themarty wrote:

Command-W works. But no, the other options are not available. No Cancel/OK buttons, the window "close box" red dot is grayed out. And now that I think about it, this seems to be an Original Bug that I also never tried Command-W with way back when

New beta version:

http://devshed.excudo.net/xpi/rpt_2.0.0_beta3.xpi

This should fix the problem of the album-info spilling over into the next section in FF 3.x

ScottFromWyoming wrote:
How strange. Do you know if it worked in previous versions for you?

There should be four ways to close the window:
1. By clicking the OK button. This will also save any changes you have made
2. By clicking the Cancel button. This will also discard any changes you have made
3. By clicking the OS-native close button. On a windows machine that means clicking the little X on the top-right of the window. On a mac - i think - it is a red (round) button on the top left (with possibly an x inside)
4. By using the OS-native short cut for closing windows. On a windows machine that is ALT+F4. On a mac - i think - it is Command-W

I'm not too sure about the mac info i gave though; I rarely work with them.

Anyways, all of these options should work. Can you let me know which ones are available for you and what happens when you try to use them?

themarty wrote:

Time for a new one? Mac 10.5 when I pull up the "Options" there's no close window button. I can minimize it but not make it go away.

hobbitt, you were completely right about the colours :-)
i just realized that by fixing the layout bug (show/hide elements) i also fixed the colour bug and that's why i couldn't reproduce it anymore. When the preference/options-window closes, all preferences are updated in a chain-like matter which got broken at the point where it should show/hide elements. The colours were the next one in line :-) So, it's a confirmed and fixed!

I've also found a work-around for the contents spilling over into the next section. Later today i will upload a new version and post the link here. With that, all current bugs are fixed i think.

I downloaded the beta2 version and both the "Show elements" and "Color options" problems are fixed for me.  (Yeah, I know, you didn't "fix" the color thing.  We'll chalk that one up to user error...)

I'm a happy camper.  Thanks for your work!

K,

Bugs:
the album info in the center section spills over into the song info in the bottom section	I can confirm this one now. This is probably a bug in the new firefox branch for which i'll have to find a work-around. Don't have one yet, but i will.. :-)
The AutoRefresh option was not set on restart, even though the Options box showed it was still selected.	I'm gonna leave it to not reproducable for now.
The default color option was Standard (Use FF). However, the Tool Bar looked like it was displayed in Greyish RP Colors. <..> Right now, the option is set to "Standard" but the display is using the Greyish RP colors.	I've tried this on several computers using different versions of windows and FF, but i haven't been able to reproduce this unfortunately :( When you select Standard, close firefox and start it up again it shows the greyish rp colours; Q: what does the preference (options) window tell you? that you have selected the greyish rp-colours or the Standard colours?
All the elements were still present even though the Options box showed them deselected.	Confirmed! I have fixed this in my current dev-version, see download-link below.
Improvements:
RP Songinfo in new screen / preference for how to open links	I will give it some more thought and maybe wait what other users have to say on this matter. My thoughts at this moment are to introduce the CTRL-key (which will make them open in a new tab when you click a link/option), since that is also how it works in FF when you view a normal webpage and it doesn't require a new preference.
How about an option "Set AutoRefresh on at restart", with three choices: Never, Always, Last.	I would like to keep the preferences to a minimum and keep the gui as intuitive as possible. But if more people think this is a good option, i will definitely consider it!
Something I'd like to see is some indication in the search pull down of what the search target is. <..> I'm thinking along the lines of the FF search bar. It shows an icon for the selected search engine, and shows the name of the engine in the search box until you start typing a query.	Ah, i understand what you mean. That is not a bad suggestion at all! I will most likely implement this in the next release.

Yea, and i'm very happy with this list! :-)
I'm also a programmer and can only appreciate getting such a thorough review :-)

Here's a link to the latest version:
http://devshed.excudo.net/xpi/rpt_2.0.0_beta2.xpi

 themarty wrote: 
Be sure you have an album with a lot of text description when you check.  It looks like the text is not being "bounded" by the display box.

 
Yeah, it's a UI decision, which means pick a choice and it'll be wrong.   

Here's my use case:

• I'm at work, listening to RP, and a song comes on I'm interested in. 
• I click the LastFM button and get a new browser window (pop-up) with the song info.  Any work I'm doing in the browser remains intact because the new window doesn't disturb anything else. 
• I decide that I really dislike the song and want to see what other folk have said about it.  So I click the RP Song Info button.  The active tab/window in my browser is replaced by the RP page.  Maybe I can use the browser's back button to recover, maybe not, depending on what I was doing.  In any case, my work flow has been disrupted.

To be honest, I don't do this very often, so it's not that big a deal.

I wouldn't make a special key to change how things work. 

Maybe just open a new tab for both selections (if you can do that from the toolbar)?  This would protect any work in other tabs, and would keep the displayed data together with the active browser window rather than a separate browser instance.

