It’s been a while since I’ve published or updated any of my Google Gadgets. But I have been sort of busy…
I’ve turned to the darkside!
What this means in slightly less dramatic terms is; I’ve stopped using Google Desktop and Google Gadgets and I’m using the built-in gadget system in Windows 7 (and Vista) called “Windows Sidebar Gadgets” or just Windows Gadgets. There are various (boring) reasons for this, but the upshot is I won’t be able to use all my lovely Google gadgets that I developed! It’s slightly heartbreaking to leave all that hard work behind, but I’m looking at this positively as an opportunity to re-write & improve them 
The first one I couldn’t live without was my Squeezebox gadget. I listen to all my music at home via a couple of Logitech Squeezebox players, subsequently I used my gadget for controlling all my music. Well it turns out that developing a gadget for the Windows Sidebar isn’t all that different from a Google Gadgets. Both are Javascript based using a sub-set of HTML for display, this meant I could re-use a fair bit of my code, and this is the result…
Squeezebox Gadget for Windows
I finished work on this a few months ago and I wanted to try it myself for a while before publishing to the world. It seems perfectly stable and does everything I need, so it’s ready for release! Here are a few screenshots of it running.
Feature summary:
- Standard controls; Play, Pause, Stop, Skip track forward/back
- Volume
- Skip to any point in the track (click on the time progress bar)
- Switch player on/off
- Play a random mix
- Show details of the current playlist
- Show large album artwork and further details on the playing track (pop-out side window)
- Search directly from the gadget
- Change shuffle & repeat modes
- Tweet what is playing directly to Twitter
- Look-up track on Last.fm
- Support for password secured Squeeze Servers
- And more…
Requirements
You need to be running Windows Vista or Windows 7 in order to use this gadget. You will also need a Logitech Squeezebox of some description, and also be running a Squeezebox Server (aka. Squeezecenter) on your network. I have tested this with versions 7.3 and 7.4 of the server software.
Download
Change Log
V1.2.1 – 30th Jan 2010 – Bug fix for server port being set to 9000 on every gadget start
V1.2.0 – 30th Jan 2010 – New optional mini mode, makes the gadget much smaller & take up less screen
V1.1.0 – 22nd Jan 2010 – Added options for secured Squeeze Server (username & password)
V1.0.0 – 21th Jan 2010 – Initial release
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ben Coleman, Ben Coleman. Ben Coleman said: New blog post: Squeezebox Gadget http://cli.gs/1W9vY [...]
I’m just kicking the tires on your gadget and I’m liking what I’m seeing.
A couple of things: I’ve been pushing some code at Paul te Vaanholt (http://paultv.xs4all.nl/) for his SqueezeGadget, which is a much more minimalist gadget than yours. My primary contribution was to give him some wake-on-lan javascript code so the gadget can wake the SBS server. I’ll be happy to send you that code too, if you’d like. Just email me.
Also, I’m seeing some errors in your javascript. To catch the errors, make the following change to your registry:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar]
“ShowScriptErrors”=dword:00000001
Nice gadget, i love the amount of options. But the small style is missing some essential controls (like volume control) and the normal style doesn’t fit nicely in my sidebar. So both of the styles don’t fit my needs. Personally i think it’s better to display the albumart (or an option to disable it) above the controls, so that the whole gadget fits in the sidebar.
Love the gadget so far. Two things on my wishlist:
1. It would be great if the “Display playlist” expanded to show more information (at least artist, perhaps album as well). When I choose to generate a random mix, looking at the playlist gives me little indication of what type of music is coming up.
2. I have no idea what this would require, and if you haven’t ever used Music IP Mixer before, I’m sure you could care less, but it would be awesome to have this gadget make use of the MusicIP (or Music Magic Mixer–whatever SBS is referring to it as these days) plugin in SBS if it is enabled. It allows you to create a mix with similar characteristics to a seed song–and it does it quite well.
Great work though–I use this daily at work to listen to my music remotely.
[...] random.geek() » Squeezebox Gadget [...]
I love your gadget. But there is a small but annoying bug. When you change the default port from 9000 to another one it gets not saved so i have to set the port each time i start my pc.
Plz. release a version which fixes this bug.
Hi Squeezebox Lover!
Yes well spotted, that was a bug.
I’ve put up a new minor version release 1.2.1 which should fix this.
Cheers!
Thx for your quick update. Works like a charm!
Hi,
I developped may own music database (classical music oriented) ans i’m now developping the way to play it on my squeezeboxes.
I learned a lot about cli… but i’m still puzzeld.
Would it be possible to have a copy of your source code to save time, effort and night !
Thank you.
Should I be able to connect this gadget to http://www.mysqueezebox.com ?
When I try and click “Connect & load players” there appears a message at the bottom that is cut off. It says:
“Connection to server” Then the next line is not visible.
Anyone seen the same thing but as a taskbar gadget (windows 7)? This one is kinda big and freezes when no connection is found (ie. when I’m at work;)).
thansk you friends
pretty good gadget – thanks – would be XLNT to have a search function performed within the gadget and not link out back to the squeezecenter
Thx for a cool app!!