iTunes Album Browser

Version: 2.3.1
Date: 18.08.2007

Thomas Nordvi
thomas.nordvi@yahoo.com

This widget allows you to sort, search and visually browse the albums in your iTunes Music Library by viewing the album artwork. The widget also lets you control iTunes, add or delete artwork (to all tracks in an album), play or queue full albums and view artwork in full size.

At first run the widget indexes your iTunes Music Library. This might take some time depending on the size of your library. At subsequent runs the widget reads the data from its own data file.

The widget saves its own copy of your album artwork by pulling it from the MP3/AAC song tags or the same folder as the MP3/AAC files are located. If no artwork is found for an album a default image will be used instead.

Compilation albums are grouped under the artist name "Various Artists". All other albums are identified by the combination of the artist name and album title.

For best result you need an organized iTunes Music Library with artist and album title for most tracks. Tracks without artist or album title will not be added to the widget. Data for year, rating and artwork are recommended but not required.

Navigate the album collection

To browse your album collection you have several choices:

Sort the album collection

The widget can sort your album collection in several different ways:

• Album (Alphabetical)
• Artist + Year (Alphabetical, earliest first)
• Artist + Album (Alphabetical)
• Year (Latest first)
• Average rating (Highest rating first)
• Random (Random order)
• Date Added (Latest added album first)

You can also reverse the sort order of the current selected sort method from the context menu.

Resizing the Widget

The widget can be resized into two sizes: minimized to a menu bar or closed down to icon size. While minimized to a menu bar you can control iTunes and view information about the current playing track.

When the widget is closed to icon size, you can open it to normal mode again by clicking the icon. Hold Ctrl and click the icon to move the icon on your desktop. Right click for options.

You can hibernate the widget to disconnect it from iTunes and make it stop responding to iTunes events. If the widget is opened up to normal mode, it will go out of hibernation mode and reconnect to iTunes (if it‘s running).

Widget features and context menu

Double-clicking the album in the middle or pressing the Enter button executes the default album action selected in the preferences (Play Album, Add Album to Playlist or Show Artwork). Double-clicking the widget background launches or opens up iTunes depending on its state.

There are two buttons in the lower-left section of the widget window to give you quick access to the widget preferences and album options.

Right-clicking the widget or the middle album displays a context menu with additional options:

Search the album collection

Type in the artist or album title you at looking for into the search field and press Enter to start the search. All albums matching your search are displayed and you can sort and browse the albums in the search result.

To cancel the search result and return to your album collection, press Esc or click the cancel button in the search field.

iTunes controls

You can control iTunes from the buttons located on the widget menu bar.

Click the Options button to set Shuffle or Repeat mode for the active playlist in iTunes. You can also select what playlist to play in iTunes and go directly to different pages in the iTunes Store.

Track Display

The display area is located on the widget menu bar and shows information about the playing track or stream.

Double-click the display to open up the Now Playing window. If you click the plus sign on the right side of the display a context menu appear with information and options for the current playing track/stream. The options displayed in the menu are based on the type of track that is playing and the preferences set in the Track Display preference group.

Two new options are added to the context menu in this version. The first is the option to add the current playing track to Party Shuffle or a another specified playlist. The second it the options to launch a video search for the current playing track at Google Video, Yahoo! Video or YouTube.

Now Playing window

When a track starts playing in iTunes this window pops up in the lower right hand corner of your screen and displays information about the track.

You can control what information to show and how many seconds to display the window from the widget preferences. You can also override the time to display the window and show it all the time while the track is playing. If you right click the window a context menu appear:

Album Artwork window

The Album artwork window displays the artwork image for an album. A default image are displayed for those albums that don’t have any artwork. The artwork image is displayed in full size or limited to 600x600 if it's larger.

Click on the image to close the window. Right click the window to open up a context menu with more options. You can open up a predefined search for album artwork images in different search engines or go to web sites where you can search for artwork manually.

To add artwork to an album you can drag and drop a image on to the Album Artwork window. You can only add artwork to an album that doesn’t have any artwork. To replace the artwork for an album you have to delete the current artwork and then add the new artwork image.

Album windows

This feature lets you add and interact with your favorite albums right from the desktop. Album windows are created from the widget context menu, the album options button or the Artwork window. Use the context menu option "Create Album Window…" to add a Album window to your desktop.

The windows can be positioned freely on your desktop and can be overlapped and re-ordered in any way you please. The Widget remembers the albums and the position of the Album windows when it’s closed. When the widget is started again the Album windows are restored to its original positions.

You can interact with a window in the following ways:

• Click and drag to position the window on your desktop
• Hover the mouse pointer over the album window (while it has focus) to see information about the album
• Double-click the window to execute the default album action selected in the preferences (Play Album, Add Album to Playlist or Show Artwork)
• Right click a window to see the context menu with options for that album:
  

Use the "Close Album Window" option to close the Album window. If you want to close all of the opened Album windows, right click the main Widget window and select the "Close All Album Windows" from the context menu.

You can control the size (large, medium or small) of the Album windows from the Widget preferences.

