Blog Entry
May 01

Minor XM Update

Posted in Development, Gadget Stuff

Another quick XM update for everyone.  Nothing too major here, but we’re preparing for some channel group swapping to be going on in the future.  As of right now, the AOL channels are no longer on XM Online, so it’s a matter of time before we know if they are to be replaced with another group or if that’s it.

Otherwise, couple tiny tweaks to the gadget:

  • Buttons cleaned up for size and clarity
  • Channel up and down now use arrows instead of + / -
  • Minor tweak to bad channel handling in favorites

As a word of caution, export your favorites (Settings -> Favorites -> Export) to the desktop.  Just in case.

Download XM Online Radio (For Vista Sidebar)


This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 10:34 am
and is filed under Development, Gadget Stuff.



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61 Responses to “Minor XM Update”

  1. Anita Coats Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    I can not get my gadget to show anything but a white square for my XM radio… All the others work fine.. whats up? I keep trying to install it but it won’t work..
    can anyone help?

  2. The Staff Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 6:45 pm

    Anita, try a persistent settings fix (Go to Settings -> Reset -> Delete and follow the instructions). That should be able to fix the issue.

  3. Neddy Says:
    May 3rd, 2008 at 2:44 am

    why is this needed? other gadgets let you upgrade without all the hassles.

  4. The Staff Says:
    May 3rd, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    Neddy, it’s a “just in case”, not absolutely neccesary. And since this is a minor update, if you don’t feel comfortable getting it, you can always wait for the next major version (which will include minor updates like this) to download.

  5. Neddy Says:
    May 4th, 2008 at 10:00 pm

    i meant why the need to do all of the settings tricks. shouldnt it just upgrade nicely? the frequent upgrades are nice.

  6. The Staff Says:
    May 4th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

    Neddy, It will for most people, we’re trying to take precautions for the people who might run into issues.

  7. Urban Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    When I click the start area, the favorites/channels pop up and disappear instantly (Vista SP1). If I pull it out of the sidebar, all is well, once docked it is broken.

    The v1.6 gadget didn’t exhibit this behavior.

  8. The Staff Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    Urban, that is very odd. We’ll take a look into it and see if we can reproduce the problem. Never ran into that before though.

  9. Nekki K. Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    When I open the channels/favorites for Google sidebar, I cannot show more than 9 favs with previews (20 without) - the rest gets . Is there any way to scroll through a bigger list with previews??

  10. The Staff Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 1:35 pm

    Nekki, upgrade your version of Google Desktop Sidebar and the scrollbar should show up in both docked and undocked modes.

  11. Allen Says:
    May 8th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

    I had the same problem as Urban’s. My favs list was gone and I could only add favs if I didn’t have them previously as part of my favs. I have since deinstalled and reinstalled and all is well again. I am using 1.7

  12. Cindy Says:
    May 10th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    I recently installed this gadget (v1.7) and set up my favorites. I haven’t used it in a few days, but now I started it and found all my favorites gone. What happened? Thanks!

  13. The Staff Says:
    May 10th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    Cindy, We noticed a small glitch with the favorites when the gadget locked up. One thing to try out first would be to restart the sidebar program and see if that helps. Pop the channel flyout out a few times instead of just once. Beyond that, we’re going to have to look into it and see if there’s a better solution for saving the favorites.

  14. RD Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    Not too long ago, I installed your XMonlineradio gadget and it worked well… in Vista’s sidebar.

    Now, even after I deleted -everything- in my Windows Sidebar Gadgets directory -and- the Sidebar Settings.ini file… and re-installed your gadget, I still can’t get it to work properly.

    First I noticed that I had no channels or favorites. Then, when I checked gadget Options, it would display the gadget’s “Settings” flyout, but just the heading ‘XM Online Radio’ and “Settings” with complete blank space underneath… and I can see a File (Retrieve) I/O error written across the gadget… and clicking OK on the Settings flyout gives a File (Save) I/O error on the gadget.

