CD Shelf was my very first Windows application implemented using Borland Delphi. In 1998, a new audio file format called MPEG 1.0 Layer 3 – or simply MP3 – began to become popular, so I inflamed with an idea of creating a beautiful, functional, and modern multimedia shell for my music collection. The program was developed in Delphi 2 with use of the RX Library.
The main idea of the project was to split the music collection into smaller parts in order to place each of them on a separate CD-ROM and provide it with an individual shell containing its own contents, graphics, and texts. The contents of each collection part were stored in a record typed file previously created using the separate application, also written in Delphi.
Options and additional functions of the CD Shelf were available via popup menu appearing on the screen by right-clicking the main form. In spite of the fact that the program was developed for my private use and was not supposed for commercial distribution, it was implemented bilingual (English and Russian) just for fun.
A possibility of viewing the currently playing song’s lyrics, as well as the artist’s biography, was the centerpiece of the program. After reviewing the most of the similar software on the Russian market those days (1998), it was discovered by me that the CD Shelf was the only one providing such functionality.