Well, as promised on this fantastic 4th of July weekend I’m delivering everyone a great new version of WWWinamp

Mostly a bug fixer with some improvements to make it easier for people creating their own scripts! There are several users active here on my blog who are creating AJAX enabled skins and it was confusing the rules as to which files were passed to the Scripting Engine and which files were just treated as is.

Well, the rule of thumb in previous versions was that if the file was consided to have a MIME type of “text/html”, it would be sent to the Scripting Engine. This pretty much meant only *.htm and *.html files. At users requests, I’ve added a new configuration key to the WWWinamp.config file (WWWinamp.HTTP.ScriptFiles) which allows users to list which files are actually passed to the Scripting Engine.

Also in this version, I fixed an issue in the WWWinamp.config file which would keep the WCF service from starting.

Because of these changes, I suggest everyone use the WWWinamp.config file packaged with this build and just set back up your default configurations.

If you don’t feel like updating your configuration file.. well.. your WCF service just won’t work and WWWinamp will default back to using “text/html” MIME typed files as scripts.

Here’s the full changelog:

• [HTTP] Better handling of malformed HTTP Requests
• Added more user friendly help to some of the most commonly reported errors
• Added ability to specify file extensions that are sent to the Scripting Engine
• Increased performance of the Scripting Engine
• Fixed issue with WCF endpoint being misconfigured in the WWWinamp.config file

Cheers!

WWWinamp v4.2 Build 3109 – Download (60k)

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I’ve been slammed at my full time work these last couple of months and haven’t been able to give much time or effort into WWWinamp, so I do apologize! BUT, the last couple days I’ve had some free time and I decided to fire back up Visual Studio and give WWWinamp some more love

Currently on the list of fixes additions:

• Speed Improvements in Script Parsing
• Stability Improvements in handling malformed HTTP Request
• Configuration File Fix for WCF Service (Renamed class without fixing endpoint configuration! Oops!)
• Ability to specify which file extensions will be handled as scripts (currently its based on files considered a “text/html” MIME type).

I’m trying to stay on top of any WWWinamp error reports that are sent to me and I’m not always able to respond to each one, so I apologize that I haven’t gotten back to some. I hope my actions in fixing these defects speak louder than words.

If there’s any issues I missed please feel free to send them to WWWINAMP AT ENUSBAUM DOT COM

Cheers!

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You can simply make this skin your default skin by plating it in your Web Root folder or by placing it in a sub-directory in WWWinamp (such as /askin/)

Anyone who has issues with this skin can make bug reports to this post!

Just another great example of the flexibility of WWWinamp in letting people remote control their own copy of WinAmp without being stuck to a single interface design like Winamp Remote or AjaxAmp.

Thanks again to dawolf for all this hard work!

WWWinamp Ajax Skin v0.2 by dawolf – Download (55k)

Click here for the latest information on WWWinamp.

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With this version of WWWinamp I really focused on implementing a lot of the IPC calls that are in the new 5.34 SDK of WWWinamp. Several of these required small changes to how I did things before. An example of this would be the Shuffle and Repeat commands where before you only only toggle them on or off, now you’re able to specify specifically to turn them on or off.

Also with this version of WWWinamp I tried to give you guys full control over Winamp including seek and EQ control! Now you can skip to any part of the song Of course, the default skin doesn’t support this but I highly suggest everyone check out dawolf’s AJAX enabled WWWinamp skin that he posted a preview of here.

I wasn’t able to get HTTP cache control built into WWWinamp just yet as I’m having issues with dynamic content such as album art which aren’t sent as static image files. I was able to add a couple extra tweaks to the HTTP daemon which should make life easier for people

Here is the full changelog for Build 3018:

• [HTTP] Added ability to handle 302 Redirect on directory requests without trailing slash (example: http://localhost/images)
• [HTTP] Added ability to submit variables to a default file (example: http://localhost/?q=play)
• Added several new commands to control EQ, Seek and Winamp UI (see sdk.txt)
• Added new script tags to get Repeat, Shuffle and EQ status (see sdk.txt)
• Changed Repeat and Shuffle commands (see sdk.txt)
• Improvements to the Winamp IPC code (up to date with latest WinAmp 5.34 SDK)
• Fixed issue when adding first folder found to the playlist when displaying all, the first file was omitted.
• Fixed issue when trying to move the first file in the playlist up or last in the playlist down