    And, now when I try to login, I get the login flyout and enter my email and password… but the ‘Login’ button does absolutely nothing… it won’t even close the flyout. The button does light up yellow when I mouse over it, and if I -don’t- enter username or password, clicking Login will display the red warning bar prompting for username or password.

    When I go to the Windows Sidebar folder and look at Settings.ini, I see my login and password saved in the XMOnline section. Back in the gadget’s login flyout, when I click on ‘Need Help’, the flyout flashes white for a split-second… and that’s all.

    My other gadgets seem to work fine. I’ve tried the 1.7 minor update and went back and got your gadget version 1.1, no improvement. I don’t know if there’s been some Windows update or what… I -can- use the other XM Radio gadget from the Microsoft library, but it doesn’t have near the features yours does (did).

    One odd thing I noticed was that when I use IE7 to look at your gadget’s Settings.html file, in the Sidebar\Gadgets\XMOnlineRadio[1].gadget folder… IE7 will display your Settings page and lots of option graphics and entry boxes, etc., with an ActiveX warning bar across the top. If I click the bar and ‘Allow Blocked content’, the html page is redrawn BLANK except for the “Settings” header.

    I’m only running Windows Defender and AVG, and Vista’s UAC as normal… don’t know what’s failing your gadget, but it’s unusual.

  15. The Staff Says:
    May 13th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

    RD, it sounds like the sidebar security tripped. It’s an issue we’re still trying to work on getting fixed. Just restart the sidebar program (Instructions under Support -> Basic Windows Sidebar Help) and it should start allowing internet traffic through the gadget again.

    We’re still looking into why this happens on people’s machines, the current theory is the file writing is being viewed as a security risk by the sidebar.

    The ActiveX warning on gadget pages tend to be normal for any page that dynamically redraws parts of it’s content, such as our settings page when it’s fired (Partly because it’s using the gadget API).

  16. Mike Buchter Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 7:58 am

    I add the gadget and the I logged in to my account the first time. After I restart the computer I click on Start my favs come up I select a channel and nothing happens. I tried removing it and re-adding it and that didnt work either.

  17. RD Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 8:57 am

    Exit and restarted… got a completely white box for your gadget… with a File (Retrieve) I/O Error written across it. Hope you fix that security… you have an othewise excellent XM gadget.

  18. The Staff Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 9:56 am

    RD, keep fiddling with it, it should work eventually. Try doing a persistent settings fix again.

    Mike, Restart the sidebar and see if it works then.

  19. Jeff Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 9:45 am

    I installed the new update to the gadget (vista ultimate, no SP1 yet) and it no longer plays. Exited and restarted, still doesn’t play. It shows the song names though, the volume is up, and other sounds play…. just not the XMOnline gadget.

  20. The Staff Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 9:58 am

    Jeff, try a logout / login and if that doesn’t work, try restarting the sidebar, if those do not work, try a persistent settings fix. One of those three should fix the issue.

  21. Kim Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    I try to login and pressing the login button on the flyout does nothing. Any Ideas?

  22. RD Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    Notes… just FYI.
    I’m going to assume that the ‘persistent file’ is supposed to be XMRadioData.xml …as I see references to that in the gadget files. However, XMRadioData.xml is -not- being created. Having exited the sidebar (not just closed), deleted the -sidebar- Settings.ini file, restarted sidebar and added in your XMOnlineRadio gadget… it just -never- creates an XMRadioData.xml file… no matter how many install/uninstall/re-installs and sidebar exit/wipes that I do.

  23. The Staff Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

    Kim, restart the sidebar program.

    RD, That is very odd. Not exactly sure what to say about that one. We can only speculate that it might have something to do with security settings, but again, that’s that first time that issue has been reported.

  24. RD Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    Would you have an idea where I might ease the security settings, at least temporarily, to see the gadget can get things done? If I could get the data file created, maybe most of the problems would go away. I could turn UAC off temporarily, but I was wondering if you knew something more specific.

