DynamicWin-Legacy v1.5.0r1

[59xa]

What's new in v1.5.0r1

• Brand new media player menu (MediaPlayer.cs, supersedes MediaWidget.cs)
• Media thumbnail fetching service (MediaThumbnailService.cs)
  • Serves MediaPlayer.cs, MediaThumbnailWidget.cs, and AudioVisualiser.cs
• High-refresh-rate support
• Minor island/notch visual improvements
• New application icons👀
• Back-end refactoring and performance optimisations
• Bug fixes
• Additional quality-of-life improvements

Introducing the brand new MediaPlayer.cs menu

This newly implemented menu deprecates Media Playback Control (MediaWidget.cs) widget in this update. This menu finally allows the user to view more information about the current song playing, including the ability to seek through sections of the current media through the progress bar. This menu is similar to the media player found on the dynamic island seen on iPhone devices.

MediaThumbnailService.cs

Centralised service dedicated to update fetched media thumbnail alongside the currently playing media. Serves MediaPlayer.cs, MediaThumbnailWidget.cs, and AudioVisualiser.cs.

• Modularised as a small registerable widget
• Can be toggled for render on small audio visualiser widget

High-refresh-rate support

Versions v1.4.2b and below rendered the interface on 60Hz, making the animations and fluidity janky on high-refresh-rate monitors. This version automatically allows the application to run on the monitor's refresh rate on for all users upon updating. This option can be configured per usual inside the settings menu.

Minor island/notch visual improvements

Both the island and the notch in this update renders the drop shadow to give depth to the interface. This visual improvement can also be tweaked in settings according to your preference.

New application icons

As DynamicWin-Legacy continues to receive updates, it made sense to give the icons a brand new fresh of paint. Below includes some of the new icons for this update:

Back-end refactoring and performance optimisations

This update drastically reduces both CPU and GPU usage compared to the previous versions, meaning less resources are being used when running DynamicWin-Legacy. Comparisons are seen below as follows:
Before

After

While performance leaks may still occur on this release, rest assured that they will be fixed on upcoming updates as soon as possible; And despite trying to improve performance further to acceptable levels, there is a huge tech debt that prevents me from continuing optimisation further than I would like to such as the application using WPF as back-end. More information about the future of DynamicWin-Legacy soon when the time is right.

Bugs fixed in this update

• Audio visualiser in MediaWidget.cs not being destroyed correctly when no media is playing (addresses Media Player Widget Comically Enlarged #7)
• Centered small widgets overlapping other widgets from left and right sides of the island/notch
• Some unaddressed null-references (more to fix over time)
• Topmost not being effective, preventing application to overlap with applications like MyDockFinder, YASB, etc
  • Unfortunately, this also causes a side-effect that prevents SetMonitor(int monitorIndex) from working properly.
  • And due to how WPF works, doing topmost will be difficult whilst trying to keep performance levels as low as possible.
  • This so-called fix will be removed in the next update.

Bugs not fully addressed but will be fixed

• Random crash due to thumbnail returning null when fetching its width/height in areas where MediaThumbnailService.cs is used.
• SetMonitor(int monitorIndex) not respecting the monitor preference at start-up
  • A fix is planned for this, but will have to undergo a huge back-end refactoring as doing it now will heavily impact performance due to how the interface is being rendered
• Random performance leaks on CPU usage
  • This is an issue that is already made aware of where it spikes in CPU usage when new media is fetched. Will be addressed in next update.

What's to come in v1.5.1r?

More performance fixes and visual improvements are currently being tested in the canary release stream. Make sure to check them out by switching release streams inside the settings menu! A snippet of what to expect for this update is as shown below:

Checksums

SHA256: 7E763F5811CE2B13CFB7D0FCAC1F96C6294E7BDE725C41D57327AF88B15171AC
MD5: E2CD5C0660D964999C1C086793408308

Continued support:

• Your support truly means a lot to me as I continue to maintain DynamicWin-Legacy. Keep an eye out on this repository whenever a new release comes out.
• Feel free to contribute to this project as you wish. Open any issues on the issues page if you encounter any bugs.

Read the full changelog here: v1.4.1b1...v1.5.0r1

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This discussion was created from the release DynamicWin-Legacy v1.5.0r1.