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[Matt]

In Media Center 9.0.125, we rearranged the menu layouts. (added Send To and Tools to the file menu, added some nesting levels, etc.)

We're trying to make the program less intimidating and more logical.

We're wondering:

1) Are there are any menu items that could be worded more clearly?

2) Are there any specific ways we could rearrange items to be more clear? (nesting, or moving what menu / grouping an item is under)

3) Is there any functionality missing from the main menus that should be there. (right-click column header comes to mind, let us know of others)

We're looking for small, specific changes here.  Please, no nebulous "change everything" remarks or feature requests. (let's save that for 10.0 -- no time for big changes in 9.0)

Thanks for any help everyone!

-Matt

Listening to: 'The Nearness Of You' from 'Come Away With Me' by 'Norah Jones' on Media Center 9.0 on Sennheiser HD600's ( I'm spoiled   )

[KingSparta]

1) Are there are any menu items that could be worded more clearly?

Edit Field Is Rename Now

I was thinking "Edit Selected Field" might Be Better

It took me 2 mins to figure that out.

=================================

Delete Is Really Close To Rename, And Delete Did Not Give You A Second Chance, And Files Vanished From Database.

I had to re-import the files.

I think Delete needs a Second Chance Pop-Up Window, And maybe a devider between the two.

[MachineHead]

This is going to take some getting used to. Seems, upon first impression anyway, that you have to chase it all the way across the screen to get somewhere. (Nesting)

Though it does appear easy enough for anyone to follow it.

And...

Kind of smug with them headphones aren't you.  

[Matt]

Thanks guys.  Keep 'em coming.

Kind of smug with them headphones aren't you.

Hehe.  Does it make it any better that I think little-kid cereal (preferably with a  puzzle on the back of the box) constitutes a gourmet meal?

[smackbadger]

3) Is there any functionality missing from the main menus that should be there. (right-click column header comes to mind, let us know of others)

The System Tray Icon's Menu needs Ratings added somewhere.  It used to be there under "Send To", but I'd prefer if it was a top-level item like the menu you get when you click on the song name in the player controls area.

It'd be great if Ratings was a top-level item when you clicked on a song in the Media Library, instead of buried under "Send To".  There's plenty of room for 1 more menu item on this one...

-smackbadger

[RemyJ]

I don't actually use the main menu for much.  My only suggestion would be to move or duplicate "Convert" into the tracks context menu under Tools right next to "Analyze".  

[canaro99]

When Right Clicking "Send To/Playlist/Create/Select Playlist" and then entering the name of the new playlist and clicking okay, the entire playlist directory collapses and you have to re-open everything to get back to where you started.  This is a real pain.

Thanks.

[bspachman]

Being a cautious soul, I haven't installed 125 yet, but in 123, the "View Filter" and "List Style" commands only seemed available from the toolbar. They should certainly be in the main menu structure. I'm not as sure about contextual menus.

Best,
Brad

[canaro99]

When Using the "Tools/Rename Files From Properties/..." Right click menu. The browse for path is no longer open to the previously selected path ... you must expand each tree until you find what you are looking for.

This changed sometime around 121 - 124 it is a pain and reminds me of Music Match -- also a pain.

Thanks.

[canaro99]

The remove option in the right click menu in the playlist pane is missing.

[michel]

n Media Center 9.0.125, we rearranged the menu layouts. (added Send To and Tools to the file menu, added some nesting levels, etc.)

It is not really an advice but I have to say that I like the new menu system, that seems cleaner and less complicated.

Nice job.

[nila]

YES YES YES!!!

This is the biggest change I've been dying for

THANK YOU!!!

Ok, here goes

---------------------------------------------------------------------
1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Personally, not sure how hard it is to implement, I think the right click menu should be customisable - TopStyle pro offers this.

Even to a simple level - let users choose which items appear as first level items. Take this one step further and let us customise which appear in second level items etc.

You could set it up a bit like the windows start menu so we can go in and create our own folders etc which we can put things into, move  things into top levels etc.
Obviously we wouldn't be able to create new items but you could have a list of fixed items we could move into or out of folders etc.

