I have long been a fan of foobar2000: this lightweight, freeware audio player has a tiny memory footprint, is extremely customizable, and plays pretty much anything. Its main problem used to be that it was somewhat frumpy-looking: with the latest beta, however, that is no longer an issue. foobar2000 v0.9.5 has an incredible new UI customization system, one that could, in my opinion, revolutionize the way people use software.
The new system is called UI Elements: it allows you to add and remove interface elements, in order to create any configuration you like. Activating the UI editing mode allows you to modify the program interface directly, through context-menus: you can cut, copy and paste elements, or replace them with other ones. Splitters and tabs are used to partition the interface: splitters are adjustable borders that can be placed either horizontally or vertically, creating cells in which components can be placed. Tab sheets can be used to layer components over each other, with a row of tabs at the top for switching between them. Themes can be imported and exported, with options to export either the entire theme, or only certain aspects like colors or layout; also, there is a sandbox for testing new layouts without affecting the main interface.
Components can be developed using the foobar SDK: this enables further customizability, by allowing you to add your own features. The new version keeps the fully-customizable keyboard shortcuts, which I have always found invaluable; as far as stability is concerned, so far the application hasn't crashed or malfunctioned at all. Everything is as smooth and swift as I remember, including UI Elements: clearly a lot of work has gone into making this feature polished and bug-free. The memory footprint is around 13 MB: I think that's a little larger than in previous versions, but my T60 with its 2 GB of RAM isn't complaining.
I think UI Elements is remarkable: I haven't seen anything like it before. In my opinion, this feature has immense potential: imagine being able to customize Windows Explorer, Thunderbird or TextPad this way -- honestly, I wish every piece of UI-driven software were this easy to customize. I'm not certain whether the foobar2000 developers implemented the system from scratch, or whether they used a pre-existing toolkit: either way, I think it has the potential to become a new interface standard for power users.
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