Xion Community

WARNING:
This is a Beta Build. That means it has fixes and features that are NEW. It is also possible it has bugs that are NEW! If you are looking for stability, please don't expect this build to be perfectly stable. It may have issues. If on the other hand you are happy to try this build out and post any bugs back in this thread, then please do!

Download Installer Version:
r2 Studios Server -> http://www.r2.com.au/downloads/files/beta/qa-xion_v1.0b108.exe
OR
Xion Server -> http://xion.r2.com.au/download/beta/qa-xion_v1.0b108.exe

If you receive errors when running, install the VS2005 Runtimes
Download from Microsoft -> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&displaylang=en

Changelist:

• Added the ability to toggle Xion showing in the Taskbar. Option can be found in Configure Xion -> Settings -> Taskbar
  
• Converted Xion internals to Unicode. Xion now supports all language filenames (I.e. Russian Characters, Asian Characters, etc all now work)
  
• Added support for .M3U8, the Unicode version of .M3U in order to support saving of Unicode pathnames/Titles
  
• Fixed the Play/pause indicator button bug where it would flicker or not show correctly on some skins
  
• Fixed windows that weren't top-level windows from registering a snap rectangle
  
• Fixed Install Skin window crashing due to Unicode issues
  
• Fixed crossfading when switching to a netstream - Thanks pickle!
  
• Fixed slash (/) issue in Unicode file saving of .dats
  
• Fixed Playlist resizing when it was overlapping the pl_list psd item
  
• Added the ability to Refresh the Playlist by pressing F5
  
• Fixed the Title of the Playlist not updating when a new skin was loaded
  
• Added more intelligent loading when a .zip/.xsf is dragged onto the shimmer window, or the playlist window. Instead of loading the first .psd it finds, it will now search the .zip/.xsf for a skin that it knows it can support. If it fails, it will load the first one it finds
  
• Fixed the list of Drivers in the Output tab so that they are correctly mapped to the internal values. If you have 2-3 sound cards listed this will now function correctly.
  
• Added extra output options in the Output Tab. You can now Output as 32Bit/16Bit, Enable Software Mixing (instead of Hardware), and Output as Mono
  
• Fixed adding of filenames that weren't the same case as the registered file extension. I.e. MP3 instead of mp3
  
• Added initial Album Art support into the File Info Dialog. Loads .jpgs
  
• Fixed left and right borders not drawing correctly when offset from the edge of the skin - Thanks WinstonGFX!
  
• Modified the Playlist so that it loads Playlist.psd from Default.zip if a skin can't be found, instead of Default.psd from Default.zip
  
• Updated the Album Art loader and avoided OLELoadPicture which causes crashes on random jpgs.
  
• Added support for album art in layers. The new keyword is albumart. The current album art will be scaled and displayed on the layer if its available, otherwise the layer will hide itself
  
• Fixed ip resolving for auto update
  
• Added support for flipy for flipping the albumart layer image. Allows you to make vertical reflections
  
• Added support for reading the alpha channel for Album art layer, allowing you to fade the edges, one side, etc
  
• Fixed the Add URL window not accepting Cancel and OK keyboard shortcuts
  
• Made Shimmer use accelerators instead of a keydown
  
• Added display text when no album art is found in File Info Dialog
  
• Updated the Skin Chooser window so that when opening a skin pack, it will automatically load the playlist and main window. If you want to browse the skin pack before opening, hold shift down, or right click and choose View skin pack
  
• Modified the Install Skin process to automatically remove Read only flags from installed files and to delete the original file if it was in the Temporary directory
  
• Fixed Skin Browser confusing archives with single psds due to changes with auto loading
  
• Fixed loading of Single Interfaces from archives due to auto loading

If you find bugs specifically related to this build, please post them here instead of the Bug reporting forum. Any feedback positive or negative should also go in here, no new threads. This way all feedback, etc related to this build will be in the one place.


