Click for large

MP3 Pla­yer: Foo­bar v0.9 with Columns_UI, album art panel, album list panel
For more great setups go here: Hydro­gen Audio
Desk­top image: Deviant Art

Well, at least my com­pu­ter has some form of style. I opted for a radi­cal makeo­ver and went for BLUE. I think it came out pretty good. Shame about the weather outside, the rain came when Samantha left for Edin­burgh and she’s gone for the month.

Click for fullsize.

Click for full­size, shows the­med fol­der, fire­fox and last​.fm stan­da­lone player 

What Is Konfabulator?

Kon­fa­bu­la­tor is a JavaSc­ript run­time engine for Win­dows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Wid­gets that can do pretty much wha­te­ver you want them to. Wid­gets can be alarm clocks, cal­cu­la­tors, can tell you your WiFi sig­nal strength, will fetch the latest stock quo­tes for your pre­fe­rred sym­bols, and even give your current local weather. 

What sets Kon­fa­bu­la­tor apart from other scrip­ting appli­ca­tions is that it takes full advan­tage of today’s advan­ced graphics. This allows Wid­gets to blend fluidly into your desk­top without the cons­traints of tra­di­tio­nal win­dow bor­ders. Toss in some sli­ding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Win­dows XP and Mac OS X.

I deci­ded to ins­tall and expe­ri­ment. Pre­viously I have used rain­me­ter and samu­rize clients to dis­play infor­ma­tion on my desk­top. Such clients have been slightly anno­ying to posi­tion, con­gi­fure and match with my current theme. Kon­fab’ comes with seve­ral pre­con­fi­gu­red wid­gets for you to use; an ana­lo­gue clock, CPU moni­tor, Wifi sig­nal moni­tor, weather fore­casts and various others. I used to have a weather add-on for Rain­me­ter yet the advan­ced con­fi­gu­ra­tion and work to find the local fore­cast code num­ber was not worth the hassle of the fore­cast only sho­wing every 3 reboots. So I tried this aspect first, I ente­red my home town and country and there it was, the fore­cast in all it’s sim­ple and bri­lliant glory, directly to my desk­top. It also shows the current stage of the moon’s cycle and puts tem­pe­ra­tu­res in a METRIC for­mat. Next up, time to browse the third-party wid­gets (http://​www​.wid​get​ga​llery​.com/).

Here I found an iTu­nes remote that looks like an empty cd jewel case. Upon pla­ying it shows the album cover in the ID3 tag, if not tag exists the wid­get searches Ama­zon for an appro­priate cover. Upon rolling over the top half a set of con­trols to change track, etc… appear, rolling over the bot­tom half brings up the pro­gress bar, track name and artist name. Sim­ple and elo­quent. It also has some advan­ced fea­tu­res such as hiding itself when iTu­nes is clo­sed, brin­ging itself to the front upon track change and hot­keys for con­trol. It also has three spea­rate sizes for album covers, in the screenshot below it’s on the middle set­ting. So here’s an image of my current desk­top, click for larger.