foobar2000 Is Dead or Dying: Part 1

There’s always been a sig­ni­fi­cant fac­tion of foobar2000 users whose pri­mary attrac­tion to the pla­yer is its appea­rance, or rather the level of con­trol given to its users over its appea­rance. In its infancy, with the stan­dard (and still default) UI, very little was pos­si­ble — the main win­dow con­sis­ted solely of a tab­bed play­list and seve­ral func­tio­nal tool­bars — but peo­ple neverthe­less took a lot of pride in making it their own, and some impres­sive things were done with rela­ti­vely mini­mal fle­xi­bi­lity. It was in the stan­dard UI that users began expe­ri­men­ting with album-level pre­sen­ta­tion, choo­sing not to repeat redun­dantly the artist and album name on each line of the play­list, but to use the second, third, and some­ti­mes fourth lines to dis­play other info, such as year, label, genre, replay­gain info, etc. Each of these cus­to­mi­za­tions was unques­tio­nably uni­que, but most of the broad details of the inter­face were con­sis­tent and inescapable.

The Columns UI com­po­nent began as an expe­ri­ment in allo­wing for mul­ti­ple columns within the play­list dis­play, emu­la­ting the Win­dows Explo­rer “Detail” view (and many other Win­dows pro­grams), with sor­ta­bi­lity via clic­ka­ble column hea­dings. Even­tually Columns UI added a side­bar and, later, panels, allo­wing the whole foo­bar win­dow to be split up inde­fi­ni­tely into panel-based com­po­nent dis­plays, the play­list vie­wer beco­ming just another one of these. This gran­ted much grea­ter fle­xi­bi­lity, allo­wing users to tai­lor the inter­face even more pre­ci­sely to their needs. You could now dis­play album art as pro­mi­nently as you wan­ted, or not at all; your entire library tree could be embed­ded within the main win­dow, rather than tuc­ked away in a pop-up; and with the trac­kinfo panel’s excep­tio­nally lax (by that era’s stan­dards) sty­li­za­tions, the per­so­na­li­za­tion of your foo­bar became even more addic­tive, and, more impor­tantly, rewarding.

Many see­med hell-bent on con­coc­ting the most garish pre­sen­ta­tions ima­gi­na­ble: giant gothic blue-on-black cus­tom fonts, deep-red 200-px-tall spec­trum analy­zers, all, of course, cou­pled with cus­tom OS “vis.”

While some still pre­fe­rred the purity and ele­gance of the stan­dard UI, the per­so­na­li­za­tions made pos­si­ble by Columns UI were inar­guably func­tio­nal ones, for the most part. Fonts, colors, dis­tri­bu­tion of panels, and a rudi­men­tary method of text align­ment were really as far as you could go. At the core of all the boas­ted screenshots was a recog­ni­za­ble struc­ture, all slight varia­tions on the theme of playlist+trackinfo+albumlist+albumart. Outside of dis­pla­ying album art, there was nothing pro­foundly new that Columns UI allo­wed you to do — rather, Columns UI gave you more con­trol over how you did what you nee­ded to do.

And yet, many (and in inc­rea­sing num­ber) see­med hell-bent on con­coc­ting the most garish pre­sen­ta­tions ima­gi­na­ble: giant gothic blue-on-black cus­tom fonts, deep-red 200-px-tall spec­trum analy­zers, all, of course, cou­pled with cus­tom OS “vis” and the most tas­te­less collec­tions of death-/black-/speed-metal slash indus­trial slash deep house techno. For wha­te­ver rea­son, peo­ple are attrac­ted to this, and these screenshots rapidly brought more curious foo­bar novi­ces into the forums, wan­ting a “cool” music pla­yer of their own.

At the time, these peo­ple were not in the majo­rity of new enlis­tees. Many con­ti­nued to jump on board for the incom­pa­rably robust pro­gram that was still very much the heart of the foo­bar com­mu­nity, des­pite all the dres­sing up. The occa­sio­nal rogue thread would crop up, asking ques­tions that had been ans­we­red count­less times before; the new user would be chas­ti­sed, sent to another rele­vant thread, ans­we­red directly, or any com­bi­na­tion of the three. These occu­rren­ces were peren­nial but negli­gi­ble, and besi­des, they fell into the uns­po­ken hie­rarchy of usership; it was the role of the foo­bar sopho­mo­res to help these peo­ple out, because they had only recently been in a simi­lar position.

Foobar2000 was in a state of rela­tive sta­sis. Ver­sion 0.9, the suc­ces­sor to 0.8.3, was relea­sed in early 2006; the set of “essen­tial” core com­po­nents was more or less firmly esta­blished, only wai­ting to be per­fec­ted; users twea­ked their inter­fa­ces, inching ever clo­ser to an asymp­to­tic UI uto­pia; things were good.

Two see­mingly sim­ple com­po­nents engen­de­red a monu­men­tal shift in the way peo­ple thought about foobar.

Even­tually, the infle­xi­bi­lity of the trac­kinfo panel began to bother some peo­ple, par­ti­cu­larly that each ins­tance of a trac­kinfo panel was limi­ted to one font and size. A user named terres­trial began deve­lo­ping “Track Info Panel Mod,” which allo­wed for in-panel font chan­ges, as well as the inc­lu­sion of ima­ges. It was this last fea­ture, ima­ges, where things really began to get off track. The free­dom to arbi­tra­rily place any image within the foo­bar win­dow is almost strictly unfunc­tio­nal, moti­va­ted purely by the desire to make foo­bar look good. The intro­duc­tion of this com­po­nent encou­ra­ged a shift in men­ta­lity about foo­bar, pro­du­cing ever more flashy screenshots, and attrac­ting ever more users see­king eye-candy.