This would give it the most amazing level of customisation and would make you loved throughout the three worlds

This could however be extremely tricky.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
2 - If the above is too hard or complex for v9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

What I would ideally like is ALL the items in the 'Send To'  menu brought up to the main menu as top level items instead of sub level items under 'Send To'.
With people with a relitively high screen resolution this is not a problem and increasingly more and more people are getting 17" monitors as standard with even the most basic computers.

Possibly make MJ 'smart' and detect the screen resolution - if it's above 800x600 then do them all as top level items - if it's that or lower then put them in the sub menu.

It is FAR more logical to just want to put a song in a playlist and right click to choose the playlist rather than thinking: Ok, I'm going to 'send it' to 'the playlist'. You just want to think about which playlist to put it in.

'Burn Track(s)' DEFINITELY should be a top level item (see below note). I am burning compilation albums or mp3 cd's for my car all the time and have to go into like 2 sub menu's to do it instead of just having it right there.

• If there is only 'One' item in 'CD/DVD/Handheld' as will probably be the case with a LOT of basic users - ie their cdrw - this shouldn't be put in a sub menu as it is a single item inside a menu - makes no logical sense as sub menu's are to stop menu's getting too clustered - it should instead be put as a direct item in the Menu.
  
  
  I could be wrong but from what I remember, creating menu's isn't toooo tricky with too much programming as the menu item when clicked calls on a function and so the menu is designed as a seperate entity.
  
  If this is the case and allowing us to customise the right click menu is too tricky for this release - possibly offer as an options window 2 different layouts for the right click menu - compact or easy access and let the users directly choose which one they want to suit them.
  This could be taken a step further with a few different layouts offered
  
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
  3 - Failing these I'd like this:
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  
• Make the start menu Replicate the Windows XP start menu whereby instead of having one sticky item we can set the number of items that appear as 'Sticky'.
  I would personally have around 3/4.
  
  
  
  
  Awkward
  The 'Locate File' could be brought up a level. I'd use this quite a bit if it was a top level item and you dont really think of this as a tool but more as a direct option.
  
  General
  
• Most of the options in the menu need some kind of graphics to make differentiating between them faster and easier visually with a quick glance.
  
• Most of the functions should all be accessible via shortcut keyboard combinations which are displayed in the menu's - This is standard for most programs and is one of the things I LOVE about ACDSee - I can do almost ALL the functions via key combo's
  (This saved me a LOT of time yesterday when I was browsing through 5000 images and choosing ones to copy to another folder to save - I simply pressed Alt+C, Enter to copy the file accross while pushing Page down to browse through them. I NEVER had to move my hands off the keyboard and so could SHOOT through the task.)
  
  
  I know I've been asking for this one for a while personally so THANKS!!!!!!!
  Wahoo!!
  Love you guys

[nila]

Hmm,

Just tried the latest version (probably should have done it before the post but I was still downloading it)

Some of the menu changes I love - navigation seems a lot clearer now in the Menu items at the top - possibly I think move: File Tools to be it's own menu item as this would seem to contain a large selection of tools that people might want to access frequently.

I love the fact you've now labelled all the key combo's to do each thing - possibly more functions have key combo's added - (especially all the file tools).

The right click menu on the left tree - love the way this is set up but it's now possible to right click on a playlist, and send it to a playlist - this is still going to need to be customised per section even though I like the fact it has a general overall feel.

Send To/Playlist - THANK YOU for making this follow the heirarchy - this still could do with refinement as in my 'imported playlists' I have 600 playlists - this isn't useable to browse up and down one by one. Possibly steal XP's idea of letting you jump 10 at a time - or maybe do it so it's smart and if there are more than X playlists, then group them so that it was: A-D, E-H, etc with a sub level entered.


For me however the general right click menu is a step back. It's adding extra heirarchy - not a good thing although the items moved to it are a good choice .
It's good for just basic use (ie playing songs and keeping this basic) but add's an extra level of clicking to most other things - to me this is a PAIN.
This might be a good menu to use in my suggestion of letting us choose menu's. Use this as a simple play mode menu, give another more advanced menu.