Widget preferences

The widget preferences contains the following preference groups:

• General
• Behaviors
• Now Playing Window
• Track Display
• Widget Playlist
• iTunes
• iTunes Store
• Hotkeys
• Indexing

Widget behaviors

You can control how the widget behaves when iTunes starts playing a track from the widget preferences (Behaviors preference group).

Enable The Now Playing Window
Select this to show a small popup window that announces the track that starts playing in iTunes.

Enable The Track Display
Select this to display information about the current playing track or stream in the display area.

Import New Albums When Played
Select this to automatically import an album not present in the widget data file when a track from that album is played in iTunes.

Autoscroll To Current Playing Album
Use this setting if you want the widget to automatically scroll to the current playing album.

Set Album Artwork in Widget Dock
Select this to add the album artwork to the Widget Dock when a track that starts playing in iTunes.

Keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys

Navigation shortcuts

Home:	Go to the first album
End:	Go to the last album
Right arrow:	Go to the next album (hold to scroll right)
Left arrow:	Go to the previous album (hold to scroll left)
Enter:	Executes the default album action
Esc:	Cancel search results and return to normal view

Use these keyboard shortcuts while the widget has focus.

Default hotkeys

Ctrl+Shift+L:	Show current playing album
Ctrl+Shift+T:	Show current playing track
Ctrl+Shift+R:	Show random album
Ctrl+Shift+F:	Focus widget
Ctrl+Shift+M:	Toggle widget size between minimized and maximized mode.
Ctrl+Shift+N:	Toggle iTunes size between minimized and open mode

These hotkeys are disabled by default. Enable them from the Hotkeys preference group. Please note that only one widget can have a specific hotkey combination registered at the same time.

Find by typing

Note: Because of a bug in Yahoo Widgets version 4.0.3 this feature does not work

Known issues

The widget gets out of sync with iTunes

This widget depends on two things to stay in sync with iTunes. Unfortunately, both seems to contain a bug or not work properly in Yahoo! Widgets version 4.0.x. To stay in sync the widget depends on:

• iTunes Events on track change:
  This widget receives and responds to iTunes events on every track change to update information in the Track Display and to pop-up the Now Playing Window. As far as I know there are two things that stop these events from being received by the widget:
  • The events can get lost if you upgrade iTunes to a new version. To fix it you have to do a Repair install of iTunes.
  • After Yahoo Widgets 4.0.x was released some have more trouble then others receiving the iTunes events. Some don’t receive iTunes events at all, some receive the events once in a while, and some experience no problem. I have no idea of what is causing the problem, but I do know that if you revert back to YW 3.x the events from iTunes will be received.
• Current iTunes status:
  The internal object in YW that keeps track of the current iTunes state gets out of sync when iTunes is closed and then restarted while YW are running. To fix this issue you have to restart the widget and sometimes you also have to restart YW.

Requirements

• PC
• iTunes 7.0 or above
• Yahoo! Widgets 4.0 or above

Credit

This widget was inspired by the beautiful CoverFlow application created by Jonathan del Strother. CoverFlow has since been sold to Apple and integrated into iTunes 7.

http://www.steelskies.com/coverflow

Version History

Version 2.3.1 (18.08.2007) - Maintenance Release

• Added the ability to drag an album to the desktop to create a album window
• Bug fixes:
  • Fixed error with invalid function call
  • Fixed error with wrongly named variables
  • Fixed error with getting correct value when track was a podcast or part of a compilation album
  • Fixed error that prevented the iTunes options menu to appear when no playlist was selected in iTunes

Version 2.3 (01.07.2007) - Maintenance Release

• Removed functionality for closing the artwork window when the artwork background was clicked
• Added context menu item to reload the widget
• Errors, updates and work-arounds due to issues in Yahoo! Widgets 4.0.3:
  • Made the widget independent from the internal iTunes object in YW. The internal object gets out of sync when iTunes is closed and restarted while the widgets are running
  • Added option to select polling behavior to get current track and iTunes state instead of receivng iTunes events. YW 4 introduced problem receiving iTunes events
  • Turned on window shadow again. YW 4 still has issues with 10 px positioning error with context menus when window shadow is turned on
  • Search by typing does not work. YW 4 has a bug with missing values in keyboard events
• Bug fixes:
  • Fixed error that prevented text to be truncated on the Now Playing Window. Also fixed bug with the Scroll Text preference option not being set at widget onload
  • Fixed element visibility issues when artwork was added to an album while the widget main window was minimized

Version 2.2 (03.04.2007) - Upgrade Release

• Added option to show reflections of the artwork below the albums
• Added option to show the Now Playing Window all the time by overriding the display time [Thanks to cdc2426 and Justin Miao ]
• New options added to the Track Display context menu
  • Added options to launch a video search for current playing track at Google Video, Yahoo! Video or YouTube
  • Added options to add the current playing track to Party Shuffle or a specified playlist of your choice
• Reorganized the order of the preference groups in the preferences dialog
• Removed the sort by options from the main context menu. The "Reverse Sort Order" option has been moved to the "Sort by" dropdown list.
• Minimum version of Yahoo! Widgets set to 4.0
• Added sub menus to some of the widgets context menus
• Updated code and fixed issues due to the new version of Yahoo! Widgets (4.0):
  • Fixed font size issues
  • Updated method to create folders. No more need for unix commands
  • Updated keyboard handling
  • Updated window drag support with onMouseDrag event
  • Turned off shadow on all of the widgets windows due to issues with window positioning when shadow is turned on
• Bug fixes:
  • Fixed error with handling of stream tracks on OnPlayerPlayEvent that prevented the Now Playing Window and Track Display to be updated
  • Fixed problem with convertPathToPlatform witch prevented thumbnails to be generated

