Sidebar/Toolbar

The sidebar is only avaible with columns UI (developed by musicmusic, official webpage ). If a lot of people use it above their playlist, it is still an anormal use of it, it's normal place is on the left. The abilities of this component is not extraordinary in itself but it will allow you to use some very interesting components. I won't describe all of them as it is quite hard to enumerate them, I will just say a few words about the more used ones.

The Toolbar is for its part quite functional. With some components, you can transform it into a tiny powerful console.

Just remember that adding the components described below will probably increase the CPU usage by foobar, as a consequence, take care ta add only the useful ones (for you) /

Configure

Toolbar

• Show toolbars: Hide or shows the toolbars (playing order, playback buttons) See here for more details.
• List all toolbars: will list all the toolbar avaible.
• Use custom buttons: Just select some buttons. (Some are avaible from here). It needs a restart from the user to take effect.
  • Bitmap includes mouseover images: use if in the file there is not only the standard buttons but also the buttons when your mouse is over them. (if there are 7 buttons, do not use it, if there are fourteen, use it)
  • Make bottom left pixel transparent (8bit or less color depth bmp only): Use it to have some transparency.
• Use system menu height:
• Disable default drawings: Not using this option, the software will outline buttons, else, it will only show the drawings.
• Visualisation frame: Choose the kind
• Reset toolbar: will return to default settings

Sidebar

• Enable sidebar: use it to have the sidebar avaible
• Autohide sidebar: Use it to hide automatically your sidebar (when it is empty for example)
• Create toggle area to left of sidebar: If you use it, clicking on the extreme left of the sidebar will make it appear or disappear.
• Use custom show delay of:
• Hide delay: Choose how long the sidebar will appear before hiding (use it with autohide sidebar)
• Reset: Go back to default settings

Use

It couldn't be more simple, you just need to right click on the corresponding place: in the sidebar for the sidebar, at the top of your screen for the toolbar.
Toolbars

• History Buttons: See here: Toolbar
• Menu: Show/hide: foobar 2000, playback, playlist, components
• Playback buttons: Show/hide Playback buttons
• Playback order: Show/hide playlist order; See here for more details: Playlist/Reading order
• Seekbar: Show/hide the seekbar.
  
  • Note: Why is MP3 seeking so terribly slow? Answer here
• Volume Control: Quite a lot of people are complaining about the lack of direct volume control in foobar 2000, this component has been created to meet their demand. Official Topic. Download.
        Note:
  • As it uses the windows sound mixer, the people using kernel streaming as output won't be able to use this tool as the interest of Kernel streaming is precisely to bypass the windows sound mixer.
    
  • The Difference between the seekbar and volume control look is that the seekbar cursor is spiked while the volume control cursor is quite rectangular.
    
• Lock the toolbars: You won't be able to resize your toolbar
• Remove Toolbar: will remove all the toolbars displayed

Panels

• Album Art: This panel will display your album art covers. See here for more details: Album art cover
• Album list: This panel will display the album list panel. See here for more details: Album list
• History: will display the History. See here: History
• Playlist switcher: will display a tool to switch between your playlists See here: Playlist switcher
• Track info: will enable you to display information about your tracks See here for more details Track info
• Playlist tree/Playlist tree browser: As this component is still in development I will just give some links: Tutorial Official topic

Visualizations

• Simple spectrum: Will display the spectrum of what you're listening. See Here: Simple spectrum
• Spectrum analyzer: Spectrum analyzer

Tips

To set the panels above your playlist, go to : Preferences,Display,columns UI, "Other" tab, use :list all toolbars, then add the panels/toolbars/visualiszations that you want to use (near the top of your screen, not in the sidebar area). Organize them as you want them to be displayed. And finally use the minimum height values of the corresponding panels. As it is not an usual way to use the toolbar, you may have some crappy things. Use it knowing that it may create some dislaying problems. Musicmusic may fix this into the next version of UI columns.

To have tabbed panels, just use uie tabs. See here for more details. uie tabs

To get G-force without any edge or in a tab/panel, just go to your "Documents and settings/<username>/G-force" folder open the Preferences (foobar2000).txt file and change the line from "NoBo=0" to "NoBo=1". You won't be able to resize the window so, choose precisely the position and size of the window. to put it as a tab, just create a fake tab called G-Force and place precisely the window. (The window without border will take the place of the window with borders included before the change).