Blog Entry
Jan 17

XM Online Radio 1.4

Posted in Development, Gadget Stuff, News & Updates

So we’ve been working on a few new things for the next version of the gadget.  And after the results came back that the testing computers did Not in fact, burst into flames, we decided to unleash this wonder on the world (yet again).  Why is 1.4 special?  Why is 1.4 cool?  Come friends, let us show ye the ways…

Features

  • Auto-Preview Option
    - It’s Like You Hit The “Song List” Button Automatically!
     
  • New Master Search Flyout
    - Amazon, eBay, Lyrics, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and YouTube
     
  • Favorites Management
    - Move And Delete The List.
     
  • Favorites File Import / Export
    - For You Know, Backup Stuff.
     
  • Stability Fix For Play Button
    - Re-Login Works Now.  Finally.
     
  • Album Name On Gadget, Link Now Artist Name
    - Cause You Asked For It.
     
  • Collapsible Channel Groups
    - Click The Group Header In the Channel List.
     
  • Improved Persistent Settings & Debug
    - This Is The Most Important Thing Most Of You Will Never See.
     
  • Gadget Signed & Delivered
    - Okay, So The Recent Windows Updates Fixed It…

There are a couple minor little things here and there in addition to the above list, but for the most part, this is the biggest set of changes we’ve rolled out for this gadget.  People who want low bandwidth options have them (Stream control, auto-preview), picky people get new stuff (channel flyout options, favorites management), and everyone else gets the cools stuff too (collapsible channel groups, search flyout via artist name, etc.).  Have fun with this update, let us know if there are any bugs, comments, suggestions, improvements, etc.

Thanks!  :)

Download @ BuildAGadget.com

Download @ Widgipedia.org

Note:  Update Feed Has Been Updated.


This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
and is filed under Development, Gadget Stuff, News & Updates.



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32 Responses to “XM Online Radio 1.4”

  1. sup191 Says:
    January 17th, 2008 at 10:21 pm

    Thanks for another great release! Just when you think you can’t cram any more useful stuff into the program, you manage to do so! But mostly, thank you for fixing that play button. ;)

    sup191

  2. Geoff Says:
    January 18th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    Suuuweeet release! Play fixed, album titles, tooltips, lyrics link, pretty much everything we asked for! Now if only I had asked for that million dollars…

    Great work! Thanks again for the #1 most useful (by far) gadget on my desktop!

    Geoff

  3. Chuck Says:
    January 18th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

    Great program. Really enjoy it.
    Just to let you know-When I use the stop button or when the program first comes up, the sound will not come on. I change channels back and forth once with the plus and minus signs and everything works fine.
    (Brand new Vista PC)
    Thanks

  4. admin Says:
    January 18th, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    Chuck, do you have version 1.4? We fixed the play buytton issue which sounds just like what you are describing.

  5. Chuck Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    I have version 1.4 now. Works fine. I thought I had the latest version because I just downloaded it but I had an older version (1.3). Sorry I should have checked.

  6. sheldon saliman Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 7:06 am

    Well done. Keep up the good work!

  7. Seabert Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 11:12 pm

    i love the update in almost all ways but when i go to the youtube search and play a video the sounds from the gadget plays at the same time. it is not practical to stop the stream and then search, so i am wondering if you could just make the stream automatically stop when play is pressed on a video. if you cant then you should remove youtube becasue it is of little use the way it is now. thanks.

  8. admin Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 2:14 am

    Seabert, Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to tell if the play button has been clicked on an embedded video.

    But good news! We added a mute button to the gadget. Just click the button (the flyout will stay out), watch the video, then un-mute the stream.

    When we built the YouTube search into the flyout we discussed this very same problem, however, the conclusion that muting the stream on the YouTube load wouldn’t be practical for anyone on a slower connection who would have to pre-load the movie before watching it. Thus, the mute button comes into play and allows a person to watch the video after clicking a button.

  9. Mark Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 6:52 pm

    I have just installed the 1.4 version. when I click on a button it keeps saying run time error and to debug. had same problem with older version.
    Keep up the good work as this is one of the best gagets around.

  10. sally Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    have version 1.4 on trial but having what I assume are streaming problems. I do not use explorer as my browser as your FAQs suggest I check into. I would like to pay for the service but not if it keeps breaking up as it is. help!

  11. Urban Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    I’m using XM Radio 1.3. It seems that proxy information is only read on startup of the gadget. I use this on a laptop and frequently switch between locations, each with different proxy information. If I move to a new location, the gadget doesn’t re-read IE proxy information until I reboot.

    It would be nice if this could be fixed. It’s a great gadget — my favorite.

    Urban

  12. csm001 Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    1st I wanted to give you props for your work. 2nd i am having an issue with the new version. The first day it worked fine. Now when I attempt to log back in, it tells me that the login combination is invalid. However i can log in fine on the xm radio site. Any thoughts?

  13. admin Says:
    January 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 am

    Sally: Can you describe the problems? Maybe we can figure out what’s going on. You don’t have to use Internet Explorer as your main browser, but the sidebar does use IE to render the gadget.

    Urban: First, try out version 1.4, see if that helps. Second, I’m not certain how the gadget can read the proxy info to begin with. If you have to move around that often, maybe stop the sidebar application and then restart it using a bookmark?

    csm001: Thanks! With the login stuff, make sure you’re using the whole e-mail as the username and double-check that you are logging into the XM online portion of their website, not just the regular account management section. If you can get the online player to work with a full e-mail address and password, it should work in the gadget.

