WMP toolbar bothering my CSS

I play Counter-Strike Source at 800x600 in windowed mode on a 1024x768 desktop and I like to listen to my music with windows media player 11 and minimize to the convenient toolbar, but whenever it changes songs, it pops up that little thing for about 5-10 seconds that tells me what it is and such but that makes the graphics lag badly for those 5-10 seconds. For normal usage I like it but I would like to know how to get ride of it while playing CSS. If it had to be a permanent thing to change it, iId accept that, but it gets so annoying in game!





EDIT:
(Flippin sweet graphics for an x300SE)

 

You could just switch to another mediaplayer, like musikCube.. I like the crossfading ability

 

What about changing to Winamp? That way you can run full screen and use the GlobalHotkeys thing.

 

stop playing in window mode? it doesnt affect it then, speaking from experience. And if your keyboard has player control keys you can skip, stop play and pause all you like.

 

thanks for the responses, but thast not what i wanted. windows media player is a great program, and i really like 800x600 windowed. i want to get rid of the pop up, nothing more.

 

it cannot be done I think was the hidden answer there. I know I have the same problem. tbh I dont play music when I play CS so it isnt a problem but iTunes minimizes in much the same way so I guess if you wanted to do it that way you could (just for when u are gaming)

 

k i guess i'll have to deal with it.

 

I looked into this before and although it's not possible (as far as I know) to remove / hide the preview window thing. There are ways round it if you want to continue using WMP.

Take a look at this program
http://www.samurize.com

Although it's primarily for creating fancy desktop configs, there’s a module that allows you to create custom taskbar’s. That coupled with the fact there’s a WMP plugin that allows you to get information about the track being played and some basic control of WMP (Play / Pause / Prev Track etc) essentially allowing you to create your own “mini mode” without the popup.

From here you can just run WMP minimized (with the mini mode turned off) and use your config to control your music.

It’s not perfect, it does take 1-2% CPU usage but there are so many plugins that allow you to monitor your PC’s performance, check you’re GMails etc. etc. It might just be suitable for what you need.

If you need any help with it just post back here. I’ll keep checking.

 

Enque the files in the player....

 

WMP since v9 has had crossfading

EDIT:

out of curiousity, how many seconds of crossfade do you use?