A nice trick might be to add menu styles to the 'Sticky View' so we can have 'play menu' and 'tools menu' type thing but I'm not sure how feasible this would be. It would allow us however to have view schemes for tagging, sorting, etc and view schemes for playing with the right click menu's adjusting depending on what we were doing. An easy way to allow us to jump between them would be to add an entry at the bottom of the menu:
Simple menu would have: - Switch to advanced menu
Advanced would have: - Switch to simple menu


On the same note - I'd like to be able to save view schemes - like now they're sticky which is great - but I'd LOVE to be able to save them like the 'Favourites' so that I could use the same menu for tagging or for playing depending on what I was doing simply by choosing a different sticky mode from a list rather than having to create several identical view schemes with the only difference being the display options used for each.


Again - Thank you!!

This is something I really wanted worked on and your doing it

P.S. 'Properties' should DEFINITELY be a top level item. It's something people are going to want to use all the time and so should be instantly accessible. - This should also make the side panel instantly jump to the 'Properties' page.

[nila]

Dont cringe - yes it's me

Love the : Quick Play>.....

Works great, I can easily play any artists album - slight  visibility problem thou.

It's hard to see which menu belongs to which (see screen shot)

http://www.phazeclothing.com/images/screenshot.jpg

You can see her album listed, but it's VERY hard to see which item it's in

(this is a menu item so I hope this is the right place to post it).

[Marko]

I've followed most of Nila's posts on these subjects in these forums and I absolutely knew he would lurve this thread!!!!

Nila, your ideas regarding this area of MC really are cool. Many times I've tried composing a thread with my thoughts on the subject and I always seem to end up rambling on, drifting off-topic, disjointed and hard-to-follow lists have also been made!!!
Your postings on this matter are clear and precise. How I wish I could make words do the things that you make them do.

For the record, I agree 100% with any posts Nila makes regarding menus or options. If I don't, I'll post and say so. He's my unofficial "proxy poster"

[NoCodeUK]

New Quick Play in the toolbar is great...

If we cannot see something like Doofs/Nilas idea of rememebring last used tools how about some kind of task based appraoch with items being in the menus respectve of tasks eg on import -> Get info from YADB/Filename, Fill Track Numbers from list order, clean file props, rename files from props.  This is the order I guess most people would use these tools...any chance they could appear like this??

Adam

[MachineHead]

Matt-

126's background colors for the slideouts get lost in the background of say File Properties.

Using XP's 'Silver' scheme right now, and when I open F.P. and click on Tools the slideouts are hard to make out against the gray color. Any chance of leaving white, or making a slightly different contrasting color?

[Jaguu]

The menu for cover art should be more concise and more prominent, something like

Get Cover Art from:
- Internet
- Scanner
- Disk
- Clipboard

It is very hard to find under Properties>Image>Right click, especially for beginners.

Also Properties is for my taste one level too low, should be on the top-level

The new MC icon, although very modern gets lost on the desktop, especially if you have wallpapers with blue skies. It is also much smaller compared to the other icons on the desktop!

May I make a suggestion: Why don't you combine the old icon and the new icon blending them into one: The Jukebox in the centre with the 4 triangles pointing to the 4 directions!

[mcphzgig]

This might be slightly off-thread, but the following just occurred to me about tidying up a couple of specific dialog boxes/pull-down menus.  Yes - there is an idea or two on specific menus and pull-downs in there among a couple of unrelated questions.

The Album Artist question will get answered in the original thread from which I have extracted this quote (I hope). I include the quote in its entirety, with appropriate highlights for this thread  bolded.

I really like the flexibility you have now given us with respect to the Album Artist field, with or without (auto).  But I have a couple of questions.

Is it possible to use the Album Artist field in path and file names?  For example, using the 'Tools>Rename File from Properties' dialog.  Ditto 'Tools>Fill Properties from Filename'.

Using either [Album Artist] (with a space) or [Album_Artist] with an underscore doesn't seem to work.

Also, could the pull-down list of 'rules' in that dialog 'learn' from different rules typed in by the user?

