Dopamine

By +Raphaël G.
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Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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Rating preview (all my songs seem to have 5 star rating. That's only because the stars are not yet hooked up to the actual rating. But it gives you an idea of how it will look like):

 

 

rating.png

rating2.png

rating3.png

rating44.png

Explorer

Zequi

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Raphaël G. said:

Yes is should. Only for Artists, Genres, Albums, Songs and Playlists pages. Now playing is not remembered. Those don't work for you?

Then it's working as expected, sorry.  I thought it was also going to remember which album I have selected. I always have it sorted by Artists  so I didn't notice the change.

 

I have no use for ratings but it looks cool as hell :yes:

Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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1 hour ago, Zequi said:

Then it's working as expected, sorry.  I thought it was also going to remember which album I have selected. I always have it sorted by Artists  so I didn't notice the change.

 

I have no use for ratings but it looks cool as hell :yes:

Ah great :)

Well for you and others which are not using rating, I added the setting "Enable rating", which can be disabled. That hides the stars and hearts :)

  • Jackaluichi and ViperAFK
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Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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To your downloads! Here's a New Year's Eve present:

 

31-12-2015: Dopamine 1.0.0.504 (Preview)
 

- Improved visibility of Semantic Zoom
- Fixed a bug in "Close to the notification area"
- Added rating 
- Added Czech translation

 

Download here

  • TAZMINATOR, Jackaluichi and BinaryData
  • Like 3
Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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28 minutes ago, BinaryData said:

@Raphaël G. Did you ever sign the program with Windows to get rid of that Error?

No. I have to look that up.

11 minutes ago, Haggis said:

Well i have windows dual bootd on my laptop for the first time in a long time so will be installing this later :D

Excellent! :)

Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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1 hour ago, Ravensky said:

I have Linux dual booting with Windows for the first time in a long time and I wish Dopamine was able to run in Linux...lol.  No I will not install WINE... :p

 

I was a long time Linux user (from 2004 until 2012 I believe). I wish I could port it. But designing GUI's in Linux is just no fun :rofl::D. But don't get me wrong. I still have a place for Linux in my heart :)

Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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6 hours ago, BinaryData said:

@Raphaël G. Did you ever sign the program with Windows to get rid of that Error?

Seems I won't be getting rid of that warning anytime soon. It either costs money to get a certificate signed by a trusted CA or a lot of effort and luck with some reputation system in smartscreen.

Experienced

Jackaluichi

Posted
Posted
23 hours ago, Raphaël G. said:

To your downloads! Here's a New Year's Eve present:

 

31-12-2015: Dopamine 1.0.0.504 (Preview)
 

- Improved visibility of Semantic Zoom
- Fixed a bug in "Close to the notification area"
- Added rating 
- Added Czech translation

 

Download here

Thanks, Raphaël!

 

Happy new year everyone!!!

Grand Master

Thomas the Tank Engine

Posted
Posted (edited)
17 hours ago, Raphaël G. said:

Seems I won't be getting rid of that warning anytime soon. It either costs money to get a certificate signed by a trusted CA or a lot of effort and luck with some reputation system in smartscreen.

 

Well, if you ever open sourced your code, then you could use the following:

 

https://www.certum.eu/certum/cert,offer_en_open_source_cs.xml

 

It's only €15.

Enthusiast

accuratecopy

Posted
Posted (edited)
35 minutes ago, accuratecopy said:

Happy new year to all Dopamine users!
Before i try using rating system, could you tell me how does it works ? Is the rating stored in tags or is it in a separated database in Dopamine ?
 

Ok stupid questions, i've found myself the answers in the options :rofl:.

Grand Master

BinaryData

Posted
Posted
18 hours ago, Raphaël G. said:

Seems I won't be getting rid of that warning anytime soon. It either costs money to get a certificate signed by a trusted CA or a lot of effort and luck with some reputation system in smartscreen.

Depending on the cost, I'll pay for it. :)

 

 

Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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6 hours ago, accuratecopy said:

Ok stupid questions, i've found myself the answers in the options :rofl:.

No problem. I'll confirm: ratings are stored in the database by default. There is a setting to also store it in the audio files (only mp3 is supported at this time).

I was wondering though. Would it be useful to have some sort of export/import function just for ratings? For example, if your computer got messed up and need to reinstall. If you then have a backup of your rating somewhere, you could import them after setting up Dopamine again.

 

Edit: I've added order "By rating" in my latest build (still in testing). I forgot to add that for the last public build. Later I plan some sort of "smart" search which will allow filtering on rating. And much later, I plan smart playlists, which will allow creating dynamic playlists based on rating, and other stuff.

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Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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7 hours ago, Thomas the Tank Engine said:

 

Well, if you ever open sourced your code, then you could use the following:

 

https://www.certum.eu/certum/cert,offer_en_open_source_cs.xml

 

It's only €15.

I've bookmarked it, for if I ever decide to go open source. Thanks.

Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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5 hours ago, BinaryData said:

Depending on the cost, I'll pay for it. :)

 

 

That's nice of you. But I'd rather not bother my users with such cost. I did only a quick search and saw someone mentioning 100 €. However to be taken with a gain of salt. I didn't do much research. It seems however that the Smartscreen reputation system is the most important factor and that signing might only help. This is one link on this topic: http://www.codeproject.com/Questions/555248/Willplussigningplusanplusexecutablepluspreventplus

 

Edit: my code is signed and strong named. So at least it is protected from external modifications. But that has nothing to do with getting around smartscreen.

Neowinian

RoboTrigger

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Hey Raphael, thanks for the awesome program and great updates! I have a question which might also be a feature suggestion: are you planning to include more options in your Playlist handling? Drag and drop ordering of songs in playlists would be an excellent addition :) It's pretty much the only reason to still use some other music player :)

Thank you very much for your hard work!

