Copyright: © Lester is slank! producties 1997   Mon Aug 18 13:44:23 1997


HandyCD

HandyCD was initially developed for personal use. Microsoft’s FlexiCD was an improvement over the standard Windows CD Player, but still didn’t offer the ease of use and all the options you’d want for a CD player. So Lester is slank! producties decided to write a better one. After using it for a while, it became apparent that HandyCD functioned so well that it should be made available to other people as well.

HandyCD is shareware. You can try it out for 30 days. If you continue using it after the 30 days have ended, you should register it. Upon registering you’ll receive a registration code, which unlocks the extra features. For more information see the 'Registering HandyCD' topic.

HandyCD was developed with Delphi 2.0. The Cdviewer part was developed by AlphaSoft.

Comments and feedback are very much appreciated and can be sent to jmulder@cs.vu.nl.


Lester is slank! producties
Lester is slank! producties is not a real company but just an unpronounceable name. Lester is slank! producties means Lester is slender! productions. Lester is a cat. In earlier times he was a little bigger than he is now, reason for some people to call him fat. But even the vet said: “He is not fat, he is solid!”.

Lester is an important factor in software development. He sits in the programmer’s lap and keeps an eye on the work being done. Thanks, Lester!


Lists all the tracks on the CD. Double click one of the tracks and HandyCD will instantly play it.


Title and artist of the current CD.


Total length of the current CD.


This is the id of the current CD. Every audio CD has a unique id which is shared by all the copies of that CD. This is the id that is used by programs like the Windows CD Player to recognise CD’s. If you take a closer look at the CD Player database (the file ‘cdplayer.ini’ in your Windows directory) you will see that all the section names are CD id’s like the one you see here.


Type the title of the CD here.


Type the artist or band name here.


Lists the tracks on the CD.


Enter the track names here. After you entered a track name, type <Enter> or push the ‘Set name’ button. Don’t forget to do this after you entered the last track!


Push this button after entering a track name. You can also press <Enter>.


Cancels all the changes you made.


Push this button to accept the changes you made. Your Windows CD Player database will be updated.


Select the CD you want to edit the data for.


Use the arrows to increase or decrease the playing count for the currently selected CD.


Accepts the changes you made.


Shows how often you played your CD’s. Right clicking will give you the chance to edit these data, refresh the data or close the window. Click one of the column headers to change the sort order.


Shows your favourite artists. All the CD’s by the same artist that you played have been added for this overview. Click one of the column headers to change the sort order.


Shows the percentage this artist contributed to all the CD’s you played with HandyCD.


Where HandyCD gets its data

HandyCD is fully compatible with the Windows 95 CD Player database. CD Player stores its data in a file called ‘cdplayer.ini’ in the Windows directory. If you had already entered CD information with CD Player when you started using HandyCD, you’ll have noticed that HandyCD already knew about CD’s that you have. This information is read from cdplayer.ini. New information is stored in the same file.

The favourites overview (registered version only) stores its data in the file ‘HandyCD.ini’ in your Windows directory.

The CDviewer stores additional CD information in the file ‘cdviewer.ini’ in your Windows directory.

Make sure you don’t lose these three files, because then HandyCD will lose information. For instance, if you re-install Windows 95 make a backup copy of the above mentioned files.


Introduction

HandyCD is an audio CD player developed with the idea in mind that a CD player should be easy to use and have lots of options. It is fully compatible with the standard Windows CD Player so it already knows all the CD’s you entered into the CD Player database.

Context-sensitive help is available in every HandyCD window by clicking the question mark on top of the window. This help file explains how to use all HandyCD’s functions.


Play and Pause

To play or pause the CD player, click once on the tray icon.


Selecting tracks

In the menu click on one of the track names. See also fast track selection.