For classical music I have been editing the directory rule in the above dialog to [COMPOSER]\[ALBUM] - it would be convenient if new options like this appended themselves to the pull-down.

I guess this would be equally useful in other dialogs, like the Burn CD 'Option>Rearrange CD folders'.

Actually thinking about it as I develop this posting, I note the dialogs for 'Rename Files from Properties' and 'Rearrange CD folders' are quite different.  Why not use the same model?

[TimB]

I hate to just be negative but I really dislike the way the context sensitive menu is going on the individual song listings, TOO much depth and I have to think too hard (and I've used MC9 for awhile now) to figure out where things are.

-=Tim=-

[dragyn]

I'm sorry guys but the actual design needs to be changed. There are a lot of anal retentive users out there that don't want/like the 9x look (me included).

If disabled mode disables the new toolbar buttons and keeps the systems' design, then I'm all for it. Check out MYIE2/Advant. Those menus are killer and I really think you should bring them into MC. It would definately spice it up.

That's all I'm saying on this. Do whatever you want. I'm sure MC will still be great either way.

(ps. if you took this as me being po'd, I'm not. later.)

[Matt]

I'm sorry guys but the actual design needs to be changed. There are a lot of anal retentive users out there that don't want/like the 9x look (me included).

If disabled mode disables the new toolbar buttons and keeps the systems' design, then I'm all for it. Check out MYIE2/Advant. Those menus are killer and I really think you should bring them into MC. It would definately spice it up.

We draw everything ourselves now, and can easily make it look like anything.  Do you have some screenshots?  I don't know what "MYIE2/Advant" is -- and neither did Google.

I hate to just be negative but I really dislike the way the context sensitive menu is going on the individual song listings, TOO much depth and I have to think too hard (and I've used MC9 for awhile now) to figure out where things are.

I hate it right after my wife rearranges kitchen -- I can never find anything for like a month.  Hopefully in the end though, just like my wife always is, you'll think we were right

And look for some sort of MRU item or something to make things a little slicker.

Keep the ideas coming.

[dragyn]

They're two separate programs. They do essentially the same thing...uses the IE engine to surf the web. Has tabs, cool stuff, etc. You'll never use IE again..

MYIE2

I'm not sure what the default skin looks like but I'm using the WindowsXP style one.

...I don't know what "MYIE2/Advant" is -- and neither did Google....

[dragyn]

Here's a screenshot of mine. You wouldn't use the checkboxes (kinda big). I have to redo those someday.

Screeny

[nila]

Thanks for the sweet words!!

Two more things I'd LOVE to see.

The ability to have more than the standard menu. I'd LOVE a menu for all the 'File Tools' to allow me one click access to all these functions.

Also - A toolbar that I could fill with as many drop targets as I want to allow me easy access to dropping files in places, ratings, playlists etc.

Also - the ability to resize the current drop target - WAY too small on a resolution of 1280x1024.

Thanks!!

[Dopas]

The new menu style (in v126) makes you search for too long for the most used comands.
Each of the commands that are used the most should be available in the main menu, not in any submenu. Too many submenus makes it hard to find commands.
Some of common commands are now too far away and should be moved into the main menus.
Here some commands that I think are used a lot and have been moved:

Player:
- Reshuffle
- Next/Previous Playlist (currently missing)

Right click on a song:
- Properties... (Should always be there, since it's used all the time)
- Locate (I use this locate menu a lot to find certain songs in library)
- Delete (delete from a playlist is very common)

-Dom

[NoCodeUK]

Also Edit when using the grid...used to be at top level now is nested and a sub menu and is called rename...  I am guessing this is becasue the tree and the grid are sharing the same menu structure??  Is this correct cos otherwise I can see no reason why this function is called rename.

I would think all the commands you would do on a recent import want to be top level as well or at least nested under one sub menu eg.  clean file properties, rename files from props, fill in track order, get cover art...

Adam

[Matt]

Do people like that "auto customize" stuff that XP and Office do? (where it hides infrequently used stuff but adds the little ^^ show all button on the menu)  

Let us know.

