Blog: Windows Media Player, WC4 stat features

from WinCustomize Forums

The Windows Media Player team still just doesn't get it.  Or maybe they get it but their managers don't. I'm playing around with Windows Media Player 10 tech beta and it still has the basic flaws that every skinnable version of media player has had: It can't decide what it wants to be.

Is it a regular Windows app or a custom one? Wow, two title bars on one app. And it's still confusing to a dumb guy like me how to actually the skin. It should be way more obvious and those skins should affect the main app as well.

I keep finding myself back with iTunes even though it's technically not skinnable because at least it knows what it is. And as a practical matter though, it IS skinnable. 

If you have the DesktopX 2.2 beta (available to those who have Object Desktop) just download the widget and you can just run it as a regular program.  This is the part of DesktopX Stardock needs to really beat into people widgets don't have to be run as part of the DesktopX environment.  You can install DesktopX and NEVER run it. You can just load up widgets like any other program. The widget infrastructure in DesktopX is pretty ingenious, it works basically as if you installed an OS upgrade framework. It's more akin to the .NET framework except it's much smaller and more targeted and has no overhead and it doesn't throw anything into your Windows directories. It's very self-contained. That will be the drum we'll be beating loudly when DesktopX 2.2 comes out.  DesktopX widgets are EXEs. You run them like any other program.

Meanwhile the WinCustomize V4 stuff is coming along.  At launch, each WinCustomize subscribers will be able to activate a home page. Amongst all the other goodies such as being able to upload personal images (albums) the site will track all kinds of stuff for users.  Eventually Object Desktop users will also be able to activate home pages once we roll it out (i.e. having a WinCustomize domain will become part of the benefits for having an Object Desktop subscription as well but at first it'll be available only for WC subscribers).  WinCustomize subscribers will get personal libraries to upload many more personal images. 

Here are some of the incidentals:

Statistics to be displayed for users:

  • Downloads Total # (rank) Along with an itemization of each section they have something in (if 0 then don’t list)

  • Article Points (rank)

  • Tutorial points (rank) (tutorials being just a particular category of article)

  • Forum Points (rank) (Forums being a subset of the articles : General + OS Customization + Personal Computing

  • Itemization of Forums (and rank)

  • Skin Comments # (rank)

  • Average Rating (in stars) [Rank] (1 to 1.5 stars = “Harsh Critic” 2 stars to 3.5 stars “Reasonable Critic” 4 stars to 5 stars “Easy critic”

  • Visitors to Home Page (rank)

  • Number of Sites referring to

  • Number of sites referring to articles # (rank)

  • Number of referrals to all articles total # (rank)

Medals/AWARDS:

  • Top 50,10,3,2,1 Skinner in Downloads

  • Top 50,10,3,2,1 Skinner in WC downloads

  • Top 50,10,3,2,1 Article Points

  • WinCustomize Subscriber

  • Top 10,3,2,1 Commenter

  • Top 3 in various categories in downloads

  • Top 10,3,2,1 in tutorials

  • Top 10,3,2,1 in home page visitors

  • Top 10,3,2,1 in subscribers

  • Top  10,3,2,1 in referring sites

  • Top 10,3,2,1 in referras

  • Medals: yearling (1 year), veteran (2 years), Elder (3 years or more)

  • Skinner: Has total downloads >1000 on skins.

  • Featured Skinner: Has had skin featured.

In posts in forums or anywhere else their name shows up, IF they have a medal, of any kind, a single small 16x16 icon shows up with a link that says “Awards” that when clicked on takes you to an Awards page.

Basically we will be doing a lot to try to give kudos to people who contribute to the community.  As you can imagine, all these statistics and other technologies will require a lot of horse power. Which is why subscribers will get first crack at using all this and why we're doing it all in .NET.  The development team has come up with a sort of multithreaded architecture for WinCustomize 4's .NET portions.  For instance,  normally when something gets uploaded or changed you have to wait for everything to be saved before continuing.  Now, the site will come back to you instantly while it does its work in the background.  We won't have the forums in .NET right away but that'll be where you'll see the benefit the most.  Well, that's not really true, the biggest places you'll see it is in commenting on skins.

You'll notice that there's a lot of kudos for people who comment on skins.  Those will come in the form of commenting points.  Moderators will have the ability to tweak those points (i.e. if someone is spamming the system we'll be able to tweak it or if someone leaves really high quality comments we can boost their points too but in either case it'll only be in extreme cases, we won't generally be touching points ourselves but rather letting the system do its job).

The look of the site is going to be totally different than it is today (and that screenshot isn't necessarily what it will look like).  Paul Boyer and the rest of the Stardock graphics design team are going to mockup what they imagine the perfect steam-lined but aesthetically pleasing looking content intensive site would look like and then the coders will run with it. BTW, for those who made it this far, as a little sneak peek, IconX is available.

