Toolbar Customizing (TRULY CUSTOMIZING)

[audio]

Hello, Martin,
it's been a long long time since I last have been here.

First of all, let me be honest: for me, 1by1 is so close to perfection that I don't even mind to update the software so often (shame on me ).

Despite that, you always manage to make the software even better while still keeping it light and simple. In the last few versions I've seen that you have successfully handled the wheel volume/tree scroll problem; you also managed to give some users a major gift be enabling the software to read ID3V2 images (that's major! how you were able to do it without increasing the size of the software significantly, I will never know...)

That being said, I must say there's only one last thing that have remained on "my wish list" for 1by1 over the years: The ability to enable and disable buttons on the toolbar.

As we have learned over time, customizing the toolbar appearance is fairly easy (as this topic well illustrates), but truly customizing the toolbar is a whole other story.

There's two "chapters" to that story:

(1) Being able to enable and disable individual buttons
- I believe some buttons are mandatory, so they can't ever be disabled (play/stop-resume/previous/next, for instance);
- Other buttons can easily be disabled, if the user wishes, mostly because:
* the user has no current use for that function;
* or this function can be more easily (in his opinion) be accessed by keyboard shortcuts or context menus (skip/reload/home/times, for instance);

(2) Having some very important functions available on the toolbar
- There are some functions in the program that never made it to the toolbar;
- While we all understand this is a programmer's choice and we do not have a say in it, it still would be very nice and magnanimous of you to allow us to have that (at least some of the more important functions).
- I, for one, have been asking for years now to be able to have the "Intro Scan" feature as a button in the toolbar; I use it all-the-time and, although I know there's a keyboard shortcut for it (ctrl+N), I've never been much of a keyboard-intensive user (I use the mouse way more than I use the keyboard - except when I'm writing a text, of course - and performing any keyboard shortcut operation always means "taking my hands off the mouse, typing the shortcut and then grabbing the mouse again" - not practical at all).
- Other users might have a need for other important functions on the toolbar, like "toggling on and off the big title view" or "open picture" (which has a logical but "very awkward for the hand" shortcut ctrl+shift+v) or "go to folder", for instance.
- We all know there are some other ways of accessing those functions, but being able to do so from the toolbar means at least two things:
* we can do them faster, being able to do with 1-click what would otherwise take 2 or 3 clicks with the context-menu.
* and, most importantly, we don't have to memorize the keyboard shortcut because the function is right there "in-our-faces", ready to be used.
- If you can do this, I promise I can come up and design a new toolbar version with the new buttons for every single toolbar available now.

Here's the prototype:

BEFORE/AFTER:


...and the "resulting" toolbar BEFORE/AFTER:






and also... some "OFFTOPIC Conversation":

[mpesch3]

Yes, something like this is planned:

- New Button "Main Menu" (I think some people still don't find it...)

Checkboxes for
- BigView
- Search
- Introscan
- LogView
- QuitAfterTrack/List
- Toggle Scrobble
- Favorites
- Open Picture (on your suggestion)
- Scan for times

Problem is that the first possible individual button is Scan for times. Otherwise I had to rewrite the complete thing, including the positions and lengths of the volume and position sliders, because they are placed in relation to the existing buttons (and separators!).

[Lesmo16]

[h4x9000]

I'd also love a button for Explore (ctrl-x).

[mpesch3]

Ok, custom buttons are enabled:
http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1_171a20101027.zip

At this time the new buttons are simply added to the right, old buttons are untouched.
May be other positions or a longer track bar are possible.

[audio]

[mpesch3]

Thanks audio.
Yes, current track background default color was wrong. By default it is
disabled and additionally has the list background color. It's fixed now.

Current alpha: http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1_171a20101027.zip

[audio]

Hi, Martin,
before I promised to give some more feedback by the end of the week, but I totally forgot this weekend was supposed to be voting holidays around here...

I have just arrived from a 16-hour drive from my home town and I must confess I don't really have the energy to stay up even for 15 more minutes...

Before I go I must say that I've been using 1by1 intensively and so far, there hasn't been any big problem; by the way, at least until I get used to this version, a simple glance of the new icons is enough to make me smile, so thank you for that!

I will try my best to write a more meaningful feedback tomorrow after work.