Wednesday, December 9, 2009

System Tray and More Background Monitoring...

I realized it's been a few days since I've updated the blog but the screenshots should make some of the improvements apparent.

Up first is the system tray. For background monitoring it's important that iTunesDSM be running but also not be intrucive and hence the system tray is used. The right click options are basic, a simple open and exit command.


Next is folder watching. Essentially what happens is a thread checks for modified folders within the music directory on a timed interval. An event listener is added to the BackgroundMonitor object which retrieves the top level folder that was modified. This folder is then run through the AddTracksTask. There is one issue that can occur; however, and that is the gap in folder's between program executions. For instance, a list of the folders is recognized when the program is running. iTunesDSM then shuts down and new tracks are added to the shared music folder. iTunesDSM would not recognize the new tracks in between executions. So, a couple of methods were added to the FolderWatcher class that stores all watched folders and their last modified times. If a last modified time is changed between folder executions then iTunesDSM will notice that and add tracks.

Next is the status bar. I felt a common status bar is more useful than seperate progress bars and status labels for each panel. It's a little neater I think, basically the screen shot shows how it works.

Finally, I've added a donation button to iTunesDSM. Again, I hate to be pushy but it's nice to see your work is appreciated and donations always help.

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