Meanwhile, in the personal tech support area, in IE, my edit menu item is grayed out even though I use Front Page as my editor. No idea why it's no longer working but definitely very annoying. If anyone has any ideas (and I've checked in tools-options and Front Page is associated) comment here please.

16,658 views 30 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Wow! Talk about having stats!
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I hate windows Media Player, with unmitigated passion.
It hijacks all your media extension, defaults to licenses to media files,
unless you go and disable them. If you assign another Media Player to take over and extension, it will not f*&%ing let go unless you manually go into the file types box and uncheck them, totally negating the "open with" overide context menu. Not to mention the less than par, mp3 conversion rate. All this crap and then the skinning is pandered as a sugar coating to get the hapless Consumer to buy into the DRM crap and featues MS, has built into it. It's a Damn Joke if you ask me.
One of the Major reasons, I am no longer @ MS, is because of Windows Media Player. They always have focus group meetings, and technology discussions, and Depts' get together and go over Dev and discuss the Tech, and ask for imput.... Never... Never say that the Tech is ripping off WinAmp, well not in a company meeting, and Never.. Never.. State how DRM silently enabled by being buried in Prefferences, is Bad for the Consumer, and Never... Never... Mention how MP3 crap bit rate enclosed in said Product in not to customers advantage over MS Codecs.. But most of all there is the silent understanding that any of said liceses for music stored on a persons machine, was only going to be allowed to be tranffered 3 times, and was going to be have to be paid for as pay support after the first instance. Most of the Dept's wanted to opt for no ability to transffer the licenes as all. So Never.. Never.. Say in a meeting how the Consumer owns their licenses, and should not be hindered in moving them or their files, or that they should be tied to the OPSYS.
If you do say these things, then within several short days, you will be FIRED!

Sorry but that is my major sore spot. Like I said I hate the Media Player.

As to the other stuff in Brads' article.... Woot!!!
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Unfortunately, the anger is sometimes for being corp politically inept.
But I still do not like Media Player, do not get me wrong... Love the skinning of it. It is beautiful some of the work that is done for it.
I've always been a Dummy when it comes to Office niceties, politically.
Great Worker and Gung Ho, but Dumb as a Rock, to schmoozing. HAHA!!
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Before the WinCustomize v4 .NET site goes live, could you be sure and have a QA guy hit it up with Opera 7.5.

It's not as popular as IE, but it is a widely used and respected browser. It would suck beyond compare to have to go elsewhere for skinz.

Thanks Guys,

Syonin
(Aka: The Grumpy Old Man)
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
You can get your edit button back simply by cleaning out your temporary internet files. Our webmaster ran into that problem before once.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
About the Media Player 10-BETA.

I agree to the crapiness, i only use to impress mates with the skins i make...
However i dont have so much hate against it, its just that MS are trying so hard and getting nowhere.
I have a site (sourceone.cjb.com) Blogsite: (demonpost.blogspot.com) and as i tried to explain, there are still problems with the old mp, as a matter of fact i made a free program, to make it easier for users, but thats not too good either.
With all due respect MS are a big company, but they are money grabbing gits, they sued linux earlier this year, and they want us to pay for Windows, by the shed load, then buy Plus! msn Premium and what other crap they want to pile up on us...were not gulliable or nieve...

MP is better than most of these media players...and a lot better the QT, but all the same.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
well Brendan before you go writing Microsoft off with regards to "not getting anywhere" read some stats. The last Nielsen/Net Ratings report i read had Windows Media Player as the most used internet application. It beat out AOL AIM, Real Player and ICQ. So while they still need some improvements like 8-bit alpha masks they are still number one. Doesn't hurt that WMP is on every copy of Windows. But i'm not complaining. Means it's easier to use our skins. Don't even get me started on the appearance of WMP 10 - They could (should) have come to us -)
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Brendan: if you get a chance to see the movie 'The Corporation' you ought to. It will explain in great detail the nature of corporations. It explains a lot. Good movie.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I would like to see the default skin for WMP done by "The Skins Factory"
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
i havn't used media player 10 but, i can speak for 9.. sorry if this is long-winded i'm working on my first cup of coffee for the day. it takes 3 to get me to my norm.

this is my 2c blog on WMP. i can't understand why people trash it.. i use it here at work, and i don't use it at home only because of - amoung things listed below - i prefer itunes' sharing capabilities.

i've always loved WMP. it has a great library, a wonderful set of features, and the windows media audio encoding is fantastic. music is everything to me and i've spent a long time trying different file types and players.. set bit rates, variable bit rates, lossless. player performance, extra bells and whistles.. mp3, wma, aac, org, wav..and some of the experimental crap from Creative Labs in between. i rank windows MP, and the WMA audio format, as a combination with great clarity verses resources.