As Track Info Panel Mod evol­ved and grew in popu­la­rity, peo­ple cra­ved inc­rea­singly more con­trol. The func­tio­na­lity was amen­ded has­tily, by sloppy, ad hoc revi­sions of the biza­rre, cum­ber­some for­mat­ting lan­guage. Still, it was only one com­po­nent, it had found a niche, and it kept to itself.

A few months later, terres­trial began deve­lop­ment on a second com­po­nent, “Sin­gle Column Play­list” (SCPL). This began as a sim­ple attempt to replace Columns UI’s play­list view, which, iro­ni­cally, is the one thing that Columns UI was ori­gi­nally crea­ted for. Rather than a sta­tic grid of mul­ti­ple columns and rows, terres­trial envi­sio­ned a blank can­vas, much like Track Info Panel Mod (TIPM), upon which ima­ges and track info could be laid with almost total free­dom. Addi­tio­nally, SCPL was able to group play­list items into collap­si­ble albums, intro­du­cing the kind of album-level hand­ling that had elu­ded foo­bar users for so long.

One got the sense that peo­ple were begin­ning to believe that foo­bar was TIPM/SCPL.

Meanwhile, TIPM had begun to allow foo­bar com­mands to be asso­cia­ted with ima­ges, so that ima­ges in the panel could act as but­tons. This was natu­rally exten­ded to SCPL, and with that, two see­mingly sim­ple com­po­nents engen­de­red a monu­men­tal shift in the way peo­ple thought about foo­bar. TIPM and SCPL domi­na­ted huge por­tions of people’s foo­bar win­dows; the album art panel was rejec­ted in favor of pla­cing album art in TIPM and SCPL; sta­tus­bars, tool­bars, and even tit­le­bars were repla­ced with button-loaded TIPM panels. And with glassy effects everywhere, huge flame back­drops, and iTunes-like album art reflec­tions, older com­po­nents began to seem just that — old. An album­list panel, with its Explo­rer tree appea­rance, and sepa­ra­ted from the pret­tier panels by gray bars, was no lon­ger accep­ta­ble as part of a seam­less, highly sty­li­zed UI. Were these con­fi­gu­ra­tions func­tio­nal? In some cases, yes, but lar­gely, no — or rather, func­tion was of a dis­tant, secon­dary concern.

The effects of this were two­fold: first, the forums were floo­ded with peo­ple who had seen these screenshots and wan­ted a decked-out music pla­yer to match their trans­lu­cent, purple-LED-spangled case mods; second, because of TIPM/SCPL’s con­vo­lu­ted new for­mat­ting lan­guage, foobar’s already noto­rious lear­ning curve was pitched to unpre­ce­den­ted new heights. Avatar-less users were everywhere, star­ting new threads with their first post, asking ques­tions about TIPM/SCPL. These ques­tions belon­ged in the com­po­nents’ threads, of course, but one got the sense that peo­ple were begin­ning to believe that foo­bar was TIPM/SCPL.

Ine­vi­tably, TIPM and SCPL were mer­ged into one com­po­nent, Panels UI, which repla­ces enti­rely the Columns UI inter­face: “Panels UI looks and acts like one large Track Info Mod panel (advan­ced text posi­tio­ning, mul­ti­ple font con­fi­gu­ra­tions, dis­pla­ying ima­ges, etc.) that can inside of it host new panels.” Alar­mingly, a very recent poll shows that, out of 89 foo­bar users, 42.7% are using Panels UI. And the threads con­ti­nue to this day:

• panels UI sort pro­blem (quick question)
• few ques­tion [sic] about Panels UI
• how do i make a but­ton that will open the menu? (With foo_ui_panels)
• Panel­sUI Coding Ques­tions (Ques­tions I Can­not Find Ans­wers To.….….…)
• and my favo­rite: please help. panels UI :( (rena­med to roc­ket scien­tist UI?)

Admit­tedly, Panels UI is capa­ble of impro­ving foobar’s func­tio­na­lity. If you took the time to deve­lop a real exper­tise in the for­mat­ting lan­guage, the look and feel of foo­bar would be limi­ted only by your ima­gi­na­tion. And my sus­pi­cion that the graphics-intensive nature of Panels UI pla­ces an unjus­ti­fia­ble bur­den on your sys­tem resour­ces has been lar­gely untes­ted (by me). Per­for­mance was the rea­son I got into foo­bar in the first place, and though I tried Panels UI for a few weeks with mixed results, the more mea­su­red, sober approach to foo­bar deve­lop­ment demons­tra­ted by older “essen­tial” com­po­nents ulti­ma­tely drew me back to Columns UI, which I am still hap­pily using today.

I do think it would be a wise solu­tion to create a Panels UI sec­tion in the foo­bar forums. These threads are not going away, and never before has a sin­gle com­po­nent spaw­ned so many one-off threads. Unfor­tu­na­tely, the noto­riously stub­born forum admi­nis­tra­tors would never agree to this, as it would vio­late the even-handedness with which foo­bar invol­ve­ment has always been trea­ted — “Why shouldn’t my com­po­nent have its own forum?”

There is a new blog meant to report foo­bar news from the forums, but its focus, too, is pri­ma­rily on Panels UI. But at least its posts are infor­ma­tive and con­si­de­red, not thought­less ques­tions from frus­tra­ted n00bs, and it does allow and encou­rage contributions.