Customizing Windows Media Player

When it comes to music and movies (or videos of any kind), Windows uses the Windows Media Player (WMP) program to manage and play back these types of media files. Windows 7 features the latest and greatest version 12 of the program, and you can tweak it a bit to do what you want to do.

Note With WMP 12, all your iPod music should automatically appear in your Music library. (Older versions of WMP could not play AAC files, and such files would not appear in the WMP library.)

Customizing the Full Display

Windows Media Player provides several different display options. Not only can you resize the WMP window, as you can any Windows application, but you also can display it in the compact Now Playing mode-or as a Mini Player on the Windows taskbar.

The default display mode for WMP is the full or library mode. You have the library pane on the left, the contents pane in the middle, and the list pane on the right. Items in the contents pane can be displayed in three views: Details view, with columns for title, length, contributing artist, and the like; Icon view, with album covers displayed; and Tile view, with album covers and key information (title, artist, genre, year, and rating) displayed. You switch views by clicking the View Options button on the toolbar; you can then sort the contents of your music library by artist, album, and genre, by clicking the appropriate option in the Music section of the library pane.

Switching to Now Playing Mode

If you'd rather display the player without all the extraneous controls and library listings, you can switch to the Now Playing mode. This is a smaller and simpler playback window, new to WMP12, that takes up a lot less desk space than the normal WMP window; it's just a media player, pure and simple. To switch to Now Playing mode, click the Switch to Now Playing button at the lower-right corner of the main WMP window. (To switch from the Now Playing window to the larger Windows Media Player window, click the Switch to Library button in the upper-right corner.)

Note When you play an audio CD, WMP starts in Now Playing mode by default.