i don't, however, use it anymore. that is because the only real problem i have with it happens to be a big problem .. it is the extreme limited boundries of subscribing onesself to a WMA file.. you can't play it in an mp3-ready car stereo or cd player, you can't put it on an ipod or sony device, and you can't play it in other audio players as easily as windows media player. that is- in my average joe computer user opinion - the only flaw. likewise - you run into this same problem if you subscribe yourself to AAC format, or roxio's format, or son'ys format. unless of course you have an ipod or walkman. so this arguement is really no different than being in any other company's realm. it is not a microsoft-only phenomenon.

as for a player, it does nothing different than a player from roxio or apple, or real.. yes it will default all of your audio formats to its own player. because it is designed to be a BUILT-IN, easy to use player for windows.. internet explorer is the same way with the internet! safari is the same way.. quicktime is the same way. so some new kid who just got his first computer can double click an audio file and not have to worry about what program is going to fight over it's rights. apple has quicktime. windows has media player. if you install another program, media player freely gives up the rights. you can also manually (and easily, by using the windows help system) set your computer to use only non-microsoft programs.. another shot down arguement people have that windows is completely totolitarian microsoft. it is designed that way because microsoft has been getting sued by small companys on the grounds that they can't compete with a built-in windows player. because real can't make a good enough product for people to notice, they've successfully gotten the EU to ban microsoft from BUNDLEING media player in windows.

media player 9 lacks in overall features compared to something like itunes (which has crossfading and smart playlists and such) but as for resources, ease of use, and sound quality - you have to step outside the box and realize that it is in fact a good player. it uses audio protection - but it asks you on first-use whether you want to enable or disable it - so i don't see how that is a hidden problem, either.

i do agree completely with brad tho - it doens't know what it's face is. the double toolbar always comes out of nowhere, it looks foogled when winfx tries to shadow it, and so on.

ok i'm done.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
as for widgets...

i tried that once and was immediately dissatisfied. it could have been a fluke in the particular objects i was using, but they were resource monsters.. spacifcally, these shortcuts for dictionary.com, google, and thesourus, and a clock. since i wanted icon effects also, it was easier just to have desktop running than to have all of these indibidual items in my start folder, hogging my system tray, and slowing down my desktop drawing by being loaded, individual programs. that is the purpose of their nature, to be free standing, but it was working against me.

i will, however, give them another shot on the new release to see if it was just a bug.

i don't however, really think they are as innovative as they could possibly be. for example, you need desktop x.. it doesn't have to be running, but you need to have it. i would prefer to see a cheaper, more streamlined alternative to download and have on your machine for people who don't want to hold the lion in the cage by having the immensely powerful desktop x installed but not being used. this would be easier for people not .. like us.. (odnt fanatics ). if such a streamlined option does exist, i think it needs to be promoted more.. for the non skinaholic.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
hehe...A bit off topic but I couldn't help but notice "DANNY ELFMAN" in the third picture of Frogboy's post report. He's my favorite film music composer. Frogboy, you like his music, too?
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I do not like Windows Media Player 9. I much prefer MusicMatch Jukebox Plus 9.0. It may not get skinned as much but it's more fuctionable than WMP9 is!
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
GREAT!!

Now all you have to do is make it work and I will be so happy!!!

Oh and as far as WMP. I like it because of the skins... like Catwoman and Alienware skins. that is when I use it, but otherwise I mostly play on WinAmp.
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Give me Quintessential Player http://www.quinnware.com any day
Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
That's a nice looking media player alexan, thanks for the link. But I'm still gonna use wmp as my default... You rock TSF!!!
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
There you go mentioning .NET and here I am again, the .NET evangelist. Please, please, please, make the OD+ and other SDKs accessible from the .NET platform. That would rock. You would see an explosion of docklets.

Please.
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Has that standalone IconX the ability to have different sized icons? One Screenshot looks like it could be, but in the free download version, it is not possible.
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
LesToreados...yes, You can change the size of the icon with IconX. Color, Shading, and Fonts/font colors also
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
one other thing that kills me with WMP.. it doesn't burn cds without 2 second gaps. evil!

ah yes. i found the cross fading.. hehe.. forgot about that.
Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I meant, that for Example, the My Computer Icon is 64 pixel, the recycle bin is 80 pixel and all others are 32 pixel in size.
I know, that I can change the size of all icons, but I want to change it for each icon separately.
Reply #25 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Back to WMP, i use WMP10 for its skins, i like alienware and combat flight sim...but Windows default skin is a bit primitive, not that i could do better, but i have seen better skins by normal people on the internet...while WMP team has loads of people on one skin...
...I use WMP because its there, easy and normally reliable, prefer 9 series...but never mind.