SKG Jukebox Update. Limited Beta Test

[BadMouth]

Got a chance to do some testing on my Windows 7 laptop this evening.
I need to catch up on the comments and try it on the Vista & XP computers before I say too much.
Overall, not experiencing any real issues so far.

On the short list for now:

+1 on the scrolling.  Disabling the animation and just having the albums change in place would be a nice option.

I had a couple albums that the correct album art wouldn't come up for, possibly due to wording of the album title or there being many similar albums, i.e. Best of Johnny Cash (There are a half dozen different ones, the correct album art for "The Original Best Of" would not come up ).  It would be nice to be able to manually enter search terms for the album art if the correct one doesn't come up.

I still have to do some maintenance on the collection and transfer the cleaned up version to the other two computers before I can do more testing.
I'll try and get it done this coming week.

[egosbar]

hey skeptikal whats going on havent had any news from you for a while , hope your xmas was good etc
really waiting for an update with the animation on scrolling turned off so i can use the software , at the moment i just cant the scrolling seems very slow now

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys. Still here, and still checking Just been super busy, was out of town for 2 weeks during the holidays, and getting caught up at work. Right now, I'm working on the website, looking at hosting options, reading a Dummies book on site design, things like that. I'm still paying attention, so keep the comments coming. Once I get it finished and hosted, I'll make a new build, with an option to turn off animation, and other features, which will be the first public version. Anyone with exp in site design or can give me pointers as to which hosting service is best, feel free to chip in. I'm a fair programmer, but don't have much experience where the web stuff is concerned. Later.

[egosbar]

Hey guys. Still here, and still checking Just been super busy, was out of town for 2 weeks during the holidays, and getting caught up at work. Right now, I'm working on the website, looking at hosting options, reading a Dummies book on site design, things like that. I'm still paying attention, so keep the comments coming. Once I get it finished and hosted, I'll make a new build, with an option to turn off animation, and other features, which will be the first public version. Anyone with exp in site design or can give me pointers as to which hosting service is best, feel free to chip in. I'm a fair programmer, but don't have much experience where the web stuff is concerned. Later.

great mate looking forward to it as i really want skg to be operational on my jukebox , sorry cant help you with the web design i havent had any experience with that

[BadMouth]

How's the website coming?

I've tested latest version on the Windows 7 & Vista machines. 
Seems to work fine. 
Only came up with a couple minor things for your consideration:

> If you press the arrow to turn the page while you are viewing an individual album, it stays on the album view.  (It does turn the page underneath)
   Intuitively, I'd expect it to leave the album view when I do that.

> Listing the upcoming song titles in addition to the number is a great improvement.  I'm don't think numbers are even necessary.
   Just my $.02

I'll use it on the xp machine (my jukebox) this weekend.
I don't anticipate having any issues with it, but if I do, I'll let you know.

[egosbar]

How's the website coming?

I've tested latest version on the Windows 7 & Vista machines. 
Seems to work fine. 
Only came up with a couple minor things for your consideration:

> If you press the arrow to turn the page while you are viewing an individual album, it stays on the album view.  (It does turn the page underneath)
   Intuitively, I'd expect it to leave the album view when I do that.

> Listing the upcoming song titles in addition to the number is a great improvement.  I'm don't think numbers are even necessary.
   Just my $.02

i agree no need for track numbers in track list , i am having problems with scrolling are you having any , my scroll is slow and sticks , enough so i cant use the program as main software , still using skjuke until geek fixes it up , other then that everything is great

I'll use it on the xp machine (my jukebox) this weekend.
I don't anticipate having any issues with it, but if I do, I'll let you know.

[BadMouth]

i am having problems with scrolling are you having any , my scroll is slow and sticks , enough so i cant use the program as main software

I had those issues in the first build, but not the latest.  It could be that I just know it's limitations now and don't try to scroll so fast.

[BadMouth]

Had a couple issues on the xp machine.

The first one was caused by the old version not uninstalling completely.  I used add/remove programs, but it didn't delete the folder.
The first time it started up, it did not ask me for a path, so I went into the options to add a path.
The old path was already in there, but it wouldn't let me delete it.  So then I try to add a new path.
After selecting the folder, it froze up for a while while it was loading the jukebox, but it still didn't show the new path in the list, etc.
It took several minutes.
Not sure if you could add some type of little message window saying that it's loading the jukebox, please wait.
Right now, it just appears to the user that the path update didn't go through.

The other one is the problem egosbar had before where the music would just stop playing.  I left the jukebox playing with a full queue while I went to do some errands.  When I got back home, it wasn't playing and had stopped on the second album I put in.  It was sitting at 0:00 seconds on the current song.  I couldn't figure out what would have stopped it, so skipped to the next song and it worked fine.  About ten minutes later, it stopped again.  One song ended and the name of the next song popped up, but it never started playing and just sat there at 0:00.  I doubt it's relevant, but I had played the entire album on both of these.  I cleared the queue, added the same album back to the queue and it played all the way through fine.  It wouldn't be as big of an issue if there were a play/pause button on screen, but I usually don't have a keyboard hooked up to my jukebox unless I'm doing some kind of maintenance.