As you can see in the changelog, I’ve also taken the liberty to updating (and including, OOPS!) the sdk.txt file which outlines all the allowed WWWinamp commands and script tags. This should help people working on their own skins a lot. Sorry I left it out! It got dropped somewhere in the migration from v4.1 This new version brings in about two years of updates and a bunch of information not in the previous version. I’ll do my best to keep this up to date with new releases of WWWinamp

Share and enjoy!

WWWinamp v4.2 Build 3018 – Download (59k)

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• Adding HTTP Cache Control (will save bandwidth)
• Adding Repeat and Shuffle status tags to the script engine (|STATUS_REPEAT|, |STATUS_SHUFFLE|)
• Adding ability to lock Winamp UI so nobody can click on any controls within the actual program
• Fix the “StartWinamp” command (Thanks ‘dawolf’ for reporting it!)
• Change Balance values from -127/+127 to 0/255

Let me know if there are any other issues you peeps might be seeing. Also if you do run into an error, please send your ERROR.LOG files to wwwinampATenusbaumDOTcom

Look for this new version to come at you sometime this weekend, unless someone gives me a difficult feature or bug fix

Cheers!

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Again, thanks to ‘dawolf’ for reporting several defects within WWWinamp that were included in the previous build (4990), but have been corrected. I suggest all users upgrade to this latest build to avoid any system performance issues

Changes in this version include:

• Fixed 100% CPU utilization issue in WinAmp Handle Update code
• Fixed issue when starting WWWinamp without an instance of WinAmp Running
• Minor Bug Fixes

I actually didn’t notice the 100% CPU bug when testing the previous version because the loop was in a single thread, and only my quad core rig it only showed up at 25% system utilization which didn’t strike me as odd for my system while developing. So my apologies for missing that!

WWWinamp v4.2 Build 2991 – Download (56k)

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I’ve taken the “beta” tag off of it as it seems the recode of the HTTP request processing seemed to work without issue and no bugs were reported (other than the ‘paging’ issue, which really was a defect in the script parser).

Changes for this version are:

• [HTTP] Daemon will now start if a WinAmp instance is not found
• [HTTP] Able to specify max number of HTTP threads to process (Default 25)
• [Script Parser] Fixed “Paging” issue when searching through the Libary
• [Script Parser] Script Files (*.wwa) will be run from the same folder as the file requesting them
• WinAmp Handles will be updated if a new instance is detected

Be sure to use the latest config file included with this release as it has a new key value, WWWinamp.HTTP.ListeningThreads, which tells the HTTP daemon how many threads to use max. This is set to 25 by default if no key is found, but it will throw an error. So if you don’t want to use the packaged configuration file because you’ve hacked together your own, you can manually add this key with any value you’d like.

This value isn’t a huge addition but it can help maintain system stability under heavy load. This way WWWinamp won’t spin up an infinite amount of threads if there’s heavy resource contention or there’s a problem that is causing threads to hang.

Also, the other ‘fixes’ were requests made by  ‘dawolf’ here in my blog so I suggest more people get involved and we can make WWWinamp better!

In addition, if you’ve made your own skin and want to share it, please feel free to contact me and I can post it here to my blog for others to use.

As for future releases, they may be a little slow in the coming month. I’m going to be diving into the iPhone SDK and Objective-C programming using XCode on my Apple. I think a remote media interface would be totally awsome if I can have a native WWWinamp application on the iPhone talk to the WWWinamp server using WCF/SOAP. It’d be way easier than using the webkit crap and I could make it have a lot more functionality (perhaps tuning in to a shoutcast stream VIA the iPhone?). Anyways, just thought I’d give you guys a little bit of information on that.

Cheers!