  25. RD Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 4:39 pm

    A little update…if I turn UAC off, and install your XM gadget, it works fine, creates XMRadioData.xml. If I turn UAC back on…. your gadget fails in the manner described previously. So on my Vista SP1 system, UAC doesn’t like your gadget… I don’t know why, because I’ve done nothing to UAC since Vista was installed. There been no prompt specifically about your gadget… which I would have allowed anyway. Is there any fine tuning I can do to allow your gadget to be blessed (or at least -not- cursed) by UAC?

  26. TriOptimum Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 2:33 am

    Hello. After reinstalling a clean copy of vista and immediatelly installing SP1, then installing your XMRO gadget a few days later, I cannot get it to run. I get a message saying “A runtime error has occurred. Do you wish to debug? Line 1322 Error: Object Required” whenever I click on ‘click here to start’ then expand channels (it just stays blank on the channels tab and the favorites tab). I already tried the settings clearing fix, and even uninstalling ,restarting, reinstalling, and restarting again, nothing, same error. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

  27. The Staff Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 9:54 am

    TriOptimum, we’ll take a look at the error, but for the interrim, turnng off script debugging will keep you from seeing the error. Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Disable Script Debugging (Check both IE and Other).

  28. Hambone Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

    I am having the same problem as RD. It has been a week, do you have a fix for this yet?

    For the guy with the script error problems you need to improve the script and it will go away.

  29. Dennis Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    Lately, no matter which gadget I use, I am getting intermittent cut-outs of the signal. Not sure if it’s XM’s stream, my internet connection or the gadget. It seems to be less prevalent with 1.6 than with 1.7. I am running Vista SP1 without UAC.

  30. The Staff Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Hambone, currently it looks like turning the UAC off is the solution to make the gadget work. In the past it’s run without needing to turn the UAC off, but it’s somehting we’ll keep in mind while trying to narrow down why it would be tripping security (which contrary to popular belief is not the exact science it should be with Vista).

    Dennis, Stream issues can be affected by XM’s stream, your connection or the buffering on the WMP element in the gadget. See if closing some programs helps out with stream quality, if not, then it’s probably a combination with internet access and XM’s stream.

  31. Whitney Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    I am having trouble switching between channels. I can switch on the players up and down buttons but not when viewing all the channels at once to see what is playing.

  32. Kim Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    I still can’t login I put in my login and password and press login button and nothing happens.
    I am running windows vista ultimate sp1.

  33. Kim Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    I also have UAC disabled. I have tried shutting down sidebar and restarting it. Also I have unistalled and reinstalled the XM gadget. It used to work fine before reinstalling Windows Vista Ultimate due to a problem with the SP1 beta. Currently this is a fresh OS installed with SP1.

  34. Hambone Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 11:53 pm

    You should fix it so it works with Vista by default and does not require special settings.

  35. The Staff Says:
    May 22nd, 2008 at 1:15 am

    Whitney, Try restarting the sidebar program itself.

    Kim, Same thing. If that doesn’t work, try a persistent settings fix (Gadget Settings -> Reset -> Delete for instructions).

  36. Kim Says:
    May 22nd, 2008 at 5:49 pm

    Already tried the above. Can I manually edit the XMRadioData.xml file I see the parameters

    Off
    Theme0
    50
    high
    Amazon
    On
    Favorites

    It all looks straight forward what values are used for LoginFlag, and Cookie ?
    I can set the rest.
    Perhaps that would work.

  37. Kim Says:
    May 22nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    Well I added my login and password and changed the login parameter to On. I see the controls now but no channels. Tried pasting values from cookies from the xmradio player while logged to no avail. could you email me a sample XMRadioData.xml file that’s working? Of course change the names to protect the innocent. Or I could send you mine with my login and password and you could try to use it and send it back populated.

  38. Hambone Says:
    May 23rd, 2008 at 9:53 am

    I am STILL having the UAC problem. It seems like all of the problems revolve around upgrading and the impact it has on the settings files, and also the UAC. Fix these bugs and you’ll have the greatest radio player in the world!!! Maybe you need someone to improve the code? With proper protocols followed all of these issues would not exist.

