I'm not aware of any tips to using FooBar2000. I'm also not sure that
it's true that most blind people use Winamp. I know Winamp used to be
the defacto standard among blind computer users, but I'd actually be
surprised if Windows Media Player didn't come out on top of any survey
that was conducted amongst the blind. I personally find the FooBar2000
interface pretty standard, intuitive and no problem with JFW. If anyone
hasn't tried it, I'd suggest giving it a try. I think you'll find that
for the most part, you don't need many tips or pointers.
I will agree that it doesn't come with many keyboard short cuts, and I
find setting them up to be kind of tricky and tedious. On the upside, if
you're willing to put in the time, I'm pretty sure you could end up with
a media player that's much more customized to your needs than Winamp or
any other media player. Note that FooBar2000 was my media player of
choice when Winamp was crashing on me all of the time. Now that Winamp
isn't crashing on me all of the time, it has again become my primary
media player.
To set up a keyboard short cut, you can do the following:
1) Start FooBar2000 and use control-p to bring up Preferences.
2) Arrow down to Keyboard Shorcuts.
3) If you tab over about 5 times, you'll end up on the list of the
keyboard shortcuts already defined.
Arrowing down this list will select the different keyboard shortcuts and
give you the chance to edit them.
4) Probably the first thing you want to do is tab over once more to the
Add New button. clicking on this button will add a keyboard shortuct to
your list of keyboard shortcuts with none of the values set.
5) Shift-tab back to the list of keyboard shortcuts and arrow down to
the bottom of the list. You should hear an entry that has three values
not set. Make sure you do this step or you could potentially be editing
a shortcut you didn't intend to change. I'm speaking from experience here.
6) Tab over about three times and you'll end up on the list of all of
the functions you could associate with a shortcut key. For example,
you'll have options like "volume up", "volume down", "seek ahead by 30
seconds" and "seek back by 2 minutes". This list is huge, so you can tab
over twice to the filter field and type in something like "seek" or
"volume" to get just those items that have that string in them. After
entering a string in the filter field, shift-tab twice to get back to
the subset of functions containing just that string.
7) Select the function you want to associate with a shortcut key and tab
over once. This is where it gets a little tricky. You'll hear a more
detailed description of the function you selected, but you're really in
an edit field where you're going to choose the key you want to associate
with this function. Be careful here, if you hit the space bar than the
space bar will be associated with whatever function you selected.
Suppose you chose the function "volume mute" and then you associated the
space bar with this function. Now whenever you hit the space bar in
FooBar2000, the volume will be muted, even when you're typing in the
title of a track. FooBar2000 will warn you when you try to associate a
common place key, such as up, down, left, right, space, ..., with a
function.
8) There's a box where it you can make this a global key. I haven't used
this option, but I assume this will let you use that keyboard shortcut
even when FooBar2000 doesn't have the focus. Again, be careful here.
9) After setting up a shortcut key you can then arrow over to the list
of shortcut keys to change or review anything you've done. Once you have
the keys set up you want then just tab over to the Close button and
you're done.
10) After you've set up some keys, like seek ahead, seek back, volume
up, volume down, ..., go ahead and give them a spin. If you don't like
them, you can always go back and change them. One thing I haven't taken
the time to do is figure out how to have those keys passed straight
through to FooBar2000. So for example, I'll often have to use insert-3
in JFW to have the next key passed through to FooBar2000.
I hope this helps. If anyone has any other specific questions, just ask.
André van Deventer wrote:
Hi!
Would like some pointers myself. For me the main problem is setting the
shortcut keys. In previous versions of foobar, it automatically came with
quite a few shortcut keys for things like play, pause, forward, rewind etc.
This does not seem to be the case anymore?
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Brett Boyer
Sent: 19 May 2009 01:17 AM
To: PC Audio Discussion List
Subject: Re: Tips on using Foobar 2000
Unfortunately not. Most blind people use Winamp. I myself am a foobar user
and have been for over a year and a half. I still have winamp but rarely
ever use it.
I can try to give you some pointers offlist if you'd like.
bb
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sunshine" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 11:21 AM
Subject: Tips on using Foobar 2000
are there any guides as to how to use foobar 2000 and a users guide for
jaws and window eyes for the program?
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