OGS wrote:
> I've got 2.0.17 installed on my previous gen iPod. Thanks for keeping
> iPeng up to date! I love this app
> It has been mentioned before by me and others: the lyrics screen.. Can
> we please have the option to display something else than lyrics here?
> Like tags or sample/bitrate or even Wikipedia for the currently playing
> artist. Most of my music is instrumental so the lyrics screen is of no
> use for me.
OK, now some thoughts about the Lyrics screen.
I had thought about that one quite a bit in the past and actually for
iPeng 7, where I'm a bit more flexible, I might some day add an option
or so.
However... it's difficult. One thing is for sure - as usual - it's hard
to make this right for everyone. Whatever I do on the NowPlaying screen,
some people don't like it. Only the Track Artists shown - please add
other roles. Roles shown? Please stop that, it clutters my screen. No
Year shown with Album - please add that! The cover is too big, please
exchange it for bigger buttons! Please show Additional volume buttons! I
don't want volume control since I use digital volume out, could you
remove that.
And that's only the last two weeks! Seriously! And only the NowPlaying
screen.
So if I don't want to make iPeng into some sort of developer's toolkit
where everybody has to design half of the App for himself through the
use of several dozens of options I have to make some choices, adding
options is not really an option, even options can make an App unusable
and confusing. The NowPlaying screen is supposed to be somewhat clean
and easy to understand, not to be crammed with buttons filling up every
available space on it.
For the Lyrics screen there's an additional problem: on iPhone,
especially the old ones, it's damn small due to the playback controls on
the bottom of the screen. that's why I can imaging sone change in a
future release on iPeng 7 where these are no longer visible ("could you
please add them back?"). So a lot of things just don't fit there. Take
Wikipedia. What do you want to see from Wikipedia? Information about the
Artist, the track? The Composer? Ah, you want choices so there goes
another row of the available space.
Another problem is that using a web view here would be really ugly since
they'd have a white background. Always. Unless I restrict it to black
web sites of which there aren't a lot. For Wikipedia I could just show
text instead but then I'm sure a lot of people would want the images,
too.
Also, any web site must not be wider than the screen or it would block
scrolling back to the main screen.... There are just too many issues
with this approach.
So for the Lyrics screen as it is right now: take it for what it is: an
offer for a feature you don't HAVE to use.
The one thing I don't really understand about people complaining about
the Lyrics is why it (still) gets in their way. I mean... it's not like
you HAVE to visit that screen. You have to actively bring it up, it
doesn't take up any space on another screen or so, it's just sitting
hidden in the back...
I mean... I know where the questions are coming from, it's because back
in the pre-iPeng 2.0 times that was the space where the player list used
to be so people were used to scroll left (and I do indeed believe I
never got a request to remove the screen on iPad) but hey, that was more
than 1 1/2 years ago now...
Designing Apps is always a compromise. You have to make choices about
the things users want and you can never do everything right. There is,
for example, already an inherent conflict between a very simple App that
gives you direct access to, say, your favorites and you are ready to use
it without drilling through down on a main menu and one that is fully
functional. The same App can't do both things well at the same time
(look at Logitech's UE Smart Radio App for one that does the "simple"
thing right while failing on more complex functionality). It's why you
often see more than one App for a task. iPeng on iPad and SqueezePad are
pretty good examples on how you can have pretty different approaches to
a UI that appeal to different types of users, I believe BOTH Apps would
do a worse job if they tried to move more into the other App's
direction, UI wise.
My personal feeling is that iPeng goes pretty far in the direction of
customizability, I've tended to accept that to a certain degree because
it's really not for occasional users but most people use it every day
over a long time so some learning curve can pay off but it's clearly at
a point where it's already pretty complex to some users and some find it
too confusing. So I really have to be careful about what to add. So I'll
be very, very reluctant to add more options in the future, sorry for
that.
---
learn more about iPeng, the iPhone and iPad remote for the Squeezebox
and
Logitech UE Smart Radio as well as iPeng Party, the free Party-App,
at penguinlovesmusic.com
*New: iPeng 7, the Universal App for iOS 7*
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