A few days ago I saw the introduction of a sort selection drop-down to the
browse albums view.
I know it's early days for the sort order control, but I can't see much benefit
for it unless this is still very much a work in progress.
I find this a bit strange for browse albums, as an album is low in the
heirarchy. Sorting by Year and then Album for example gives me a list of 989
albums in year order, but the page links are simply numerical, so if I want to
find an album in 2002, I have to guess what page number to jump to to find it.
I was thinking that perhaps year links could be provided instead of page links,
but this browse method doesn't offer any improvement over Browse Years, and
then selecting a year from the heirarchy.
If it's possible (perhaps a longer term goal), wouldn't it be better to add
different heirarchy selections to each browse method? For example:
Browse Years
[ Album ]
[ Genre / Album ]
So for example, I could go to Browse Years, and select "Genre / Album". After
selecting year 2000, I get a list of genres present for that year. Select
"Rock" and get a list of rock albums in 2000. I think this is a better way to
go than sort orders, as it reduces the number of entries returned in the list,
so navigation and selection would be easier in Web UI and player UI.
Browse Years doesn't need many other browse methods. Eg. I don't think there
would be much point having a Browse Years by Genre / Artist / Album, as how
many artists have more than one album in a year in different genres?
Even better would be a system like FooBar, where heirarchies can be defined in
the settings by the user, and when selecting that browse method, the whole
library is displayed in a tree view, where each item in the heirarchy can be
expanded/collapsed. Possible I guess in a web browser interface using AJAX,
but perhaps easier in a third-party app like Moose.
If we are going down the route of sort orders for each browse method, here's a
few minor observations:
1. Wherever "year" is a browse/sort option, there could be two options -
ascending or descending years order. I would prefer years displays to be
descending by default, as I am more likely to pick something recent, than the
one song I have from 1952, or the one album I have from 1959!
2. The list/gallery view button doesn't line up with the sort order drop-down
in Fishbone skin.
Phil
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