The steampunk media player widget allows you to play audio files on your Windows PC via a simple slider and pause buttons. The thing that is different about this widget is the Steampunk design. It purports to be brass, steel, enamel and cloth-covered cord but behind the scenes is all the supporting technology that allows it to operate on your ultra modern PC, be it Windows 10, 8/7/Vista or XP. It can also be assigned the function of your choice when you double click on any part of the widget, by default it opens the Windows network sound control applet.
This desktop widgets is provided both as a Yahoo and XWidget that runs on your desktop behind all your applications so that it/they do not interfere with your day to day computer functionality.
These widgets work with Windows XP SP3, they have also been tested on Vista Home, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, Windows 8 and 10 (32/64bit) and it should work on all these with no problems whatsoever.
You will, of course, need Yahoo widgets or Xwidgets for this widget to run. Get Yahoo widgets here.
and the Mac version here:
To be honest the Yahoo widget version is a lot more usable and user-friendly and that would be my recommendation. The Xwidget engine has fewer links into the core media player and so it can't do some of the stuff the Yahoo widget can.
The widget functionality is self-explanatory, tinker with it and you will soon get to grips with it, you can't do any harm. Think of it as a bit of steampunk eye-candy with a useful function.
The yahoo widget has a useful playlist. It can hold up to 10,000 media files, can save and re-open playlists and saves folders for later playing. You can drag/drop files or folders onto the widget straight from Windows.
Click on the slider and drag it to the left or right and the media player volume will increase/decrease.There are pause, next and previous buttons.
Click on the slider and drag it to the left or right and the media player volume will increase/decrease.There are pause, next and previous buttons.
Click on the pause button and the media player sound will mute as the track will be paused.
The position slider allows you to select the exact part of the track to play. The rod to the right end of the chassis acts as a shuffle button. The rod on the other end allows you to select a specific single file for playing. To select a whole folder for playing click on the speaker.
The widget itself has a built-in help screen (above) accessible when clicking on the help pin lug.
Right clicking will bring up a menu of options. One option is the player settings where you can set the default player for the widget to use.You can also select a variety of options for playing incuding selecting an audio CD.
Double-clicking on the widget will cause a personalised Windows application to fire up. The first time you run it there will be no assigned function and so it will state as such and then pop up the preferences so that you can enter the command of your choice. The widget takes command line-style commands for windows.
Some example commands for windows: (This command would fire up the sound control panel applet).
control mmsys.cpl sounds
To fire up a web-page in your default browser, the widget command(s) would be:
start http://lightquick.co.uk/steampunk-widgets.html?Itemid=264 (windows)
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start http://lightquick.co.uk/steampunk-widgets.html?Itemid=264 (windows)
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INSTALLATION
1. Download & Install the Yahoo or Xwidget engine FIRST.
1. Download & Install the Yahoo or Xwidget engine FIRST.
2. Download the widget
3. When downloaded it should prompt you to ask what you should do with this widget. Tell the o/s to open it with Yahoo /Xwidgets.