  39. The Staff Says:
    May 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 am

    Kim, Delete that file again, also double check firewall and UAC settings one more time. If restarting the sidebar and doing a persistent settings fix aren’t working, then there’s somethng else blocking the traffic.

    Hambone, We’re aware that it might be the file writing that could be causing some of these issues. It’s something that Vista should be allowing us to do, but when we go back over the gadget for the next set of updates, we’re planning on reducing the file writing to see if that helps. In the meantime, if you’re volunteering to take a look at the code, you’re most welcome to, the gadget code is pretty open and we appreciate any insights.

  40. Kim Says:
    May 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am

    As you can see below nothing is getting written to the XMRadioData.xml file. This is after I disable the firewall and UAC. I also gave full permissions to the gadget directory to “everyone”. I have tried manually editing the XMRadioData.xml and have put in username, password, and cookie information from the xmplayer online, although don’t know which one I should use as there are about 5. Also toggled the login parameter to On.
    Then the gadget loads as though it could play but doesn’t find any stations.It doesn’t seem to write to the file at all, however it does create it, Interesting?

    –?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″ ?–
    –Settings—-General–
    –Username–myusername–/Username–
    –Password–mypassword–/Password–
    –LoginFlag–On–/LoginFlag–
    –Theme–Theme2–/Theme–
    –RadioVol–50–/RadioVol–
    –Stream–high–/Stream–
    –Section–Amazon–/Section–
    –AutoPrev–On–/AutoPrev–
    –Channels–Favorites–/Channels–
    –Cookie—-/Cookie–
    –FavList—-/FavList–
    –/General—-/Settings–

  41. RD Says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 6:33 am

    Wonder if an older version of your gadget would work any better for me…

    Also wondered why XMRadioData.xml is placed in the Gadgets directory instead of in your own XMOnlineRadio.gadget directory, perhaps UAC frowns on that.

  42. Chris Says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 8:30 am

    Kim: The cookie your looking for is named usvoCookie and the value should start with your email address, and you should see your actual name and radio ID for the 8th, 9th and 10th values respectively. (The values are pipe-delimited.)

    The Staff: I’m having a slightly different problem than everyone else. The gadget writes XMRadioData.xml just fine (I’m running Vista Business 32-bit with UAC active, no problems there), but every single time I shut down the laptop and turn it back on, the channel list is completely gone each time, and there are only two ways to fix it, it seems: your suggestion of closing and readding the gadget, and the much faster method of clicking on the Links header and selecting “Re-Build Channel List”. Both methods, of course, nuke my Favorites list and I’ve given up even bothering.

    If you would like additional developer help, I’m a long-time .NET developer. I’m not up on the Sidebar Gadgets framework real well, as our company’s focused on moving up to .NET 2.0 (from VB5… ow), but you’ve already written that code so I shouldn’t have trouble working with it.

  43. Hambone Says:
    June 2nd, 2008 at 11:08 am

    Why aren’t you fixing these UAC anf Favorites issues? I don’t think you should blame Vista. Well written code does not break and people have explained how to fix and offered to help if your developers don’t know how to write the code properly. Sorry I am frustrated but your gadget is one of the best applications I have ever installed and it just annoys me not to see these simple things fixed.

  44. Tom Novak Says:
    June 5th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    My XM Gadget is nonfunctioning. It is dead. I uninstalled and reinstalled it and still no response. It won’t even let me put my username and password into it. I’ve been using it for about 6 months with very little trouble. Any ideas?
    Thanks,
    Tom Novak

  45. Tom Novak Says:
    June 5th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    I might have jumped the gun with my post above. According to XMFAN, the whole XM site is down right now. I’m sure this is the reason the Gadget is not working.
    Sorry…

  46. Kurt Says:
    June 5th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

    I am having the same issue as Urban. When I click on the XM in the top section or the Start Here area, it flashes the box to the left and then closes it. I can not select a station or favorites. If I undock the gadget it works fine. I just updated to the 1.7 version (from 1.6) and did not have this issue before, though I have not used it since updating to Vista SP1. I am using the Vista sidebar. Nice gadget otherwise.

