WARNING: Big Email Alert!
I've not had the time to re-read this email as much as I would have liked, so apologies if I describe things unclearly at times!!
Isaac Richards wrote:
I really don't understand how the current interface makes selecting a specific album difficult.
I'm in "All my music" and I have random tracks, artists and such selected, when I come across an alubm I want to play on it's own.
To do this, I have to go all the way left to the root, untick "all my music", go back in, and scroll all the way to the album I want (which could take a while). and then select it.
Please correct me if I'm wrong and I've just not seen the commands to achieve this!! ;)
I sps you could say that I should have cleared my playlist first, but I've got some tunes playing in the background and I just kinda browsing and not really doing anything in particular and WHOOP! Yeah I've got to hear that album right now (probably Darkside of the Moon ;)).
I guess you could say that I should show the full tree on the playing screen and browse about that way but I may have started off casually making up a playlist or something and changed my mind.
I'm not complaining about what's there, I was just sympathising with someone else who finds it slightly lacking, and winding up to actually doing something about it!!
For what it's worth I've tried to do precisly what you ask, which was to provide some ideas on how to improve the current system:
How about combining the playlist selection and the player screens more seamlessly...
Effectivly set the "show enitre music tree" option as fixed ON.
Alter the split tree in the player such that when you go "far right" it grows to full size and fill the available width for a more attractive view.
Going left once from here will cause the list to split vertically as it does currently.
As we are expanding the "far right active play queue" to full width, the size bias on the split can be a little more even, perhaps 40/60??
The size bias on the split could follow the cursor? e.g. so if you are on the right pane (60%) and you move left one, the cursor moves across to the left and the size bias switches sides so it's now 60/40. The actual screen switching would be the same as currently, with the bias followign the cursor.
Pressing the info button at any point would "popup" a little statistic about that entry, e.g. If it's an artist, how many tracks by that artist, total length, how many albums by that artist. etc. It could perhaps even bring up an album browser at this point? Back in the list, if the highlighted entry is an album then try and correlate the track metadata and files in the album's folder to bring up cover art etc. and perhaps a tracklisting with times or something maybe auto scrolling past slowly??
When on this information "popup", a hit of the play button could start a new active play queue with those entries in.
A "menu" key pressed at any time would give you a popup like the one that appears when pressing "i" on the "Active Play Queue" entry in the playlist editor as it stands currently. This would give you buttons to save the active play queue as a playlist, clear the active play queue etc.
The tree that appears here would have to include the CD/DVD drive and any saved playlists as these are only currently available through the playlist editor.
Allow fast switching of modes in this tree. e.g. from artist,splitartist,genres etc. Perhaps have them all available as different paths of the "All My Music" root node? I don't really know the memory implications of this? Probably not too much if the tree class can support nodes in mutliple locations, probably 4x if it can't! If it can't could it be impoved?? If not this way then definatly by a couple of key presses, e.g, "menu" -> popup -> first option is a select which alters which view you want -> enter takes you back into your tree, and if possible on the same element you were on before you switched views.
The ability to define on a per playlist basis, which layout to use use, e.g. splitartist, artist, genre etc.
Phew!
OK those are my suggestions for improving the current setup. Now for a small suggestion for a new feature.
* Regexp based auto playlists. The ability to define a playlist that can use all the different metadata components along with a regexp to match certain tracks. This could be automatically built at startup or when the "scan for new music" thing runs (e.g. on demand or after ripping a CD).
They would be shown slightly differently in the playlist tree (different icon?) and would not be editable (e.g. "d" does not delete).
I don't think any of these suggestions would be rocking the boat in any great fashion, in that the interface would remain much the same but just be polished slightly.
I don't think it would interfere too greatly with Thors stuff either as the GUI could be ported to the mfe player presumably???
The auto playlist may ask the question as to whether it should be client or server side, but nothing too complex I shouldn't think.
OK, this is a massive email, so thanks if you've read it all.
If these changes are agreed upon, then I will begin looking into it and perhaps recruiting some volounteers?
The other more novel ideas can also be developed in paralell I'm sure.
Cheers
Col.
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+------------------------+ | Colin Guthrie | +------------------------+ | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | http://colin.guthr.ie/ | +------------------------+
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