I'm not sure what's going on.  I didn't see any balloons or anything pop up where some other program or update might be interfering with it.  I don't have  a screen saver and the computer power scheme is "Always On".  I don't have any anti=virus software on that machine.  I haven't had any issues with anything interfering with my other jukebox program and it gets used for 4 or 5 hours straight a couple times a month.  To be honest, I only played 5 or 6 songs at a time when testing on the Vista & Win 7 machines, so I'm not sure that I wouldn't have had the same issue pop up on those had I used them for a longer period of time.

I think that's all I'm going to have for you this round.

[BadMouth]

SKG, I picked up on something last time the jukebox stopped playing.  It took a while before it did it again so I could verify it.

When it stopped playing, the track didn't begin and the time read 0:00 [7:07]
When I pressed play/pause to start it back up, the time changed to 0:00 [13:14] (correct for the track)
7:07 wasn't the length of the previous track either.

Not sure if it's any kind of clue to what is happening or not, but it's the only odd thing I've been able to correlate with the jukebox stopping.

EDIT:  Just happened again and did the same thing, went from 6:46 to 6:20 when I pressed play/pause.
          This is on my Vista computer btw, so it's not limited to xp.

[skepticalgeek]

Hey Badmouth. The reason that the directory isn't removed during uninstall is because there are files there that are not part of the original installation, like the config file, and the files for playlists and custom album lists. The Windows uninstall utility won't delete files that are not part of the original install. This is actually useful, because if you uninstall an old version, and install the new one, your config settings and playlists are not lost.

I've experienced the issue of the music no playing, but can't duplicate it consistently, so haven't been able to track it down. I'll work on it after the website is up. In the meantime, I've added an option to disable the sliding animation, as well as added the jukebox minimize function to the Options screen. Later.

[egosbar]

hey skeptikal , just bumping your thread to the top , hows the website going and the new build , really looking forward to testing it without the scrolling issues 

[skepticalgeek]

Hey ego.

Just registered the domain name and started work on the site this evening. Went with Yahoo web hosting. They offer a lot of tools to help build a site quickly, good rates, and no space or page number limits. I hope to have it active by next weekend. Once the site is up and running, I want to get started on my next project, the SKG Gamebox. This will be a multiple emulator frontend, with a UI similar to the juke. It will be written in C#, using Mono as a development tool. Like the juke, it will be open source, cross platform (Windows and Linux), and have a special netbook mode for smaller screens. Don't worry, I'll still be making improvements and fixes to the jukebox, but I at least want to start work on this. Any ideas you have on features, let me know. Later.

[egosbar]

Hey ego.

Just registered the domain name and started work on the site this evening. Went with Yahoo web hosting. They offer a lot of tools to help build a site quickly, good rates, and no space or page number limits. I hope to have it active by next weekend. Once the site is up and running, I want to get started on my next project, the SKG Gamebox. This will be a multiple emulator frontend, with a UI similar to the juke. It will be written in C#, using Mono as a development tool. Like the juke, it will be open source, cross platform (Windows and Linux), and have a special netbook mode for smaller screens. Don't worry, I'll still be making improvements and fixes to the jukebox, but I at least want to start work on this. Any ideas you have on features, let me know. Later.

ok mate no problems , was hoping that the juke would be operationable before you started too many projects , at the moment as ive said im at a standstill as the scrolling is just to buggy , hope you get back to the juke sooner rather then later , understand your busy but hope your not starting too many projects before making sure the juke is finished ie the game emulator sounds like a lot of work

will be keeping an eye out for the next skg juke update

regards

ego

[skepticalgeek]

Hey guys. Just a quick status update. I've been working on the website, hope to have it operational by Sunday night. If not then, Monday or Tuesday. Working out the final few glitches in the Linux version. Ended up having to build a system for deployment testing on. Ego, you will be happy to know that I have speeded up the scrolling. There is still some slowdown if your album art files are really large, unfortunately I can't do anything about that. Scaling down pictures to fit in a certain area is expensive, processor wise. There is also a Config option to turn scrolling off, if it is still too slow for you.

This will be my last post in this thread. When the web site is operational, I will post new threads announcing it in this forum, as well as Project Announcements, and Jukeboxes. Curiosity, does anyone know how I get my project added to the list of jukebox projects on this forum, and the wiki?

I'd like to thank all you testers for helping me with this, especially my boy Ego, who was very generous with both words of encouragement and ass kicking, in equal measure. You guys have been great.

[egosbar]

no problem mate , really looking forward to the next update and the site , been a pleasure