SLAG-FS
Simple Little Audio Gadget
Full Screen Version
SLAG-FS is a modified version of SLAG, a free music-playing sidebar gadget for Windows Vista and Windows 7.
SLAG-FS is
a normal-sized sidebar gadget. But, when clicked, it expands to a full-screen display -- great for your
large-screen high-def
TV that's used as a computer monitor.
I designed this gadget for myself, but I'm making it available for others. There's a
decent chance that you might find some problems with it under certain conditions. If so, please let me
know so I can fix them.
Requirements:
Download it:
Right-click the link, and save the file. The file you download should be named
slagfs.gadget. Then double-click to install and display on your desktop.
Features:
Here's the SLAG-FS gadget in full-screen mode, displayed on a 46" Samsung
720p DLP TV. The computer is running Windows Vista, and connected to the TV
using DVI. Importanly, SLAG-FS was designed to be legible from across the
room. It can be controlled using a mouse or keyboard (see below). A wireless
keyboard is a great accessory.
-
In
normal mode, the gadget is small and compact -- but capable of filling the entire screen when
you want it to.
- In normal mode, the gadget displays album art (with cool transitions), or, display animated
visualizations. Click the red dot in the lower right corner to toggle.
- Click the album cover (or visualization), and the gadget expands to
full-screen mode. The space originally occupied by the gadget displays a
synchronized visualization.
- Adjust the volume with your mouse wheel. In full-screen mode you can
also use the + (plus) and - (minus) keys on your keyboard.
- The horizontal bar below the album cover displays the track's progress as it plays.
Click this bar to change the position (replay a section, or skip ahead in
the tracks).
- If you choose the 'Auto detect' option in the Options dialog, full-screen mode adjusts to your screen size automatically.
You can
specify a different size if you prefer.
- You can also adjust the text size displayed in full-screen mode. In the Options
dialog, specify a percent value (without the % sign). For example, to make
the text 15% larger, specify 15. To make the text 15% smaller, specify -15.
- Two special playlists are provided, named [SEARCH TITLE] and [SEARCH
ARTIST]. These playlists, when selected, prompt you for text to search for the title or artist field.
This is a handy way of generating a playlist on the fly. For example, you
can easily play
all tracks that have the word "rain" in their title.
- By default, full-screen mode displays album art for the next six tracks.
You can scroll backwards or forwards to see other covers. Click a cover to
play the corresponding track.
- You can also drag files or directories into the gadget to create a temporary playlist
and play the tracks instantly. For performance reasons, only the first 500
dragged files are included.
SLAG-FS Usage Tips:
- The key to this gadget is to create playlists in Windows Media Player.
The more playlists you create, the more flexible is your music listening.
You can create some great "auto playlists" in WMP. If you're not
familiar with this feature, spend a few minutes and learn how to do it.
- If you aren't seeing any animated visualizations, you must turn that
feature on in WMP. As far as I can tell, it's not possible to do it in an
embedded media player.
-
SLAG-FS is fairly color-neutral by design, but the artist name stands
out with a different color in full-screen view. If you don't like the
default orange color of the artist's name, use the Options dialog and
specify a different color. You can you use any of the standard
HTML color names,
or specify the color in RGB hex notation (for example, #FFA500). You can
also specify "random"
(no quotes) as the color, and you'll see a different color for each track.
And sometimes you get lucky and the color coordinates nicely with the album
cover.
- As with all sidebar gadgets, the "flyout" disappears when you activate
the desktop or any other application window. At first, I thought this would
be a negative feature. But as it turns out, the disappearing act is very
useful. It takes no additional effort to hide the music screen and do some
real work. And all it takes is one click to get back to full-screen mode.
- In full-screen view, click the artist name to search Google. Click the
track's title to open the directory that contains the current
track.
- In full-screen mode, double-click the album cover to move to the next
track.
- Full-screen mode supports the following keys: Right-arrow (next track), left-arrow (previous track), space bar
(toggles Play and Pause mode), PgUp and PgDn (scroll through album covers
for future and past tracks in the playlist).
- In full-screen mode click the Playlist button to display a list of
playlists. If you prefer to use the keyboard, press P to display the
Playlists, then press Alt+Down-arrow to expand the list. Use the Up-arrow
and Down-arrow keys to select the playlist, then press Enter. If you hit P
and change your mind, press Esc to hide the Playlist drop-down control.
- To toggle the display of upcoming album covers, click the little green
dot in the lower right corner of the full-screen display. You can also change
this setting in the Options dialog.
- If you use a multiple monitor setup, the automatic detection of screen
size is always based on your primary monitor. If you would like a
full-screen view on a different-sized monitor, you must specify the
dimensions manually.
- When you specify full-screen dimensions manually, you need to allow 157
horizontal pixels for the gadget itself, and 10 vertical pixels. So, to make
it fill a 1920 x 1200 screen precisely, specify 1763 x 1190 as the screen dimensions.
- SLAG-FS adjusts nicely for most monitor sizes. If you specify a custom
size, there's no guarantee that everything will be visible or look good. For
example, the album cover display at the bottom may be cut off if the screen
is much wider than it is tall.
- In order to display upcoming album covers, SHUFFLE mode is turned OFF
by this gadget. If you would like to hear the playlist tracks in random order,
activate Windows Media Player, select your playlist, right-click and specify
Shuffle. Like this:
- An exception to the "no shuffle" rule occurs with dragged files and
directories. The gadget randomizes the items and are dragged-and-dropped.
- Remember that SLAG-FS doesn't fill the entire screen -- only the non-sidebar
area.
Therefore, other sidebar gadgets can also be visible when SLAG_FS is in
full-screen mode.
- When going to full-screen mode, SLAG-FS may display the full-screen on
the wrong side of the gadget. If that happens, make sure that the gadget is
fully docked to the left or right side of your monitor. Or, use the Options
dialog to specify the Height and Width settings manually.
- To make full-screen mode cover up the Windows taskbar, right-click
the taskbar, choose Properties, and check the 'Auto hide the taskbar'
checkbox.
- If the full-screen view is totally messed up, check the settings in the
Options dialog. The gadget does minimal error checking, so it will dutifully
attempt to set the options you specify -- even if they cause the display to
be illegible.
Screen shots:
Here's how it looks as a normal sidebar gadget:
Click the album cover, and it fills the entire screen. This was originally
1680 x 1050, and it's shown here reduced in size. The space originally occupied by the gadget is
replaced by a miniature visualization display. Click the gadget to return to
normal.
Here's the Options panel:
Customization Example:
Here's an example of how you can customize the full-screen view for a more
compact display. In the Options dialog, I specified a Width of 380, and Height
of 200 (which is the gadget's height), and a Full-screen text size adjustment
factor of 40. I also turned off the 'Show upcoming album art' option. Here's the
actual size gadget in "full-screen" mode.
Contact:
Please report all problems. I can probably fix them. Email:
walkenbach@gmail.com
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