  47. Robert Says:
    June 13th, 2008 at 1:46 am

    I have also seen the behavior described by Cindy. So far, I have exported my favorites in case a lockup occurs…then re-imported them.

    Quote from staff:
    “Cindy, We noticed a small glitch with the favorites when the gadget locked up. One thing to try out first would be to restart the sidebar program and see if that helps. Pop the channel flyout out a few times instead of just once. Beyond that, we’re going to have to look into it and see if there’s a better solution for saving the favorites.”

  48. Chris Says:
    July 8th, 2008 at 7:56 am

    Upon further observation, it would appear that the gadget does not like the fact that there is no network connection upon booting up. (The apps that manage my mobile broadband connection tend to load up last.) So, because there is no connection available when the app is started, it seems to never try again until I force a Re-Build. This basically means I can never have a Favorites list since that gets blown away every time I press “Re-Build”, and it gets tedious reimporting the Favorites every single time I boot up.

  49. cek Says:
    July 15th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    As of yesterday the gadget has stopped working on either of my two machines (home and work). I get all the metadata and it appears to be working, but no music plays. Anyone else having problems?

  50. Calo Says:
    August 2nd, 2008 at 3:12 am

    The problem I have (and the gadget used to work perfectly) is that it stopped working, and now I’m getting a Runtime Error. The Error pops up at different times though, sometimes when installing, sometimes when adding to the sidebar, and other times when loggin in. I’m using Vista Home Premium. The runtime error is:

    “Line: 141
    Error: ‘System.Gadget.document.XMMediaPlayer.settings’ is null or not an object”

    When I go to debug, it highlights this code:

    “//>> Set Player Volume
    System.Gadget.document.XMMediaPlayer.settings.Volume = RadioVol;”

    I’ve tried everything, but it just won’t work. When the runtime error doesn’t pop-up, I get no sound. But I’m assuming it’s due to the runtime error.

    Any ideas?

    I agree with everyone else, this has got to be one of the best gadgets around and I really want to get it going again.

  51. Calo Says:
    August 2nd, 2008 at 3:54 am

    Microsoft has info about the “null” Runtime Error at:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927825/en-us

    They say that the problem occurs if the gadget’s script code tries to set a gadget event to null. Sidebar gadget events cannot be set to null.

    The workaround they suggest is to assign a function to the Sidebar gadget event.

    Could anyone please describe how I could do that?

  52. Calo Says:
    August 2nd, 2008 at 3:56 am

    Microsoft’s info is at KB927825.

  53. The Staff Says:
    August 2nd, 2008 at 5:19 am

    Calo, Thanks for the information. We’re currently working on fixing issues with the gadget, so this will go a long way in nipping the no sound problem in the butt.

  54. Rob Says:
    September 24th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    I installed the Gadget, have the correct login information, but nothing happens when I click Login.

  55. The Staff Says:
    September 24th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    Rob, try restarting the sidebar application itself. Gadget should work after that.

  56. Dave Says:
    October 2nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm

    THis sidear gadget no longer works due to XM update.. Is there a fix?

  57. The Staff Says:
    October 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 am

    Dave, XM is currently down, try it again after XM’s radio comes back and let us know if it’s still broken.

  58. Creecher Says:
    October 4th, 2008 at 8:48 am

    The Staff….This gadget is sweet! Thanks for developing one that actually “rocks”!!!

  59. Bill Says:
    October 5th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    The XM gadget used to for a long period of time, without shutting down. As of the last few days, the gadget shuts down after a few hours.

    Is there anything that can be done to fix this?

  60. The Staff Says:
    October 6th, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Bill, we’re looking into some of the bugs that have been unleashed by XM Sirus’ updates. We’ll announce a fix when we have something. Thanks.

  61. The Staff Says:
    October 6th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    Creecher, Thanks! :)

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