JJ
Glad it's not just me <g>.
As another note says, some details appear in a tooltip bubble - but only the album title; artist too would be useful. More useful would be to have full details appear in text beneath the thumbnail.
And agree completely that it would be great if the sort order were adjustable. My own personal preference is to sort whole list by artists, grouped by album. Also another note suggests having thumbnails available everywhere, whatever the browse method. I'd agree with this too.
While we're on the subject of artwork, it would be nice to see the currently playing thumbnail at the top of the player window on the RHS of the web interface too, so regardless of where you've browsed to subsequently in the LHS browse window, you still see the a/w for currently playing track.
My own use of this is to use the web interface ONLY for controlling this thing, hence the importance of getting the web interface right. No need to use the Squeezebox's screen or remote at all. Here's why:-
1. We have a client for whom we're currently trying to spec an office-wide jukebox system, where a central player is connected to speakers around the office, and all users are able to see from their own PCs what's queued on the jukebox, and add their own selections to it. For this, the web interface to the SlimServer box is PERFECT, and will be the only interface users use. Am trialling it here in our own offices, and it looks to be just the job, apart from these web interface issues described.
It's surprising that more of these MP3-streaming devices do not have this kind of web interface for central control of a single device. You'd think the applications for it would be very wide indeed, just like the one we have. No need for streaming different things to multiple devices - just want control from multiple points of one central player. SlimServer does it. As far as I've been able to find so far, it's almost on its own in this (though please feel free to put me right). Think we've found the solution we need.
2. Personal use here: I've tried several of these music streaming boxes - NetGear MP101, Hauppauge MVP etc (though not an SB2 yet) - and the one limitation they all have (though maybe not the SB?) is the small size of the screen on which you browse and select your music. Trying them has made me realise with some surprise how UN-familiar I am with the album titles of things I've been playing for years. I'm an old fart, and have been used to digging in the cabinet for the album or CD I'm after, or often just browsing through, recognising a cover, and deciding to play that one. But whatever governs the choice, it's what it LOOKS like rather than what it's called that produces the recognition. With only text to play with for recognition, this process is very different. My feeling is that devices with bigger screens, with bigger ranges of images to browse through in order to select, will be the ones that win in the end. A few lines of text do not work the same way,
IMO.
I'm probably wrong!
Frank
JJ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I've just begun playing with artwork and browsing by artwork so I have no
recollection of whether that's how it used to work. But I do know that it
_should_ work like this. The album name and date appear where there's no
thumbnail shown, but when there _is_ a thumbnail they're not being
displayed. There's no way to recognize many albums only by their
thumbnailed image.
I'd also like to see the sort order as artist/album, or maybe
artist/year/album rather than just by album name. Ideally there'd be some
ability to change the sort order from within the interface.
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