Jay and I release NicePlayer 0.91 over the weekend. I did a lot of work on DVD playback support and the underlying plugin framework. Indeed, the plugin API has been mostly solidified (except for adding support for returning a nib for custom configuration in the plugin preferences), and there’s a even some sample code posted on the NicePlayer web site to help others create plugins. In fact, for anyone who is looking to create their own DVD player using Apple’s DVD Playback API, they need not look further than the provided sample code, which is basically the code that NicePlayer uses to play DVDs. If all goes as planned, the next release will use VLC to play video: not only will it give a great speed boost to playing back divx files and such, but will also provide a better user interface for VLC users.
The other big new feature is AppleScript support — extremely useful for users of the Saline clicker software. There’s a resize widget, as per Nicholas Riley’s suggestion, and the widgets now smoothly fade out after you’ve moved your mouse off of them. While trying to figure out if we could get normal correct window shadows for NicePlayer (we can’t without faking our own — something which makes the app a lot slower), Jay found the following shadow bug in OSX — the non-focused windows with standard OS X shadows have an artifact in them — a thin line running along the bottom, below where the shadow should have faded out. You can see this if you stack several TextEdit.app windows on top of each other, such that the bottom shadow falls on the white space in the window below it (this makes it easier to see). The line is fairly clearly visible, and I’m surprised I didn’t notice it before Jay pointed it out.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
stupid word press
http://indyjt.com/img/FlySketchWorkflow-2005.03.10%2000.53.12.jpg
Hey, i’ve recently been using Niceplayer, but I had a couple of things I wanted to mention to you, as developers. One feature i’d like to see is the ability to add alpha transparency to a window playing. It would be really nice, especially with the UI the way it is now, is this possible?
Secondly, how do you install the DVD plugin, it fails to mention this on your website. The content of the feedback section of your site, seems to have died also, just to let you know. I expected a more Apple like design to your webpage too, maybe I could offer to redesign it a little if you were interested. – Just make it a little more visually appealing.
Steve
I left a comment on your LiveJournal (hydroai) a while ago asking about Tetrinet Aqua. The date of the post was 2003-06-12. I foolishly included all my contact information, including my primary email address, and I think it’s been the source of my address leaking to spammers. It was my mistake, I shouldn’t have left it vulnerable to crawlers, but would you please delete the comment for me? I’d be grateful.