Dale Preston's Web Log
Monday, January 01, 2007

My Windows Media Player Shell

Unhappy with the usability of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE), I created my own full screen album art display designed for simplicity.  When I use my HTPC, I am not sitting at the computer.  I want to see it, as the specifications for MCE require, from 10 feet away.  MCE's album art display was broken in that it displayed the song title under the album art where the album name should be and the album name was shown at the top where the track name should be.  The second largest user interface element in MCE's album art was, of all crazy things, the track number!  As if that is the second most important thing to a user.
Here's my album art view.  The media and window controls shown here go away after 5 seconds of inactivity leaving the album art to do just what it should do:  display track information should someone look up to see what's playing.
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And some of my track tag editor.  First, the ID3V1 editor:
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Adding a new embedded image using the ID3V2 editor:
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And the raw frame viewer in the ID3V2 tag editor:
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