PPlayer.org opened

Hey there,

as somebody may have seen, the redirections now points to www.pplayer.org.
This page is the new home of PPlayer and any new news, updates etc will be released there.
The Wiki – now for the first time called “FAQs” is available here but soon on (faqs.pplayer.org).
PPlayer is now downloadable with the latest version here (later download.pplayer.org).
The board is open for everyone – the bug/feature-tracker will be found there – as some other discussion forums.
I’m focusing on putting every feature (wiki, bugtracker, featuretracker etc.., cvs, blog) on this one page.

So we’ll see us on www.pplayer.org

Good bye

PPlayer 0.9 finally released

PPlayer is a media player offering many amazing features. It combines Podcasts,Streaming and an intuitive musicsearch in a user designed interface.
Just started its able to play nonstop music without any input from the user. It analyses the current song and searches in the database for a song matching the parameters of the user.
This search is highly optimizeable for the user from its own interface also holding a manual search input.

The new version 0.9 introduces some interesting features:
The top position of the long list of changes got the revived design. In early days of PPlayer the interface looked really boring, but now the users get some utils to make their own interface:
0.9 goes along with 20 Skins which can be easily enhanced and be made available by and for the community. Furthermore the user is able to change the position of the controls on the interface.
For example some users could like a bigger cover display. They can easily change the size of the cover label and then also submit their change to the community.
If a skin or kxf (Interfacechange) is accepted by the community it may reach the top position of the list and thus default skin. An intelligent algorithm makes this possible.
Someone installing PPlayer will now download the best skin during the installation. If they dislike the skin they can just change the skin.

The next important features is the statistic in the 0.9 package. It creates tables using information logged by a database to inform the user of his music behavior.
The development of PPlayer is actually implementing a feature called “AutoMode” or “24/7-playing”:
It uses the statistic to optimize the search automatically.

PPlayer – SongView takes the collected information and creates a profile for the user. This profile can be implemented into a blogpost or a forum-signature and will inform the reader of the current song played or the behavior of the user.
This is useful in little communities, where just everybody’s friends or in topic related forums (Band forums, Music forums, Genre forums etc…)

Each change can be taken from the change log and each feature of PPlayer with a description can be found on the wiki.

Have fun testing and enjoying PPlayer,
Pascal

Milestonerelease: 0.8.6

The last updates brought some modifications on the database.

1. The creation of the database is alot faster. (0.8.4.6)
2. The database will automatically created the first time PPlayer starts (0.8.4.6)
3. Similar bands are now longer stored inside the database (0.8.4.7)
4. Databasesystem changed to SQL: (0.8.6)
• Queries are about 75 times faster (pre: 1.5 sec/now: 0,02sec)
• The information is faster and better stored (no doublings)
• A song is now instantly loaded
• Of course the database.exe now works with the new system and a convertation of the database will automatically started with PPlayer

Other changes are

1. Volume fades with ani (0.8.4.7)
2. Ratingalgorithm changed -> songs with higher rating will be chosen preferably (0.8.4.8)
3. Optimations on SetNext -> Songsearch works much smoother and faster (0.8.4.8)
4. Fixed some minor bugs in SetNext (0.8.4.9)

I also fixed many many bugs and changed some stuff for example a new statusbar and a changed positionlabel

Have fun,
Pascal

Milestone release: 0.8.4 beta

“Long time ago” I introduced PPlayer Songview.
It was avaiable one day after the release but I hadn’t have enough time to announce the release on this blog.
Instead I worked on a better release.
There came many bugs within the new system released with 0.8.3..
Songs were able to be started to play within one second (and less).
Problems within the playlist and the positionbar were created…
And both are solved in the new beta.
I played around with the player and did some “hard” testing switching songs all the time.
But it worked correctly and any song got played and the right information displayed.

I also changed some things in the PlayMode-GUI.
Many people said the PlayMode-GUI isn’t easy to understand.
And yes it wasn’t.
I deleted some useless buttons and added a “Help!”-Button directing to the Wikiarcticle about the PlayMode.
Some innercode things were changed too:
Now its posible to use the keywordsearch for the autosearch (huuh? – take a look on the wiki).
Just enter a keyword like “billy II” and you should get “Billy Talents” second album “Billy Talent II”.
Autosearch will search for songs inside this album everytime a song begins.

There will come some more changes within 0.8.4 but more about them later.