ABOUT THIS BUILD:

Thanks to those who have been testing the playlist to find bugs!

There are a bunch of new features in this build. Apparently with these changes, a lot of people will be using Xion from now on as their default player!

In particular Xion now supports loading Album art from jpgs in the same directory as the audio file. Use the layer name 'albumart'. If you want the album art to be flipped vertically, add 'flipy' to the layer name. This allows you to make mirrored images of the art if you want a reflection. The colour of the layer is unimportant, however the Alpha will affect the appearance of the final image.

Xion is also now 100% unicode! So everyone who's had problems adding files with non-english characters can now do so without issues! This also means that Tags that use Unicode are now also supported.

You'll have to make sure that if you want your playlists to properly support these characters, you'll have to save them as M3U8, the Unicode version of M3U.

Skinners please note: Depending on the font you use, some users may not be able to view their non-english character tags. The Default Xion skin now uses MS Shell Dlg as its font, which automatically gets converted to whichever font the User has on their system. This is generally a Unicode compatible font.

The Skin Chooser has also been updated so that it will automatically load a skin pack when you choose it. If you want to choose a specific skin before you load the pack, you can shift click, or right click and choose view skin pack.

Any questions or bugs related to this build should be posted here only!

Enjoy!

Cliff

Wow, great to see albumart in Xion!!!!!

of course I had to check it out at once.

works basically, but there are some bugs I experienced:

- the playlist is empty after colsing and reopening xion
- the skin used after reopening xion isn´t the last one chosen (but some kind of default - not the real default one- is used everytime)
- albumart shows only after (re-) adding a folder which has an albumart jpg, ALTHOUGH the song playing comes from a folder supporting album art. Maybe this is due to the empty playlist, because also the song playing isn´t listed there.
-albumart layer doesn´t show when reloading a skin
- albumart layer doesn´t respond propperly to commands. Sent you a simple skin with action_layer_switch as an example, Cliff.
- xion taskbar button: I can´t restore xion after minimizing, have to use the xion icon in the system tray
- the "button-above-button" problem is still present tested it with the skin I sent to you, Cliff, still not working.

All in all this build with album art supported is a big step forward for xion! :thumbsup:


.

and btw: is there a possibility to add a "please keep me logged in until I have finished anything I want to finish here, cause I can log out on my own, I don´t need a time-out" option to this site?

Looking good Cliff

couple of things I thought of

- Add ability to lock playlist to main player on snap so that when you move the main player the playlist follows too
- Ability to fetch album art from the net, you just know that is going to be next on the request list now album art has been added heheh


hmm crash on resizing playlist, although it was a silent crash, no logs to eventvwr either, just bombs out
where is the error handling logging during beta?

ok managed to crash it twice now but not exactly sure its reproducable with these steps

open playlist
resize it a few times, reposition it a few times, double click on the playlist title bar a few times (yea yea nothing happens), then goto resize it bigger and bang its gone just like cillit bang

also how about doing a minimize on dbl click of title bar? and dbl click to reset to previous size

ALAS Wrote:Wow, great to see albumart in Xion!!!!!

of course I had to check it out at once.

works basically, but there are some bugs I experienced:

- the playlist is empty after colsing and reopening xion.

Hmm I don't get this at all, is anyone else experiencing this?

ALAS Wrote:- the skin used after reopening xion isn´t the last one chosen (but some kind of default - not the real default one- is used everytime)

Is this for just the playlist? I haven't seen this occur either. Is it a particular skin? How did you load the skin?

ALAS Wrote:- albumart shows only after (re-) adding a folder which has an albumart jpg, ALTHOUGH the song playing comes from a folder supporting album art. Maybe this is due to the empty playlist, because also the song playing isn´t listed there.

Hmm, not sure what you mean here. If I jump between songs in the playlist, the Album art loads fine? Or do you mean if you restart Xion? Or refresh the window?

