[gtn]

Tromoly4130: I used to get that problem - not anymore. Not sure why... The first time you start it acts like iTunes is *unloading* instead of loading. I wonder if the iTunesHelper service affects this. Try disabling in both your startup and services.msc.

A closely related problem I still get is after closing iTunes, I have to wait about 3-10 seconds before I can reopen it. I assume in this time iTunes & MP are unloading. Not a big issue for most, but when when developing skins I need to reload iTunes every other minute.

[iGo]

@gtn: I believe, that delay of iTunes shutdown happens if you have "Suppress the scripting warning message on" and any widget (like avedesk or konfab) is accessing iTunes. Cause if I close any of the widgets that access iTunes, iTunes shutdown faster (without delay).

I think, multi-plugin first force-hide the Scripting Warning Message or tell it to continue shutting down iTunes without showing up and then it closed the COM connections with whatever third application using iTunes and then it closes it finally. So that causes delay. Off course if you are using foobar passthrough, closing down foobar as well could add some time to it.

So, you should try closing any iTunes related widgets (or even remote controller app for iTunes is any) while developing skins... that way you should be able to unload-load iTunes faster... and that way, you would be more happy.. and we would get more nice skins from you..

[Tromoly4130]

@gtn: I have itunesHelper.exe disabled but iPodthingy.exe still runs, I'll have to end that and try it.

@localhost: what type of editor do you use to make MultiPlugin? I'd like to try making plugins for other programs that work similar to MP. And keep up the excellent work.

[gtn]

igo: No widgets running. "Suppress the scripting warning..." is off. No Foobar either. Maybe the delay is iTunes saving its settings. Unloading seems a fair bit faster after moving my iTunes folder from a USB2 hdd to a firewire hdd.

[iGo]

@gtn: hmmm... that's is really wierd, but like you said.. it could be reason of HDD access time for saving settings too. Cause after telling you about widget and suppress box thing, I did some more testing at my end too.. and I found it's unloading pretty much faster without widgets (2 sec vs 7 sec). So the HDD reason sounds more logical at this momment, since my data is on SATA drives I wouldn't know.

[localhost]

I don't think it's related to Multi-Plugin. iTunes backs up the database when it's being closed, and it takes a lot of time. it's really annoying when I test stuff on iTunes, but it's better than having the library corrupted somehow. I remember back in the times of iTunes 4.1 had my library corrupted once because of an iTunes crash.

widgets also increase the closing time, and the "suppress warning message" option doens't help with that. iTunes still takes 100% CPU usage for about 10 seconds after clicking OK in the script warning message, and I can't fix it unless I force iTunes to close and not let it backup the library.

[Tromoly4130]

Localhost: what programing language did you use to create Multi-Plugin?

[localhost]

Tromoly4130 said:

Localhost: what programing language did you use to create Multi-Plugin?

C++ with MFC.

Edit: I've just read your previous comment, I use MS Visual Studio.
To create plugins like this, you need to learn Windows API hooking. that way you can redirect the API calls of a program to your own functions, and do different things. there are many sites about this, google it. one file I found very useful is "Hooking Windows API.txt" found on eMule.

[Tromoly4130]

Alright, that sounds like fun. Thanks for the info, localhost.

[haibane]

localhost, thanks for the plugin.
I find an open source, cross-platform visualizer plugin for itunes called VizKit, and the author also made a dll version called "Cover Version". But the sad thing about it is that it(dll version) only works on iTunes 4.2(will crash higher version of iTunes).

What I really like is the CoverArt(album art) texture generation, which means I can enjoy visualizations other than random colors.

Is it possible to integrate this(album art as visualization) into Multi-plugins?

-----------------------------------------------------
Cover Version http://www.imagomat.de/coverversion/

VizKit http://www.imagomat.de/vizkit/
http://vizkit.sourceforge.net/

-----------------------------------------------------

(Maybe I am too demanding, sorry!)

[Disorientated]

Tehee, iTunes rocks.

[ffpsx]

I second halibane's idea for adding the cover visualizer to multiplugin. That would be a awesome addition to this plugin!

localhost, I like that your plugin outputs the currently playing tracks information and album art. However, could you put together some HTML or something that people can use to display their currently playing song info and art online? For example, in forum signitures or just on our own websites.

[Soniku]

this is for itunes 4.9 correct? Just wanna make sure

[Kairos]

I just found this plugin and it is great. I'm trying to embed itunes into an application and was wondering if there was a minimalist skin. I want to get rid of the buttons on the top and progress bar. Is this possible? Ideally I just want the visualization window, but I'll settle for anything at this point.

[fronde]

@Soniku
Yes, it's for iTunes 4.9

[Tromoly4130]

@ Kairos: I'm currently working on a skin that is more minimalist than stock but still uses the buttons at the top. Every button is now a single shape; no more "triangle on a circle" for a play button, now it's simply a triangle. If you're interested PM me and I'll send a screenshot to you.

@ffpsx: MP puts out album art? I never realized that. Then again, Coolmon doesn't display graphics, so it isn't much use to me.

@localhost: A friend of mine and I display the amount of songs, total space used by music, etc. in Coolmon, but we have to hardwrite this info in. Is there any way to pull this directly out of iTunes, like how it is displayed across the bottom of the main window?

[DannyDPX]

@localhost: Now that iTunes 5 is out, do you have any tricks up your sleeves? I'll test to see if the current version of your plugin works, but I suspect I might be in for nasty (non)surprise, given that they may have changed too much under the hood...

[edit]
Just as I thought, 0.68 is a confirmed no-go with iTunes 5, won't even start up...

[lid]

oooh.. local I await your update even before trying iTunes5. It's crazy how much I rely on it even the fancy new interface can't tempt me. I hope that updating multiplugin is a relatively easy task for you..:/

[iGo]

Well... this is really an irony, I really don't feel like downloading iTunes 5 since I can't think of using it without Mplugin... damn !!

[Larsen2k4]

I'm currently loading it. But the first thing I also thought about was the MPlugin. I hope that you can make it work in iTunes 5, localhost. Good luck