Rookie

Loreno

Posted
Posted (edited)

Great job, first I found LifeMate (https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1231965-lifemate-p4/) and now Dopamine - this is just awesome. By the way, do you know any other high-quality apps like the two I mentioned? I think both of tchem are a great example of what Universal Windows Apps should look like (although unfortunately Dopamine and LifeMate are not universal apps).

 

Using Dopamine, I had one issue. When I wanted to get more information about one of my albums, I couldn't - clicking "Information" doesn't do anything:

 

Information.PNG

 

I also have a suggestion:

I think context menus in the app would look a lot better if they were transparent/blurred (like in OS X - https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/tto72pmy9f8tcximbd1f.png), but it's just my opinion.

Also, I think that a description of a buton (when you hover your mouse over it) is too far from the buton:

 

button.PNG

 

I also have a question: Could you please tell me what you had to learn in order to build an application like Dopamine (and where did you learn it from)? I'm currently more into programming microprocessors, but it would be great to create a Windows application one day. I also like the design of Dopamine, so please tell me what programs you used to make it happen (and what's a good website/book to learn it). I'd really appreciate it.

 

Looking froward for new versions of Dopamine and if I find any bugs/have any suggestions, I'll post it here. Dopamine is my new default music player now of course ;) 

 

 

Enthusiast

accuratecopy

Posted
Posted
15 hours ago, Raphaël G. said:

No problem. I'll confirm: ratings are stored in the database by default. There is a setting to also store it in the audio files (only mp3 is supported at this time).

I was wondering though. Would it be useful to have some sort of export/import function just for ratings? For example, if your computer got messed up and need to reinstall. If you then have a backup of your rating somewhere, you could import them after setting up Dopamine again.

 

Edit: I've added order "By rating" in my latest build (still in testing). I forgot to add that for the last public build. Later I plan some sort of "smart" search which will allow filtering on rating. And much later, I plan smart playlists, which will allow creating dynamic playlists based on rating, and other stuff.

Yeah, a function to export/import for ratings would be a nice component to add to Dopamine.

Grand Master

+Raphaël G. MVC

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53 minutes ago, Loreno said:

Great job, first I found LifeMate (https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1231965-lifemate-p4/) and now Dopamine - this is just awesome. By the way, do you know any other high-quality apps like the two I mentioned? I think both of tchem are a great example of what Universal Windows Apps should look like (although unfortunately Dopamine and LifeMate are not universal apps).

 

Using Dopamine, I had one issue. When I wanted to get more information about one of my albums, I couldn't - clicking "Information" doesn't do anything:

 

Information.PNG

 

I also have a suggestion:

I think context menus in the app would look a lot better if they were transparent/blurred (like in OS X - https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/tto72pmy9f8tcximbd1f.png), but it's just my opinion.

Also, I think that a description of a buton (when you hover your mouse over it) is too far from the buton:

 

button.PNG

 

I also have a question: Could you please tell me what you had to learn in order to build an application like Dopamine (and where did you learn it from)? I'm currently more into programming microprocessors, but it would be great to create a Windows application one day. I also like the design of Dopamine, so please tell me what programs you used to make it happen (and what's a good website/book to learn it). I'd really appreciate it.

 

Looking froward for new versions of Dopamine and if I find any bugs/have any suggestions, I'll post it here. Dopamine is my new default music player now of course ;) 

 

 

You just discovered something that shouldn't be allowed: right clicking on the album header :). The information window is meant for songs. When you right click a song in that list, and select information, you'll get information about the file. I'll will now have to block right click on headers :) Thanks for noticing.

 

Transparency and blur on context menu's: I'm not sure that is possible. Not out of the box anyway. Maybe I can use the same Windows 10 workaround I used to make the windows transparent. I'll have to try it out.

 

Tooltips too far from buttons: you're not the first one telling me that :). It's not an easy one to fix. It's not me who positions these, it is the .NET framework. I could tweak the coordinates, but I have to be careful for tooltips that needs to be positioned differently, like on the left of the mouse cursor (based on the position on the screen and the available margin). So that will probably be for when have spare time and I'm too lazy to do anything productive :)

 

The components I used are all listed in the about screen. The links are clickable, they will point you to their website. Dopamine was written in VB.NET. But it could as well be written in C#, both are equivalent. For the design, it is all WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). I don't know your amount of .NET knowledge, so I'll try to give a short explanation of how WPF relates to other parts of .NET.

In .NET there are currently 2 ways to write desktop GUI's: WinForms (older) and WPF. WPF is, in my opinion, much more customizable (every control can be styled any way you want), dynamic (animations), and is hardware accelerated.  

 

Learning: that's the hard part. I'm not a fan of books. They provide lengthy explanations, and are mostly not to the point. For Dopamine, I did it this way:

 

  • I chose a UI framework: WPF
  • I learned that the best way to apply WPF in an application is to use the MVVM (Model View ViewModel) pattern: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848246.aspx
  • I learned the hard way, that it is very recommended to use a MVVM ToolKit to overcome some limitations of MVVM. There are 2 very good ones:
  • I also learned the hard way: don't ever write a complex UI program without using a IOC (Inversion Of Control) Container. There are several containers. I used Unity: http://unity.codeplex.com/
  • I said I don't like books, so I usually think of what I want to achieve, and then bing it (yes I'm that only bing user out there :). And usually I end up finding solutions and tips on www.stackoverflow.com or www.codeproject.com or some random blog :) 

I won't go into detail here what everything does, if you ever need more info, don't hesitate to contact me. But with these few tips, you have a good starting point.

 

 

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