ALAS Wrote:-albumart layer doesn´t show when reloading a skin

Ah I think I've experienced this. It was only a minor bug if you reloaded a skin, so I didn't worry about it for this build.

ALAS Wrote:- albumart layer doesn´t respond propperly to commands. Sent you a simple skin with action_layer_switch as an example, Cliff.

Ah true. Currently it controls its visibility automatically. If there is no album art, it will hide itself. I'll make it so that skin designers have full control. The Visualisation layer does the same thing. If you disable the Visualisation plugin it hides the layer. Has no one noticed this?

ALAS Wrote:- xion taskbar button: I can´t restore xion after minimizing, have to use the xion icon in the system tray

Ah good point, I'll add a system menu to it as well, including close/restore/minimize.

ALAS Wrote:- the "button-above-button" problem is still present tested it with the skin I sent to you, Cliff, still not working.

You're kidding me Wow. I just checked it then, I must have screwed it up in the last couple of days again or something! It was totally fixed!

ALAS Wrote:All in all this build with album art supported is a big step forward for xion! :thumbsup:

Thanks!

Cliff

ALAS Wrote:and btw: is there a possibility to add a "please keep me logged in until I have finished anything I want to finish here, cause I can log out on my own, I don´t need a time-out" option to this site?

Hmm it should? I think it may expire after something like 3 months though? How often is it auto logging you out? Do you have cookies enabled?

Cliff

SLoB Wrote:- Add ability to lock playlist to main player on snap so that when you move the main player the playlist follows too

Yeah that's coming soon. Rather low priority for build 108 though, the major features are in, now I can start expanding them for build 109

SLoB Wrote:- Ability to fetch album art from the net, you just know that is going to be next on the request list now album art has been added heheh

We've discussed this before in the request forum. It will come, but I said one thing at a time. First disk, then tag, then net.

SLoB Wrote:hmm crash on resizing playlist, although it was a silent crash, no logs to eventvwr either, just bombs out
where is the error handling logging during beta?

Not sure, it should be reporting. Something may be broken due to Unicode changes. I'll have to do some more testing here to force a crash and see why its failing.

I can't get that problem here, has anyone else had this problem?

SLoB Wrote:also how about doing a minimize on dbl click of title bar? and dbl click to reset to previous size

I'm assuming you're talking about the playlist? If so, I guess I can allow double clicking to change a skin too and just change to a small version of the skin. I'm assuming you're meaning something like Winamp?

Cliff

yea playlist minimise Cliff, just use the top bar kind of thing

will try and see if i can narrow the steps to crash for playlist, there are no events logged even in eventviewer, just a silent crash/bomb

yea the other things were kind of related to the new features added and I know you will add them as they come, you just know that people will want more and more especially since the new features although some are somewhat transparent to some users but on the whole people will really appreciate the new additions/changes

How many more beta builds do you reckon we are away from another release version Cliff? or are you kind of making x amount of releases per year?

found a real easy way to reproduce the playlist crash

1. open playlist
2. resize diagonally from small to almost full screen
3. then reverse the size back to almost initial size approx 1/5 of screen

repeat steps 2 and 3 until it crashes, got to 3 lots of those 2 steps and it crashes, no warnings, nothing

also you can crash it even if you dont release the mouse button
it will crash if u let go of the mouse button before resizing
or even if u just keep the button down and resize and you get the dotted border line and resize it a few times, cillit bang eating playlist

so basically goto resize move to resize in and out still holding mouse down

btw I have 3 monitors here but this should not make any difference to the window size or being resized, its resized on the main monitor

well, first of all , strange but some of the problems are fixed after SEVERAL reinstallations of Xion. At my first post I had installed it 3 times. Now 5 times. The details:

Cliff Cawley Wrote:

ALAS Wrote:- the playlist is empty after colsing and reopening xion.