[KingSparta]

>> Do people like that "auto customize"
>> stuff that XP and Office do?
yes, i would rather see that than going deep into menu after menu layers if possible

i think someone said something about the menus could use a frame around them also so it easyer to see whats what.

[zevele10]

Not sure if OT ot no , but:
I would like a way to see only music part in the left tree .
-=-=-=-=-=

Sorry Matt ,i did not see your question.
Concerning the tree , it can be a solution.

As mister average ,i  am lost most of the time in the MC interface.
To the point that i may reverse to MJ9 if you put one out with all the music features.
Not a critic , just to give opinion from an average user

[bspachman]

Do people like that "auto customize" stuff that XP and Office do? (where it hides infrequently used stuff but adds the little ^^ show all button on the menu)  

Let us know.

Arrrggghh!! That's the second feature I turn off!! (The first being the little paperclip!) I think that no matter how complex the UI is, having it constantly change is an even worse design decision.

Whew--sorry about that--just my $.02

Best,
Brad

[NoCodeUK]

Not deliberately being a devils advocate to King Sparta but I hate that Personalised Menus thing in Office

The only reason I could see this being any use would be if the menus were returned to having all options in one long menu.  If you are using nesting then I consider this to be pointless...

Adam

[KingSparta]

>> If you are using nesting then I consider
>> this to be pointless...
10-4

[Jaguu]

I also dislike personalized menus in Office and XP and turn them off right away. Although running XP I still use the old classic start menu which I prefer.

One important thing: menus and functions should entirely depend on media type. If a menu or function is not relevant to images, it should not be displayed and viceversa.

[Marty3d]

1.

Do people like that "auto customize" stuff that XP and Office do? (where it hides infrequently used stuff but adds the little ^^ show all button on the menu)

Yes! But I don't know if you want to implement it in right-click menus though...never seen it used that way... (or I just misunderstood you!)

2.
Rating rating rating... Top Level, absolutely! I find it almost ridicilous to have it under Send To...that's a long shot!

3.
Internet section: I believe Cover art should have a separate sub like someone said before. Cover art -> Get from Internet, scanner etc.

Other:
I believe the menu should change a bit depending on where you are. If I'm in Playing now, is it really necessary to have the option "Add to playing now"?

Thanks for listening,
/Martin

[nila]

I also hate the customise feature in Office/IE/Windows etc and turn it off as default.
It adds no extra use except to hide some of the features meaning u again forget about them. It also just add's an extra click to getting to things.

What I DO like though is the Windows XP start menu.

It brings right to the surface the most common features and takes OUT a level of clicking. It saves the last X amount of programs used (I also LOVE being able to set how many programs it remembers - this really lets you adjust it to personal taste). As well as this you can right click on ANY item and choose 'Stick to start Menu' so that it's ALWAYS one click away for the most commonly used items.


This is going to be a hard one to crack as everyone is going to have different tastes and different things they do frequnetly in MJ and so if you could let us choose which items go where or give like 4 different designs we can choose between I think it'd probably be the best way to make the most people the most happy.

Is it too hard to allow full customisation like some other programs do? or to offer a few different layouts that we can choose between? I'm just curious because if it is too hard I'll shut up about it


Also - I looked at that screen shot provided by dragyn and I LOVE how those menu's are done. I think MJ should try copy that style as it's pretty much becoming the standard menu style for all recent builds of most software as it's the new XP look. I've even seen quite a few programs releasing new builds purely with the menu's and GUI changed to look like that as the only release changes.


I think it comes under 'Menu' too but I'm not sure but for the 'rename from properties' and 'fill properties from filename' - these could do with a GUI way of letting us choose which fields to use like most other programs have. It makes it easier, doesn't require us to remember field names at all and also totally removes errors caused by mis spelling. It's also a lot less intimidating for beginners. At the very least this tool needs the ability for us to save/delete naming formats as I personally never use the ones you guys suggest (except one) and I commonly use several others.
Again this is something that will be highly subjective.

