a while and see what happens.
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Reply #1 Thursday, May 15, 2003 11:29 AM