Hmm I don't get this at all, is anyone else experiencing this?

this bug still there. playlist - 0 files after reopening Xion
and: the path of my last addition of folders isn´t saved, so I have to browse again to it...

Cliff Cawley Wrote:

ALAS Wrote:- the skin used after reopening xion isn´t the last one chosen (but some kind of default - not the real default one- is used everytime)

Is this for just the playlist? I haven't seen this occur either. Is it a particular skin? How did you load the skin?

it was the main interface, but this is ok now...

Cliff Cawley Wrote:

ALAS Wrote:- albumart shows only after (re-) adding a folder which has an albumart jpg, ALTHOUGH the song playing comes from a folder supporting album art. Maybe this is due to the empty playlist, because also the song playing isn´t listed there.

Hmm, not sure what you mean here. If I jump between songs in the playlist, the Album art loads fine? Or do you mean if you restart Xion? Or refresh the window?

I meant after restart of Xion. Can´t check, if it works now, cause the playlist is empty after restart But albumart is displayed, though there is no song

Edit: just saw, that albumart is gone after refreshing the interface (F5)... comes back after playing the next song...

Cliff Cawley Wrote:

ALAS Wrote:- the "button-above-button" problem is still present tested it with the skin I sent to you, Cliff, still not working.

You're kidding me Wow. I just checked it then, I must have screwed it up in the last couple of days again or something! It was totally fixed!

... next build

Cliff Cawley Wrote:

ALAS Wrote:and btw: is there a possibility to add a "please keep me logged in until I have finished anything I want to finish here, cause I can log out on my own, I don´t need a time-out" option to this site?

Hmm it should? I think it may expire after something like 3 months though? How often is it auto logging you out? Do you have cookies enabled?

Cliff

it should? cookies are enabled. Does maybe my dsl-rooter cut the connection?

I have a grand announcement.

Ahem.

Xion build 108 beta is now officially confirmed to work on Windows 7 Beta 1.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v626/ ... titled.jpg

A note to you Vista people.

Install with 'Run As Administrator'

And START with 'Run As Administrator'

If you still have problems, open the Control Panel and navigate to Programs, and select 'Use an older program with this version of WIndows'. This will open a wizard. Use it to give Xion more access. That should clear all issues.

That wizard was actually what helped get Xion running in Windows 7, and after that it's been running exactly as good as the one i installed in XP. None of the weird errors people are reporting. However, the playlist didn't open on the first run. I'm not sure what caused it.

I also ran into a Unicode error which activated the 'send report' wizard, which contained huge dump files again. The error occured when it randomly chose a file with heavy japanese kanji written into it. Sadly i forgot what file it was.

Still, it's nice to see Xion can hold it's own even in the newest of OSes!

logokas, thanks for mentioning the Vista tip. In my case I also edited the shortcut permisions, which I sometimes forget to do.Now 108 seems okay.
xonenine

hey Cliff,

running on b108, wanted to mention the last.fm plugin.
Is it yet implemented,updated to fit the beta version ?

- Under Plugins Tab:

Code: Select All Code

Invalid Plugin: LastFMScrobbler.dll
Unable to load: Version 4 instead of 5

Other than that little thing, it seems that it's working just fine, tested & pretty neat so far, so just keep it up.

:thumbsup:

Sincerely,
roovel

roovel Wrote:hey Cliff,

running on b108, wanted to mention the last.fm plugin.
Is it yet implemented,updated to fit the beta version ?

- Under Plugins Tab:

Code: Select All Code

Invalid Plugin: LastFMScrobbler.dll
Unable to load: Version 4 instead of 5

Other than that little thing, it seems that it's working just fine, tested & pretty neat so far, so just keep it up.

:thumbsup:

Sincerely,
roovel

Hi roovel,

The plugins will be updated as soon as I release the next non-beta version. The plugins aren't backwards compatible, therefore if I release them now, they won't work for build 100. I'm cleaning up and stabilizing now so hopefully a new release will be soon.

Cliff