Getting WACUP to appear in right-click context menu

[donwiss]

I have finally given in and I uninstalled WinAmp on my Windows 7-64 PC. It once worked fine, but for some reason has been getting worse over time, with stealing the focus the biggest problem. Now WinAmp is gone.

I have sort of gotten the Bento the same. The scroll bars and buttons are still a little larger.

But what I don't have is WACUP doesn't appear on the context menu when I right click on a folder. How do I add this?

[Running latest non-beta version.]

[Eris Lund]

as the prefs page will tell you, this is currently intentionally disabled until it's done (dont ask when)
you can however in the meantime manually associate files to WACUP and it will play them like normal

[donwiss]

Thanks for the response.I did not install mine as portable, but maybe that is the way it installed.

I consider this to be a vital feature. I play music by the album, which corresponds with folders here. Now I have to go into the folder. Copy the full path from the Address Bar, get the focus on WACUP, type Ctrl-L, paste in the path, and press enter. A bore.

[donwiss]

I copied the WACUP shortcut to my SendTo folder. Right clicking and using SendTo works. This is better.

[dro]

No build of WACUP available has the complete support needed for file association handling (it is mentioned during installation as part of the build notes) & whilst it's in a preview state then this is intended as it eases side-by-side testing without messing with existing installs, etc.

Yes some aspects of it work but it's a mess (especially with having to go through the wacup loaded onto the original winamp handling & other parts) & it isn't going to be resolved until I've dropped the need to use the Winamp core & so I can then directly handle all of the external integration actions needed.

-dro

[donwiss]

I used WinAmp to play music. I like the narrow Bento strip I can leave at the top of my high aspect-ratio screen. I view all videos in VLC. For meta tag editing I use Tag&Rename. To rip and convert I use PoikoSoft. All of which I consider best in class. I am not a fan of all-in-one software. I would be quite happy if all WACUP did was to play music. And I would think if it only did do, getting rip of the Winamp core would be easier.

[dro]

I am going as fast as I can to get to a position where for the core program that's run it'll just be WACUP & not a hybrid solution with Winamp (i.e. only wacup.exe instead of wacup.exe + winamp.original).

If I'd realised back in 2016 that I was going to end up writing a fully Winamp compatible program then I would have made a number of different decisions but I didn't have that foresight & so I'm in the situation equivalent to driving a car whilst changing the wheels, engine & much more whilst it's still able to be driven in some form.

So because of those early decisions, that's why a proper fully supported file association implementation doesn't exist under WACUP as I'm at the stage now where doing it would be a waste of my time when I then need to re-work/replace it again once I've dropped the need for winamp.original to handle things. So I can only apologise for the inconvenience that I'm causing by not offering that feature at this time.

-dro

[MRakestraw]

I Drag & Drop albums (folders) into the playlist window, this has been working for the last few (maybe all) versions of WACUP. Right-click context menus will be nice when it happens, after it is added it will likely need to be debugged over numerous releases...

[donwiss]

Dragging is a useful suggestion. I can't try it, as I gave up trying to use WACUP. It would grab the focus at times, which was the reason for my leaving Winamp. Unacceptable to me, but probably due to the old code that is still in WACUP.

I don't know what appeal Winamp has to people that WACUP was created to follow along. I've never used any part of Winamp, other than to play folders (albums). And sometimes a single track.

I looked to see if a Bento skin existed for VLC. I found a 13 year old forum post asking for it. The followup was asking what the Bento skin was, and 13 years later it has yet to be answered. So I'm just using VLC with no skin.

[dro]

Grab focus when doing what exactly? Though as you mention the Bento skin, from other reports there's likely something weird going on when video playback is involved it seems & that's so far seems to be down to the modern skin engine (effectively Winamp3 as a plug-in). This is something that I've still to replicate (hence asking for more information on the matter) to then be able to patch around it where needed.

The appeal to me is something that can be supported (hence going down the rabbit whole of writing a complete replacement) & which can get the features that are wanted whilst working within a Winamp-like experience. Likewise using VLC could be questioned as for me is just an awful experience for non-video playback & all of the other things that I rely upon (e.g. WACUP handles podcast downloads for me). But this is why numerous media players have been created over time & due to the ineptitude of those that bought Winamp that I'm now trying to make a replacement that can have some form of a future vs a leaked/vaguely updated build that doesn't differ much from it being abandoned in 2016.

Bento doesn't exist for anything outside of Winamp as nothing out there has replicated the modern skin engine. That's why you never got a solution for VLC.

-dro

[edit]
This is not aimed at anyone specifically but if I don't get feedback about things that are wrong, could be better or just aren't working then often I'm not necessarily going to know about it & so can't attempt to find a solution / plan to make improvements. As it goes both ways in that if I get no feedback then a) I have to assume it's all ok or b) no one cares & option B isn't what I want to be thinking as that isn't helpful for me nor for achieving things going forward.

[thisisbbc]

Howdy,

Sorry for digging up an old thread but I figured maybe it would be worth it to get an update on this feature directly here instead of creating a new topic.

Since my library is fairly well sorted I often find myself using the right-click 'Play in Winamp' / 'Enqueue in Winamp' contextual menu so I was a bit bummed when I found about this thread.

I tried to replace winamp.exe with wacup's exe but alas it's not that simple (not sure what I expected here lol).

It seems what @donwiss suggested is the best option at the moment, adding Wacup to the 'Send To' contextual menu works, albeit not having the ability to enqueue a folder to the current playlist. (Instructions here: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-customize-the-send-to-menu-in-windows).

Hope we get to see Wacup fully integrated in the contextual menu eventually :-)

Again, really appreciate what you're doing Dro!

Cheers

[dro]

You should be able to use the OS "open with" option to get single file selections to work & that can depending on other OS aspects allow it to then be the default handler for that specific file type. I've not done anything towards reporting what file types are supported by WACUP to the OS (needed for it's ability to be set as the default handler via the OS default program UI) nor trying to do shell integration as Win11 arrived & seems to have complicated things.

Whether you're trying to associate things to the winamp.exe named file (provided for compatibility) or the default wacup.exe, unless the OS knows to call them, what one is associated doesn't really matter. I suppose I just haven't seen it as massively important as I run things from what's been collated within WACUP or can just drag+drop things as needed which has always worked (barring any build specific bugs).

-dro