WWWinamp v4.2 Build 2990 – Download (56k)

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I’m currently working on fixing socket errors I’m seeing when interacting with Safari on Windows (I haven’t tested on my Apple computers yet). This issue is also related to a hanging socket issue I’ve noticed with the iPhone switches from EDGE to Wi-Fi. These issues can result in partially loaded data and messed up UI in the browser. Firefox and I.E. don’t seem to have these issues, and if they do they’re able to recover.

Part of my work around is making an active IP Table which will track active connections allowing you to restrict how many connections from a client are being serviced, as well as being able to link resource usage to a specific connection. This way administrators can restrict say, how many files a person is allowed to download at a time. It will also help in debugging WWWinamp as I’m going to implement a verbose debugging option that will dump all vital information to an XML file. This trace log will allow me to better assist people in identifying possible issues with WWWinamp.

Also planned for this new version is a few features requested here on the site. One in particular that never crossed my mind was suggested by “dawolf” here that the HTTP server still function even though an instance of Winamp cannot be found. This way WWWinamp could also serve as a lightweight HTTP daemon (as a simpler alternative to Apache or IIS).

Look for this new version coming within the next week.

Cheers!

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Along with a quick bug fix version of WWWinamp, I’m also releasing an iPhone compatible skin for WWWinamp! This skin will make controlling your copy of Winamp from an iPhone quick and easy! A big thanks to the guys over at Google and Joe Hewitt for providing such a great set of iPhone web functions in their iUI interface library for the iPhone. Made development very quick and easy so I suggest anyone interested in iPhone Web Development hop over and give this great collection of JavaScript and CSS functions a look!

Of course, controlling WWWinamp from a mobile device is nothing new as I’m sure most of you have been using the default skin through the iPhone/iPod Touch Web Browser anyways, but this will give your copy of WWWinamp a more ‘iPhone-ish’ feel This of course is in addition to the already existing mobile skin which I developed for use with my Nokia 6682

The new build of WWWinamp is just a quick bug fix to handle some strange socket behavior caused by Safari trying to switch between Edge and a WiFi connection when trying to access a private IP (such as 10.0.0.1). Previously it would have caused an unhandled exception and WWWinamp would just bite the dust. This has now been fixed and it can gracefully handle Safari’s connectivity issues

Please keep in mind this is the first version of the iPhone skin and it’s still a work in progress. There are currently several features still missing (playlist re-order, and a few others). To use the iPhone skin you must set ALL commands usable by guest, as I haven’t incorporated admin login functionality yet. You can do this in your WWWINAMP.CONFIG file by setting all the commands under the WWWinamp.HTTP.Commands namespace to “true”. Be warned that this will open all functionality of your WWWinamp instance to all users, so be careful if you’re using this on a publicly visible instance of WWWinamp!

I’ve also added an icon so when you add it to your home screen using the new bookmarking functionality in iPhone firmware v1.1.3, it’ll display a cool little WWWinamp icon rather than a screen shot.

I look forward to your feedback!

WWWinamp v4.2 Build 2953 (Beta) – Download (56k)

WWWinamp iPhone Skin v1.0 – Download (39k)

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It was then announced that the official iPhone SDK which runs natively on the iPhone will be released later this month. So soon you’ll have a host of local applications which will most likely include 3rd party media players. It then dawned on me, if a user could use WWWinamp from the iPhone with an interface that interacted nicely on the iPhone, then someone’s iPhone could act as a remote control from ANYWHERE allowing them access to their home media library.

Well, this is just a heads up that I’m currently working on a skin for WWWinamp that will let it work on the iPhone (better)! Soon you all will be able to control your media center or home copy of WWWinamp from anywhere using your Apple iPhone!

I’m still working on the organizing the data on the screen in a manner that makes sense and is easy to use. All the functionality that comes with the default skin will be included in the iPhone version, including cover art and all the Winamp Playlist functions.

It’s actually pretty sweet controlling Winamp from an Apple iPhone and I hope I can polish this up and put out a beta version this weekend. I’m still trying to fish up some resources on the WebKit API and the WebKit specific tags to make things integrate nicely.

Keep your browsers posted here for updates in the coming days!

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