Plus! Dancer: Display Dancers Based on Genres
Published: March 31, 2003
By Tony Northrup, Windows XP Expert Zone Community Columnist
Editor's Note: Past articles by members of the online community are archived for your use. The information may become outdated as technology changes. For the most current information, please search the Web site or post a question in the newsgroups.
Plus! Dancer is part of the Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition add-on pack for Windows XP. This collection of digital media tools enhances your Windows XP experiences with photos, music, movies, and portable devices. You can purchase and download Plus! Digital Media Edition from the Web.
Plus! Dancer displays an animated dancer or pair of dancers on your Windows desktop. You can start or stop the dancers at any time. You can set the dancers to appear only when you're playing music or to appear all the time, even when no music is playing. Each animated figure or pair of figures has their own dance style. Plus! Dancer may not be the most momentous component of the new Plus pack, but using it to turn your desktop into a dance floor can be a lot of fun.
Start Dancing
After you've installed Plus! Digital Media Edition, you can start your dancers.
To open Plus! Dancer:
| • | Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition, and then click Plus! Dancer. |
When you first open Plus! Dancer, an animated dancer or dancers appear on the Windows taskbar. You can drag them to any location on your desktop. You can also configure dancer options, such as how visible the dancers are on your desktop and whether the Dancer program should start when Windows starts.
To set Dancer options:
| • | Click the dancer in the notification area, and then click the appropriate command or click Options. |
If you click Meet the Plus! Dancers after clicking the dancer in the notification area, you'll be taken to the Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition Music page. From there, follow links to the dancers' biographies or to download new dancers or dancers in different sizes. Check the More Dancers page periodically, news ones are being added.
Display Dancers Based on Genres
It doesn't make much sense to watch Evan and Michelle tango to the top forty hip-hop hits. You'll want your dancers to match the kind of music you're playing. Fortunately, Dancer lets you choose dancers for different types of music. You can create settings to specify a dancer for each genre (category) of music you have stored on your computer.
To specify dancers for different types of music:
1. | With Plus! Dancer running, right-click the dancer, and then click Options. |
2. | Under Dancer selection, click Based on music genre. |
3. | Click the Genre Settings button. You'll see a list of all the different genres of music available on your computer—if you only listen to one type of music, you'll only see one genre. |
4. | For each genre, click the Dancer field, which is set at Random by default. You'll see a list of dancers available on your computer, as shown in Figure 1. Select the dancer you want for that type of music, or leave it set at Random. 
Genre settings let you specify who dances to each type of music on your computer
|
Create Genres for Your Music
Assigning dancers to genres is simple—but the song genres don't always make sense. Some songs may not have a genre at all and other songs may have a genre that is too broad for your tastes. Windows Media Player automatically sets the genre, title, and artist of your songs by looking them up in a database connected to the Internet. If you listen to many different types of music, this will work well for you. However, if you only listen to one type of music, having all your music in the same genre means you could only assign a single dancer to your entire Media Library.
Of course, Windows Media Player doesn't force these genres on you. You can and should assign custom genres to your music. After all, every blues fan knows that there is more than one type of blues music, but Windows Media Player doesn't seem to know this. Fortunately, you can create your own genres and categorize songs more granularly. After you've done this, you can assign different dancers based on your own categories.
To assign a song to a new genre in Windows Media Player 9 Series:
1. | Click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Windows Media Player. |
2. | On the View menu, point to Go To, and then click Media Library. (You can also click Media Library from the taskbar.) |
3. | In the left pane, click All Music. You'll see your songs listed in the right pane. |
4. | Right-click a song that you want to create a custom genre for, and then click Advanced Tag Editor. |
5. | On the Track Info tab, type the name of your custom genre in the Genre box, as shown in Figure 2, and then click OK to return to Windows Media Player. 
The Beastie Boys' rendition of Benny and the Jets was classified as Hip-Hop, but it clearly needs its own category.
|
Repeat steps 4 through 5 for at least one song in each custom genre you want to create. Manually typing the genre for every song in your library would be pretty tiring, even if you were listening to the songs as you categorized them. But you can process songs by genre more easily: After you've manually typed the genre for at least one song, use Windows Media Player to categorize whole groups of songs.
To set the genre for songs using Windows Media Player 9 Series:
1. | In the left pane, expand All Music, and then expand Genre. You should see a list of all genres you have available—including your custom genres. |
2. | Select the All Music folder. In the right pane, you'll see all the songs you have added to Media Library. To assign songs to genres, simply drag them into the correct genre in the left pane. You'll be prompted to add or change the genre—normally, you should click Change Genre. |
Add to Your Music Enjoyment
Plus! Dancer adds a non-intrusive, visual element to your music enjoyment. While you don't need to customize Dancer, specifying who dances to each genre of music definitely adds to the fun. If you haven't already assigned genres to your music library, now is the time to do it. Custom genres are a great way to organize your music and they give you the power to quickly select music that fits your mood.
Expert Zone columnist Tony Northrup is an Internet engineer, a part-time photographer, and author of dozens of books and articles. He writes to help people safely use the Internet to communicate, share, and learn.