Fast track selection

Place the mouse above the HandyCD icon. Press the left mouse button and move the mouse to the left or right. While still over the tray icon release the mouse button. Depending on whether you moved the mouse to the left or to the right, HandyCD will now skip one track backward or forward. How far you have to move the mouse depends on the value you entered as the distance in pixels for single-click track selection. You can enter this value in the Options dialog box.


HandyCD's menu
HandyCD’s menu

Click on one of the menu items in the picture below to get more information.


Shows a window with information about the CD you’re playing.


When you click on one of the track names HandyCD plays that track.


This opens the Options dialog box where you can enter various options for HandyCD or program your audio CD.

(Programming only available in registered version.)


Opens CDviewer, where you can view and edit your CD collection from the Windows CD Player database.


Select this menu item to edit the properties of the currently playing CD (artist, title and tracks). This information will be entered in the Windows CD Player database.


Available in registered version only.

View how often you played your CD’s!


Select the menu item Enable/Disable skipping to show or hide the trackbar, which allows you to skip within a track.


Select this menu item to eject the CD from your CD-ROM drive.


Select this menu item to close your CD-ROM drive.


This stops playing of the CD as opposed to pausing somewhere in the middle. You might want to do this before turning off your computer.


Shows HandyCD Help.


Shows information about HandyCD.


Exits HandyCD. The CD will stop playing if you checked that option in the Options dialog box.


The tray icon

The tray icon is HandyCD’s home base. Right clicking gives you a menu with a lot of options. Left clicking pauses or plays the CD. You can skip through the tracks with the left mouse button (press, move, release [see fast track selection]).


The skipping trackbar

The trackbar enables you to skip within tracks. Move the thumb to some other position and the CD will continue playing from that position in the track.

The trackbar will appear when selecting the menu item ‘Enable skipping’.

You can dismiss the trackbar by clicking the button with the X on it or by selecting the menu item ‘Disable skipping’.


The CD information window

Click on any of the items in the picture below to get more information.

Select the artist or the title of the current CD in the menu to show this window.


The Options dialog box

Click on any of the items in the picture below to get more information.

Select the menu item ‘Options’ to show this window.


CDviewer

No help available.


The Edit CD properties window
The CD Properties Editor

Click on any of the items in the picture below to get more information.

Select the menu item ‘Edit CD properties’ to show this window.


The Favourites overview

Available in registered version only.

By selecting the menu item ‘View favourites’ you get to see this overview.

In the favourites overview you can see how often you played your CD’s. This is nothing more than an approximation, but after using HandyCD for a while it will give a nice overview of your musical preferences.

The playing frequency of a CD goes up if you play it by starting HandyCD or if you insert it into your CD-ROM drive while HandyCD is running.

Right clicking gives a menu from which you can select the option to edit the data. This will open Notepad with the file ‘HandyCD.ini’ (in your Windows directory). You can edit the data right here. This is pretty much self-explanatory. You might want to do this if you’re very picky at the preciseness of statistics and you just crashed your computer so you had to restart HandyCD (‘cause then it would seem as if the CD was played more often than you actually intended and we can’t have that, can we?).

Another menu item is ‘Clean up favourites’. This is only available if you have some Unknown artists or titles among your favourites. These are CD’s you once entered into the CD database but removed later. You can remove these entries from your favourites with this function.


Click this button for context-sensitive help. The mouse pointer will turn into a question mark. Now you can click on any item in the window to get more information. This information will be the same as you get by clicking the item in this picture.


Programming a CD

Available in registered version only.

You can program your CD’s by clicking the Program… button in the Options dialog box. You’ll see a window which lists the programmed tracks and the available tracks on the CD. Click the track names to add or remove them from the play list. You can add a track more than once to the play list.

Click the Reset button to match the contents of the play list with the available tracks list box.

Click Clear Program to clear the program (you guessed it!).

If you click OK, thereby accepting the changes you made, your Windows CD Player database will be updated accordingly. Next time you play this CD with HandyCD, the program will be remembered and played.


Shuffle play

Available in registered version only.

To play CD tracks in random order check the Shuffle play checkbox in the Options dialog box.

