nemof.org blog

Unfortunately the documentation for foo_ui_columns isn’t exactly extensive, and some of the options on the config page are quite cryptic, so it took me a few hours to work out how to move foo_browser to the top of the screen so that fb has a similar browsing style to itunes. However I pulled my finger out, worked out what I was doing and now I can post a little tutorial to help anyone else having similar problems.

This is what my fb looks like, notice that I have an extra column on the left, this has other info, you don’t necessarily need it (and I can turn it off by hiding the sidebar in columns_ui). You can see the three column file browser at the top, which can be browsed in this case by genre, artist and album.

Now in the screenshot above you’ll see that there is something called the "Splitter", this is what we are going to use to create our column structure and place the browser at the top of the fb window. This is the bit that took me the two hours, actually realizing that if you right-clicked on the splitter you would get a contextual menu. Heh.

Anyhow, if you right click on the splitter a menu will come up (as illustrated below). Select "Insert Vertical splitter" and click it. A new splitter wil appear. Right click on that splitter and select "Insert horizontal splitter".

Now we have the basic structure we need to add the browser columns. Right click on the last splitter and go to the sub-menu "Insert Panel", from there go to "Panels" and you should see a list of browser panels. Select the ones you want (e.g. I have Genre, Artist, Album) and insert them into the structure. Of course with this method you can install any panel in any place you want in foobar, you just need to experiment.

You’ll notice in  second screenshot  I have inserted the "Columns Playlist" one tier above the browser. What this means for my particular fb installation is that the playlist appears on the left hand side in it’s own area, but doesn’t interfere with the browser.

Unfortunately with my sidebar on I get a nasty side scroll bar in the browser columns, I think that may be a bug currently. Let’s hope it vanishes!

Hope this was of use to anyone who comes through here.

*edit* recent changes to foo_browser necessitates an update to the guide. To select what option you want in each column of foo_browser there are two methods. Firstly in the ‘Configuration -> Display -> Columns UI -> layout’ page go to the splitters you’ve set up, select one of the instances of the ‘Browser[*]‘ and to the right you will see a button saying ‘Configure..’. Click this and you will be able to select what you want from a drop down list of options.

Alternately and much easier, set up your browser columns as you would like, and once finished Shift+Right-Click on each of them in turn and the same list will be presented to you. Very easy.

Also it should be noted that the latest version of foo_browser fixes the sidebar problem. If you do ever get the sidebar then click on ‘Library -> Reset Browsers’ and it will refresh them. Not very intuitive but it works.