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IDEA: small plugin-toolbar (or similar) audio player in Windows Explorer

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skwire:
Welcome to the DonationCoder site, goldencut.

ANY feedback would be nice at this point - it's too complicated, it's impossible, it's been done already, it's stupid... anything... -goldencut (March 14, 2013, 03:38 PM)
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While I like your idea, what you're asking for is a lot more complicated than you might think.

First of all, anything you write is, technically, outside of Windows Explorer.  This mean that a developer will have to consider all the different versions of Windows Explorer (2000/XP/Vista/W7/W8 + 32/64-bit of each) along with all of their different capabilities, limitations and idiosyncrasies. Furthermore, the shell context menu has its own set of capabilities, limitations and idiosyncrasies to deal with across the different Windows versions as well.  It's a real mess.  

Let's say you decide to do this anyway.  Now you have to deal with the fact that your interface is separate from your playback engine which, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing.  However, in this case, you don't have access to the innards of the interface so you're forced to use an intermediary, i.e. a service, API calls, window messages, etc.  This can be very limiting and very frustrating to work with.  For what it's worth, I've written an audio player called Trout that some folks here at DC have come to like.  I could not imagine trying to write such a player without designing, and having full access to the user interface code, myself.

I hope this made some semblance of sense.  =]

skwire:
You are probably looking for a modern version of CustomBar.
Sadly, it was not really updated for the new millennium...

$20 http://www.custombar.net/
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=6499.0
 (see attachment in previous post)
-Curt (March 14, 2013, 06:19 PM)
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I could easily code a small, independent bar that could control Winamp or any audio player that incorporates the Winamp API.  Trout, AIMP, & Foobar (with a plugin) come to mind.

tomos:
Nobody else would like to just browse through their music collection and play a track when they find a one they like, right there, without starting any snazzy players etc?
-goldencut (March 14, 2013, 03:38 PM)
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I'd love that, but I dont use windows explorer...
Using a small player as the default mp3 file-opener could be an answer. One that'll automatically clear the current playlist and play the double-clicked file (I tried a couple and gave up/got distracted by something else then :-[)

Directory Opus file manager will play an mp3 file in the viewer.
I've never tried it till now tbh so cant really say much about it but seems to work very well:

IDEA: small plugin-toolbar (or similar) audio player in Windows Explorer

goldencut:
Thanks for all the feedback and let me address some of the points mentioned.
Most of the audio players I've used have had some form of minimal control interface - for example XMPlay (http://support.xmplay.com/), 1by1 (http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1.html), Apollo (http://apollo.capacala.com/), Snackamp (http://snackamp.sourceforge.net/) and Trout by DC's very own Skwire has two! Also the classic, Winamp, had minibar mode; in general, many players out there stay out of your way nicely - old but good STP (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Audio-Players/STP-MP3-Player.shtml), TrayPLay (http://chime.tv/products/trayplay.shtml) and probably many others I have forgotten.
So there is a lot to choose from and they all do the 'stay-out-of-your-way' thing very well. But they all lack basic things like sorting my collection based on file (modification) date and they duplicate many things Windows Explorer can do maybe even better and users have already accustomed to using. I have accumulated over the years hundreds of gigabytes of music and as the filesystem actually IS a database it seems redundant loading all this info into players database that then also occupies my disk space, the database also needs to be updated and the player still won't recognize when and if I have downloaded some new (free! like http://www.ektoplazm.com/) music. Player interfaces are often not native Windows and they also occupy screen real-estate, memory etc.
So this idea of player integrated (at least by it's control interface) into Windows XP explorer have slowly creeped into my head. It should be no hack, IMO, so no interface-hooking. What got me thinking it was possible was that I have installed some Windows Explorer add-on toolbars, lastly Explorer Breadcrumbs (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/minimalist-explorer-breadcrumbs-for-windows-xp/) which made me think that there is a legit way to add toolbars to Explorer. This is also explained some here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/jj673982%28v=vs.85%29.aspx , http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc144095%28VS.85%29.aspx#unknown_73276 , http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250436%28v=vs.85%29.aspx to mention few. I just can't program (I've tried repeatedly, I blame the genes ;) so I'm not sure how difficult those things, explained there, are, but it seems there is a legit interface to do it in Explorer. Windows XP Explorer, that is, mainly. Because I think XP is still the best, most efficient, stable i.e. usable Windows there is. Also, I tend to get overly attached to some hardware, sometimes, so I need to use older (but still modern) OS's.
Other way to approach it maybe is to use just links/shortcuts and a player that allows itself to be controlled by executing control commands with it's executable. There are programs out there that do it, Mplayer (at least in Linux), maybe also VLC? But they both are overkill for this. Optimal would be a command line or (optionally) hidden-interface audio player that allows itself to be controlled with command line switches and would be able to output Windows shortcut files to files it is playing.
I stop now. Probably TL;DR already...

BR,
G.

tomos:
^reminds me of the struggles I have between filemanagers and dedicated image viewers, both with different weaknesses and strengths...

FWIW I just wanted to say that the Dopus solution will play the file only so long as the file has focus. Obviously one could open a new window and work in that. But not really what you had in mind.

But wondering would this be a stumbling block in explorer as well - IIUC you want it to integrate directly with explorer initially, but you then want it to stick to that folder - and ignore whatever you're now doing in explorer...

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