I suppose you could add an option "Display toolbar pages in a window".  "Yes" says you open a new browser window; "No" says you open a new browser tab.  For consistency you might want to change the Options display to honor that choice, was well as any other pages opened by the toolbar.

 
As I said, I couldn't recreate the missed setting, so this is probably moot.

How about an option "Set AutoRefresh on at restart", with three choices: Never, Always, Last. 

• "Never" always turns off refresh when the browser is started. This would be the default value when the toolbar is installed.
  
• "Always" always turns it on. 
• "Last" says use the value from the last time the browser was shut down.

Since the Main and LRC channel refresh options are de-coupled, you'd probably want two settings in the Options box.

Note that you can change the auto refresh choice on the fly; this option is specifically about how to initialize the setting when the browser starts.

I'm ambivalent about all of this: once you decide whether to have auto refresh or not, you'll probably never muck with this setting again.  So spending time on rationalizing this option may not be worth it.

 
I see this always on FF restart.  Right now, the option is set to "Standard" but the display is using the Greyish RP colors. 

I can change the colors using the Options box, and the display does change correctly.  It's as if you were not checking the choice at startup and instead always select Greyish RP.

 
I'm thinking along the lines of the FF search bar.  It shows an icon for the selected search engine, and shows the name of the engine in the search box until you start typing a query.  Perhaps you can steal/borrow the FF layout?

(I'm a programmer, and design review is part of my job.  I happened to be in "analysis mode" when I saw the new toolbar release, so that's why you got this nit list.  But really, none of these is a big deal unless you're a commercial product.  I'm quite happy with the toolbar as it exists now!)

hobbitt wrote:First of all, thanks a lot for writing such a detailed description!!! This is really very helpfull!

Hmmm..it shouldn't do that. My guess is that this is a FF 3.0.4 issue and will try to verify that as soon as i have access to my laptop with that version of FF installed on it.

I see. I had never thought about it in that way. But you're right, it's not very consistent.
The reason i don't let it open in a popup is because they're too small. Also we decided in the past that it would be best to let everything open in the current window instead of a new tab, because a new tab is not always wanted and if you don't want it in the current window you can always open a new tab first (ctrl+t) and then click.
I could look into the possibility of opening links in a new tab when a certain key is pressed (ctrl for example)?

Good find! A look in the source-code showed this bug got introduced at the very last minute before i put it online
This will be fixed

Hmmm...i'm not sure that i understand you. Maybe it's because this preference is not completely clear. I must admit i had difficulties coming up with a good short description for this feature.
One of the users asked if 'Refresh Automatically' could be persistent. So, that it would still be selected when starting firefox, if it was already switched on the last time firefox was used. I decided to implement this, but also to make it optional. So, if the preference ('Auto Refresh at startup if On at shutdown') is not selected, the option 'Refresh Automatically' will never be selected when firefox is started. When the preference ís selected, it will only be selected at startup, if it was also selected when firefox was closed.
But, to make it even more complicated: this also depends on the 'channel' you've selected in the toolbar. Suppose the preference is switched on and you have selected Refresh Automatically for the Main channel, then switch to the LRC-channel where 'Refresh Automatically' is switched off and then close firefox, then the next time you start up firefox, the LRC channel will be shown in the toolbar and Refresh Automatically won't be selected, because it wasn't selected for the LRC at shutdown.

If you think this is too complicated or counter-intuitive i'm open for suggestions :-)

With initial display you mean the very first time you started FF, after installing the toolbar? Or always after (re)booting FF?

Well, those menu options don't really functions as options as such, but more as actions. In the past the search always defaulted to Google when you didn't selected a specific menu-option for performing the search and i decided to let the user choose this default through a preference.
But i guess it would be more user friendly if the text and/or icon of your preference stands out a little! Good suggestion!

No, i had no idea there was such a thing! Sounds like a good place for writing some documentation!

 themarty wrote: 
Firefox 3.0.4, Win XP2 fully patched.

Downloaded the XPI file to my desk top and dragged it into a FF window to install.  No problems.  Restarted FF to activate it.

Clicked "Load" while "My Heart Is Free" by Tift Merrit was playing.  The song title displayed correctly.

Clicked "Options / LastFM".  Got a pop-up window for Tift Merrit's song and the displayed info was correct.  However, the album info in the center section spilled over into the song info in the bottom section, making it difficult to read.

Clicked "Options / RP Info".  My current window (this reply) was replaced by the correct song info.  Based on the LastFM action, I expected a pop-up window.

Clicked "Options / Load Automatically".  The song title updated correctly, about every 30 seconds.

Set a vote value and clicked "Vote".  Verified the vote was set in the song page.

Selected "LRC" and verified the song info changed.  I didn't do any other LRC tests.

I went to FF "Tools / Add Ons", then selected the RP Tool Bar "options".