Have a nice day,
Pascal

0.8.3 released & some changes on the blog

With 0.8.3 some cool features come to PPlayer:

1. URL Protocol functionality
   pplayer://domain.host.com/filepath.mp3 starts pplayer playing the requested sound.
   HGS Radio Episode 9 (hear directly with PPlayer
2. DefPushbuttons for every GUI:
• PPlayer — “Play”
• Podcast — “Load”
• Stream — “Play”
• Playmode — “Search”
• Settings — “Save”

There’s a wiki for PPlayer available replacing the online help.

Besides I wont post any small update on this blog anymore…
You can take a look on the wiki – changelog holding any information.

Every “great” update will get a blogentry with every changes.

I’m ~2 weeks away now…
Pascal

0.8.2.8 published

Long time ago I made the last update for PPlayer.
And I admit that I haven’t done much things for PPlayer last time.
But we actually have holiday here in Germany and I was more interested in doing useless things (hehe).
This changed today as I wrote some changes on PPlayer like:

1. Faster startup than ever.
   I changed the Podcast check which checked any Podcast loaded whether it was notified or not.
2. I removed the E-Mail-Registration that not everybody understood and made the startup through this much faster.
3. The PlayMode is now to recieve up to 3 separated (by “|”) keywords making the search easier.
   eg.: “Metallica|Live” will search any Song by Metallica played “Live”
   But this needs some improvement coming next updates.
4. Fixed a bug crashing the player on restart.
5. Added a check on SetNext if the file found in Database still exists

There are many things to be changed in the next weeks.
I focus on making PPlayer much faster, especially that there’s no longer a break between two songs cutting them.
I also want to optimize the loading time of the song information because you cant load another song while PPlayer is updating his information on the active song. Thats annoying.

I hope you guys still enjoy using PPlayer and send me some mails with feedback or make a post on AutoIt-Forums available here.
You can also use PPlayers inbuild “Report a Bug”-Feature available on the Settings-Module.

Have a nice week,
Pascal

0.8.2.4 released

After a long break a new version is released.
There are many little changes done:
- A bug never stop playing a song caused by Copy’n'Paste has been fixed
- The Player, the database and the downloader has been obfuscated due to hacking attempts…
- The Updater got a new request-function (faster)
- You can now also left click the menu (no annoying msg anymore) – Thx Bert and Piano_man

0.8.2.3 released

New great features coming with this version!
The best new feature is the streamsupport:
You can now listen to your favorite onlineradiostream using PPlayer and its Streammodule.
The second I want to announce is the improved keywordsearch, where you can use the Genre/Band/Album parameter.
And the databasecalculatefunctions works now around 1000% faster than the old one.
There comes some bugfixing with the new version too, like loads of the bugs with similar bands were fixed now.

Check it out!

0.8.1.8 released

The player was successfully released on AutoItScript.com’s Forums…
I’d like to see some feedback from there extending the existing feedback from my friends.
You can also see that the Blog is now written in english and I want to note that my english is not the best but I hope you can understand what I want to say in my upcoming postings

With the release comes a new Installer looking better than the old one and holding more features like adding Desktop/Startmenuicon.

In 0.8.1.8 I added a searchfunction to the Keywordsearch.
After clicking search using the Keywordsearch you’ll get a list with matching songs.
This feature will get updated tomorrow but it’s too late now hehe.

Pascal

0.8.1.5 released

Die Entwicklung des Players macht Fortschritte.
Mit dieser neuen Version kommen folgende interessante feature hinzu:
Als erstes kann ich euch freudig mitteilen, dass ich endlich das Podcastmodul des Players erweitert habe.
Nun sind alle PodCasts die auf einem RSS-Feed basieren auf dem Player abspielbar bzw abrufbar.
Außerdem sind sämtliche Funktionen des besagten Moduls um einiges schneller als vorher.
Sollte ein Podcast nicht mehr erwünscht sein, kann man ihn nun via “Delete” aus der Liste entfernen.

Als zweite große Änderung möchte ich das Playmodemodul ansprechen.
Dort kann man nun via Keyword ein neues Lied suchen lassen.
Dieses Modul erfreut sich bald einer weiteren Weiterentwicklung inform einer besseren Suche und einer Selectfunktion.
Mehr dazu wenn ich mit dem Modul fertig bin.

Ansonsten wurden etliche Bugs gefixt und eine neue Internetzugriffsfunktion sorgt für mehr Geschwindigkeit.

Das wars für diesen Augenblick.

Pascal