  14. Geoff Says:
    January 23rd, 2008 at 4:43 pm

    admin, one quick question:

    Love the new tooltips, but it seems you need to give the gadget focus before they’ll show up. If I click the sidebar icon in the tray to bring it to the top (I don’t have it on top all the time), and then hover over the artist name the cursor changes to a hand icon, and hovering over a control (volume, channel, etc.) displays the control name, but until I actually click on the XM gadget I can’t get tooltips for the artist/title/album name. Not a big deal by any means, but I’m curious if this is something you can address?

    Thanks,

    Geoff

  15. csm001 Says:
    January 23rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    I think I found the problem. I outputted some of the javascript variables to the app and I found that somewhere in the script it isn’t parsing integers the way it should. My password was previously an integer beginning with a zero. I outputted the pw variable in a few spots and I noticed that it truncated the zero at the beginning. I changed my login PW to a varchar data type with an alpha char first and it logged in fine. I changed it back to the int just to verify that it wasn’t a cookie issue and it failed again. If you want you can shoot me an email and i’ll go into further detail.

  16. admin Says:
    January 23rd, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Geoff, Not sure what we can do with that, but maybe if we can use Abbr tags, it might help. Otherwise, with tooltips of any kind, the focus needs to be on the element. It’s something we’ll definetely look into.

    csm001, Problem noted, we’ll look into that a bit further, see if there’s a way to get around it. Kind of an odd issue, but an issue nonetheless. Thanks for the heads-up!

  17. sup191 Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 12:54 am

    Is anybody else having streaming problems with the XM channels the past couple days? They keep breaking up every few seconds for me - so much that I can’t even listen to them. I have no problems with the “1 Hit Wonders” or “Late Night Mix” channels, but I think those channels are streamed from AOL. I’m using v1.4.

    sup191

  18. sup191 Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 1:02 am

    Ok, now those channels are doing it also. Hopefully it’s just problems on their end. Is it working intermittently for anybody else out there?

    sup191

  19. Geoff Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 10:16 am

    sup191, I occasionally have those problems too, but in my case it’s my crappy ISP (Comcast) and all internet connectivity is flaky at the same time, not just XM. Comes and goes, and not much I can do about it, but you’re right, it’s majorly annoying.

    Geoff

  20. Merlin Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    I would love to know how to import my favorites to the xm gadget and how I would export my favorites from the xm online website? can anyone help me with this? thanks

  21. Geoff Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    Is it normal for monitor sleep mode not to kick in when the gadget is in “play” mode (on Vista)? The screensaver is active, but the monitor never goes into power-save mode as long as tunes are playing.

    A Vista thing, or might there be a way to change that behavior?

    Thanks,

    Geoff

  22. admin Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    Merlin: Try an export of the favorites and then look at the file format. Unfortunately, we don’t know of any way to export favorites from the XM online site. But if you know the channels, you can edit them into the exported file and then do an import to the gadget.

    Geoff: No idea, but it might be due to the timer changing the display, but it seems odd that the gadget would do something like that.

  23. sally Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    thanks for your response admin. the music cuts in and out constantly making it very annoying to listen to as you can imagine. Usually the problem is worse for the 1 half hour or so then less of a problem.

  24. admin Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 10:06 pm

    Sally, that sounds more like a problem with the connection or the buffering on Windows Media player than with the gadget code itself. Have you tried out the XM online player (from the website) to see if it’s doing the same thing? If it is, then it could be either: The Internet Speed, The Incoming Stream, or Buffering / Codec issues. Hard to say which one without testing it out a bit though.

  25. Seabert Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 12:45 am

    thank you, but if that is the case with the you tube videos, you really should put a mute button on the pull out page itself. how is someone supposed to know they need to go back to the gadget otherwise? if you cannot put a mute button on there you should remove youtube because im sure that people just play the sound streams over each other.

    i tried the the password problem with the zero and the focus issue with the tool tips too. both can be fixed with good coding and you guys should fix them.

  26. The Staff Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 2:42 am

    Seabert, We’ll consider adding in a mute button to the page. We’re already working on fixes for the other issues mentioned, thanks for confirming them. :)

  27. Mark Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 11:47 am

    Hi there, the new 1.4 xmradio gadget is a lot more stable than the 1.3 version. I have seen an issue crop up, dont know if anyone else sees it, I added a channel to the favourites list, and whenever the flyout opens when I click the channel button, it shows the favourites list then approx 2-3 sec later a pop up box appears with the message - A runtime error has occurred. Do you wish to debug?

    Line 833 error: ‘document.getElementbyId(…)’ is null or not an object.

    any ideas?

    thanks

  28. The Staff Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 11:52 am

    Mark, we too have seen this issue and will be working on a fix for the next version. In the interrim, you can either turn off the auto-preview option in settings or keep it on and the message may go away intermittenly as it’s porbably just broadcasting null data that we need to account for.

  29. Mark Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    thanks for the prompt answer, great sidebar gadget I use it every day. keep up the good work.

    regards

    Mark

  30. The Staff Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    Seabert, Re-add your gadget and check the YouTube, got a suprise for you.

    The Numeric ID problem has been fixed for the next version.

    The Runtime Error on the song preview should be fixed for the next version (we added some stuff, but it’s hard to test as it’s not constant).

    The Song Listing on the gadget will trigger a focus event in the next version, allowing you to see the full title without having to click on the gadget.
    Scratch that, still working on it. I can get focus in the sidebar, but the sidebar itself needs focus first, it seems.

    Overall, we’re moving along pretty steadily with stuff, any other requests?

  31. Jose Says:
    February 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 am

    I really like this gadget better that the other XM options. Works great for me.

    I do miss the popups when a song changes though.

  32. Keith Says:
    November 12th, 2008 at 11:44 am

    I love this player, the only one that works. I just thought i might let everyone know that the new channels from Sirius are now added. So you will have to update the play list. For example Squizz is now Octane. and there are new channels as well, like the Blue Collar Comedy.

    Keep up the great work, im lost without this player.

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