Terres­trial has done it again, this time it is his third com­po­nent, Panel­sUI . Until now, all foo­bar menus, tool­bars and panels were arran­ged using Column­sUI in any desi­red grid for­mat — these panels were dis­tin­guished by irre­mo­va­ble bor­ders that were defi­ned by Window’s visual style, much to the dis­tate of bud­ding user inter­face desig­ners everywhere. Panel­sUI offers a clean new approach — using scripts (in the fami­liar trac­kinfo mod for­mat) panels them­sel­ves can be abso­lu­tely posi­tio­ned and pla­yed with. New “per­sis­ting varia­bles” or PVARS allow these scripts to store and edit varia­bles in memory using but­tons (see func­tion: $but­ton). In com­bi­na­tion a slew of exci­ting new oppor­tu­ni­ties are pos­si­ble; tab­bed panels without the need for tabs_ui, clic­ka­ble pop-ups, scrip­ted inte­rac­tion bet­ween trackinfo’s, SCPL and Panel­sUI, amongst others. To explain in words the poten­tial is pro­ving dif­fi­cult, so I will show you some early design animations: 

Pop-up play­list, this appears beneath when thin (as below) and to the side when wide.

A pop-up menu, but­tons and con­trol panel

Im sure I will think of some much more advan­ced uses of this inte­gra­tion in the near future. But for now I think this is exci­ting enough. For those inte­res­ted, to get going, the code for tab­bed panels in Panel­sUI is: 

$select($add($getpvar(display.mode),1),
$panel(Option1,Track Display,0,20,%_width%,140,)
‚
$panel(Option2,Album list,0,20,%_width%,140,)
‚
$panel(Option3,Console,0,20,%_width%,140,)
)
$button2(0,160,0,0,14,14,button text,but­ton text,‘PVAR:SET:display.mode:0′,)
$button2(14,160,0,0,14,14,but­ton text, but­ton text,‘PVAR:SET:display.mode:1′,)
$button2(28,160,0,0,14,14, but­ton text,but­ton text ‚‘PVAR:SET:display.mode:2′,)

This sim­ple exam­ple (that needs the but­ton text repla­ced with a $font()text code) is the basis for tabs, clic­king the first but­ton shows the track dis­play, the second an album list, third a console.