Only tracks in the program can be selected for playing. HandyCD won’t remember which tracks it has already played, so it could play the same track several times in a row.


Available in registered version only.

Check this option if you want HandyCD to start playing again from the beginning of the CD when the last track has ended.


Check this option if you want HandyCd to start playing the CD when HandyCd is started.


With the trackbar you set the amount of pixels you have to move the mouse over the tray icon (while the left button is pressed) to select the next or previous track.


With the combo box you can select the drive which HandyCd should use as CD-ROM drive.


Cancels all the changes you made.


Push this button to accept the changes you made. The options will be written to the registry.


Unchecking this option enables you to add more CD’s to the Windows CD Player database. The values used for programming your CD’s with CD Player won’t be entered into the database. This saves up to 20 % in space.  Don’t uncheck this if you want HandyCd or CD Player to remember the programs!

If you don’t want the database tampered with you should also leave this option checked.


If you check this the CD will start playing when the CD-ROM tray is closed.


Check this to stop playing of the audio CD when you exit HandyCd. If you leave this unchecked the CD will continue playing on exit although it won’t be programmed anymore.


If this option is turned on, HandyCd will automatically start on inserting a CD in your CD-ROM drive. If it is turned off, the standard Windows 95 CD Player will be launched.

For this option to work you have to have ‘auto insert notification’ on. To do this go to the system page of the Windows 95 Control Panel, select the Device Manager tab, double click the entry under ‘CD-ROM’, select the Settings tab and check ‘auto insert notification’.


Available in registered version only.

Turn this option on to make HandyCd play the programmed tracks in random order. This order will be really random: each time a new track is played, each track has the same chance to be selected. HandyCd won’t remember which tracks it has already played (so it is possible that the same track will be played five times in a row).


Available in registered version only.

Click the Program… button to program the CD. Context-sensitive help will be available there.


Lists the programmed tracks. Click a track to remove it from the list.


Lists the available tracks on the CD. Click a track to add it to the program.


Removes all tracks from the program.


Resets the program to the available tracks on the CD.


Once you have received the registration code

Upon registration you’ll receive a registration code. With this code you can unlock HandyCD’s unavailable features. To do this go to the About Box (menu item ‘About HandyCD’) and click the ‘Register’ button. Now you can enter your registration code. Click ‘OK’. Your copy of HandyCD is now registered.

After you have registered you can still update your version of HandyCD by downloading the latest version from the Internet. The new version will be registered automatically.


Registering HandyCD

 The benefits of registering:

You’ll receive a registration code, which unlocks these extra features:

•	Programming of audio CD’s

•	Random play

•	Continuous play

•	Printing of your CD collection (text and HTML)

•	Favourites overview

For an additional charge you can get the source code.

After you have registered you can still update your version of HandyCD by downloading the latest version from the Internet. The new version will be registered automatically.

The cost:

Registration of HandyCD costs $10. The source code is available for an additional $25.

The procedure:

•	Send the right amount of money ($10 or $35) to:

Juul Mulder

Pretoriusstraat 67-III

1092 GB Amsterdam

The Netherlands

•	Send your e-mail address too. If you don’t have an e-mail address, include a self-addressed and stamped envelope with the money.

•	Send your personal code too. You can find this code in HandyCD’s About Box. Alternatively you can click the ‘Register’ button that you see in the About Box; you’ll see your personal code in the text box under ‘Your personal code:’.

You can send other major currencies too. Just send an amount equivalent to $10 (or $35 if you want the source code too), according to the current rate.

The method of payment should be such, that I can change the money to Dutch currency. Make sure your cheque can be drawn on a Dutch bank. If you’re not sure, just send cash money.

If it’s possible from your country, you can deposit the money on account 6200781 (Dutch Postbank) with the address above. Make sure I receive your e-mail address and personal code too.

I’ll send you the registration code within a few days after receiving the money. With the registration code you can then unlock the extra features.