Keep up the great work - sooooo nice to see some GUI changes being implemented

[JollyJim]

I think I'm missing something here......so far, I really dislike the menus, sub-menus, sub-sub-menus etc flying across the screen and making me and my mouse trying to chase them. I think it's quite a backward step but if they can be turned off, then that's ok. So far, I have'nt found out how to disable them as several of the topics in this thread have purported to. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong - I dunno... I found that by holding the left mouse button, things seem to slow down. Is that what I'm supposed to do ? I'm totally confused.....

I know for sure that when my better half sees it, she'll prob not touch MC again - it's far too confusing...

One request though, can 'Erase CDRW' be put on a simple menu (maybe Tools) somewhere.. thanks

Jim

[Doof]

Personally, I kind of like the customized menus. But I don't really have a preference.

And I just want to say that the more you pull things out of the Sent To menu, the more you're crippling one of the easiest to use features of MC.

For instance, currently you can configure MC's double click behavior to "Current Send To Item". So if you have it set for that, you basically have the ability to change the behavior of the double click action on the fly. All you have to do is click on the drop target, and set it to whatever you want. If you want to set a bunch of files that are all intersperesed to a rating of 4, you just set the Drop Target to Rating -> 4, and then double click away. It's easy.

If you remove Rating from Send To, then you also lose that ability.

So if you DO decide to make Rating a top level menu, which would be fine with me, you should at least also leave it in Send To.

As for the rest of the menus... right now I feel kind of like how I do with XP at times. I used to know where everything was. Now I have to try and think... Move\Copy File... where is it? Oh... under Filename. I guess I can see that, but it's not the most intuitive thing in the world. I'm not sure what was wrong with the Tools menu the way it was before. The only thing I would have changed would be to add Convert Format to it.

[nila]

? ? ?
Just tried the latest build.
Not too happy. Seems to be going further and further away from what I personally want. Everything is getting put into more and more sub menu's meaning more clicks to do each task. Try doing this for 100 songs - not too uncommon when sorting a load of albums or something and it's now going to take forever and be one of the slowest tagging/renaming programs there is.

• I cant press Alt+F to bring up the file menu and even if I could I then cant click on any other letter to jump to any other sub menu etc to navigate quickly using my keyboard.
  
• I cant press any key combinations to perform any file tool actions on any of my files.
  
• I cant do one button click MS Office toolbar style to perform any file tool actions on my files.
  
  The only way I can currently do it is right click on each song, wait for the menu to appear (this can be up to 1 second per menu/sub menu), scroll down to tools and wait for this to appear, move down to filename and wait for this to appear then choose rename from properties.
  
  Compare all that to:
  Alt+R
  
  You'll see what I mean - it's NOT at all designed for easy or speed of use.
  The old big list of tools was quite big your right but add icons to each of these tool items and it helps to differentiate them easily. Adding extra layers of clicking is a PAIN.
  All items in the right click menu need to be keyboard selectable by pressing one letter too (just like in explorer when the right click menu is up you press D to delete.).
  
  I'm afraid to say, an area that was exciting me with the changes about to happen is now running in the oposite direction and putting me off MJ alot. I know it's a work in progress but it's progressing for the worse so far.
  
  
  
  
  Also, regarding doof's reason for  wanting it all to stay in the send to menu. Perhaps the drop target could just have a list of ALL the 'Send To' and the 'Tools' items and we could set this individually and then make the double click action follow this - That way the right click wouldn't be at all restricted by the possibility of loosing that feature.

[NoCodeUK]

I partially agree with Nila in that there are too many clicks for things now and I also think it is impossible for you guys to try and come up with categories for the submenus to make them intuitive cos one mans intuitive is another mans pain in the butt.  You cannot win  Still not sure on what the optimum layout would be but am wondering if as we get nearer to D-Day evryone will actually be able to agree on something...  Sorry for probably not being at all help ful and simply adding another spanner to the works...

Adam

[CptanPanic]

I think there should be a copy/paste for playlists.  

[rocketsauce]

Finally upgraded from 9.0.120 to 9.0.127.

Too many sub-menus, especially when trying to reach often used items like Properties, Rename, Rename Files From Properties, etc. I definitely preferred having all the tools on one longer menu rather than split up into 5 or 6 sub-menus.

Also, I'll put in my vote against XP/Office style menus.

Rob