Version 2.1.1 (26.03.2007) - Maintenance Release

• Fixed problem with setting for "Always On Top" not working after pc is restarted
• Fixed issues with import and handling of video and podcast tracks
• Added ability to set half star ratings on tracks

Version 2.1 (01.01.2007) - Upgrade Release

• Added options to add Album windows to the desktop
• Added options to snap the widget to the top of the screen and set it to always be on top
• Added the ability to select what playlist to play in iTunes
• Added new options to the preference dialog
  • New options to set the size of the album windows
  • New options to control if playlists can be selected from the widget or not

Version 2.0 (29.10.2006) - Upgrade Release

• Reorganized the preferences dialog, added new preference groups and options
  • New preference group to disable and configure hotkeys. [Thanks to Amin Issa ]
  • Added icons to most of the preference groups
  • More options added to control the Now Playing window
  • New preference group added for iTunes related options
  • New preference group added to control the Track Display
  • New widget behavior added to control the Track Display
  • Added option to control the speed of the navigation [Thanks to m ]
  • Added option to set the widget size after the initial load has finished
  • Added option to skip to the next track when low rating is set
• Added buttons to resize the widget to menu bar or icon size. [Thanks to Poncho ]
• Added the ability to hibernate the widget while in icon mode.
• Added buttons to control iTunes
• Added Track Display that shows information about the current playing track
  • Supports radio streams and tracks
  • Find related music on Pandora and Last.fm
• Added the ability to browse the album collection by using the mouse scroll wheel.
• Upgraded the ability to find albums by typing. It can be used with all of the sort methods and supports more than one character
• The average rating on albums now displays half star ratings
• Added a new sorting method that sorts the albums by Date Added
• Added links to artwork sites from the Artwork window
• Added feedback on the number of tracks added and filtered out when "Play Album" or "Add Album to Playlist" options are executed. [Thanks to JuryDuty ]
• Breaking change in the data file.
  • Added new data field for Date Added
  • Reduced the file size by reformatting the xml code
  • Added the ability to detect previous version of the widget and the option to convert the previous data file to the new format
• Most of the code has been restructured
  • Better control for add, delete and update operations against the data file
  • Button class added to better control the button logic
• Bug fixes:
  • Fixed problem with auto imported albums where artist or album title are blank. [Thanks to darkangel ]
  • Changed the address to Top tracks and Top albums in the iTunes Store

Version 1.1 (04.06.2006) - Upgrade Release

• Compilation albums are now supported (albums where all tracks are marked with "part of a compilation")
• Double-clicking the widget background launches or opens up iTunes
• Added a context menu option to show all albums by the selected artist
• Added a new sorting method that sorts the album collection in random order and a context menu option (with hotkey) to show a random album. [Thanks to tsunami99 ]
• Optimized and improved the speed of the function that reads the widget data file at start up. [Thanks to darkangel ]
• Updated the context menu on the artwork window
  • Delete artwork from an album in iTunes. [Thanks to David ]
  • Manually add artwork to an album in iTunes
  • Launch a predefined image search for artwork in different search engines
• Added a context menu option and hotkey to show the current playing track
• Added a context menu to the Now Playing window
  • Rate the current playing track
  • Pause and skip to the next/previous track [Thanks to tsunami99 ]
• Reorganized the preferences dialog, added new preference groups and options:
  • New preference group to control the widget behaviors
  • New preference group to control options for the widget play list
    • Select a filter to control witch tracks are added to the play list
    • Select that only tracks checked for playback are added to the play list
  • New preference group to control options for the Now Playing window
    • Set the time in seconds to display the window
    • Set whether or not to scroll text
    • Choose if track rating and duration should be displayed
  • New preference group to control options during indexing
    • Include or exclude compilation albums
    • Search for artwork in the album folder if the album doesn’t have any artwork in iTunes.
  • Added the option to choose the default album action to perform when an album is double-clicked or Enter is pressed.
  • Added the option to remove links to artist and album in iTunes Music Store
  • Added the option to select the background color on the default image to show on albums that doesn’t have any artwork. [Thanks to Graham ]
  • Added the option to set the state of iTunes when the widget initiates the launch of iTunes.

Version 1.0 (05.05.2006) - Initial Release

• Added Search
• Added Now Playing popup window
• Added tool tips
• Added possibility to navigate by using the keyboard
• Reduced the need to reindex the iTunes Music Library by adding options to refresh/remove an album and auto import new albums
• Code optimized and restructured

Version 0.9 (12.03.2006) - Private Beta

• First release for beta testing