• I de-selected all the Show Elements options (main, search, and voting) and got a warning about no main menu.
• I set the default search to the RP Forums.
• I set the option to AutoRefresh at startup if On at shutdown.
• I didn't try changing the refresh interval.
• Restarted FF.
• All the elements were still present even though the Options box showed them deselected.
• Changing the search target worked; searches from the tool bar did go against the forums.  (I didn't try other targets.)
• The AutoRefresh option was not set on restart, even though the Options box showed it was still selected.  However, this didn't appear to always be true; subsequent restarts seemed to work correctly.
  

I experimented with the color option:

• The default color option was Standard (Use FF).  However, the Tool Bar looked like it was displayed in Greyish RP Colors.
• Selecting the 3 options did change the display correctly. The selected option was persistent across a FF restart, but the initial display was always Greyish RP.
• At some point, after playing with the color option, the search phrase box had a vertical line to the left of the down arrow. Also, when I tried to select one of the saved search strings using the down arrow, the string was never copied and the search box remained blank.  However, I can't recreate either problem now.
  

I verified that all of the page-related links in the Tool Bar menu worked.

I verified the MP3:192K link from the Tool Bar menu worked.  I didn't try any others.

I did not try the FOXAMP plugin link (I use FoxyTunes).

Something I'd like to see is some indication in the search pull down of what the search target is.  Right now the same icon and text is shown no matter what is selected.

Thanks for updating the Tool Bar.  I've missed it.

(BTW, did you know there is an unofficial Wiki for Radio Paradise?  http://sites.google.com/site/rpwiki/
Discussion thread here: http://www.radioparadise.com/content.php?name=Forums&file=showtopic&topic_id=13147
If you'd like to add a page about the Tool Bar, send me a PM and we'll get you set up.)

If anyone would like to test the 2.0.0 beta version, you can do so by clicking this link:

http://devshed.excudo.net/xpi/rpt_2.0.0_beta.xpi

Any feedback you have is welcome.
I plan on uploading this version in the last week of november to the mozilla addon website

The Last.fm connection sounds great! I'm an addict to "scrobbling" and related..
I'l be waiting for this version.. thanks in advance.

themarty wrote:

themarty wrote:
Ohhh- Bokey want.

I'm working hard on the 2.0 version at the moment and thought it would be nice to post a little teaser:



(click the image for a bigger version)

The Last FM Song Information will be available for every song playing on the Main or LRC channel and loads a whole lot of information about the band, album and track.
Personally i'm very excited about this new feature :-)

I replaced the experimental version 1.8 with a newer version (1.9)

https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addons/versions/4392#version-1.9

new features:
- The Vote Options now contain a link which takes you directly to the song info & comments page
- The song information now gets its info from an xml file which has speed up things a lot
- The whole loading-of-information mechanism has been optimized so the user-rating is only retrieved when necessary
- A link to the support-topic at RP has been added

fixes:
- The search function appeared to be buggy in FF 3.x; this has been fixed
- Sometimes the average rating didn't get displayed, due to a regex failure; this has been fixed.

Hopefully, this will get reviewed soon.
The next version will be 2.0.
Bill, if you think you can fix my last request concerning the user-rating, that would be really great. There's no immediate hurry as 2.0 will take me a few weeks to complete.
If you're too stuffed with other things, that's no problem; I already have the user-ratings working. But of course it would be great if i can use that new location as source since the call is much less heavy.

I'm also playing around a bit with getting data from last.fm. I plan on adding a Song-Information link to the Vote-bar (below that of the RP song-information) with which the last.fm data is retrieved for the current song and displayed. (summary, bio, artist image, album image, etc.). I have a prototype working and it looks very cool :-)

Furthermore, i'm planning on adding a history to the search-box and adding another option to the preferences with which you can make the toolbar start with auto-refresh for the main-list or the lrc-list.

If any of you have any other requests.... just drop me a line in this thread.

 themarty wrote:

 
FYI — this URL will always take you to the song info page for the current song: 

http://www.radioparadise.com/content.php?name=Music&file=songinfo&song_id=now

 Sadfish wrote: 

HTFAY Paul?  Nice to see you around.  How's the renovation coming along?

 themarty wrote: 
my hero! :)

Sadfish wrote:
I can confirm it's not working in Firefox 3.x
Since FF3 event bubbling can only be stopped by the stopPropgation method of an event apparently. So, in fact it did work, but because the event-bubble didn't get canceled it immediately activated the buttons action (which defaults to google) as well. When i changed the old method's name to that it worked again.

I will also fix the link

And i will also fix another bug i've spotted: it fails to load the Average Rating when it's not a decimal number.

And maybe i'll even add the link to the songinfo :-)

I will let you all know when version 1.9 is ready to be downloaded, in this topic

jadewahoo wrote:
That is not possible yet :-)
Sounds like a good feature!