I was jus thinking about how confusing it is to have music, video, and images all in the same Playing Now. There are all sorts of different actions that can lead to different results, and it's really hard to remember what action has what result. This really needs to be straightened out, IMO.
So here's my idea.
Get rid of the idea of "Play" in the context of Images. You don't "Play" an image, you "View" it.
Now, if you have an empty Playing Now, the right click on a music or video file gives you the "Play" option, and a right click on an image gives you the "View" option, or "View Slideshow" if there are multiple images selected.
If Playing Now already has images in it, then a right click on music gives you two options : "Play (with slideshow)" and "Play (no slideshow)". A right click on an image can give you "View" (or "View Slideshow") and "Add to Slideshow".
If Playing Now already has music in it, then a right click on music gives you the same options we already have, "Play" or "Add to Playing Now". A right click on images gives us "View (with music)" and "View (no music)".
As for what's displayed in Playing Now, I would ONLY show images if Playing Now ONLY had images in it. If Playing Now had even one music file in it, then Playing Now doesn't list images. The image list is moved to the right click Image List. Currently there are actions that can leave you with 3 different possibilites, one of which has Playing Now display a list of both music and images, that play in order just like that rather than overlap.
Also, Playing Now wouldn't wipe the list of images and stop Slideshow when it hit a video, but rather just suspend the Slideshow and resume it once the video was finished.
To me, this seems to be much more orderly than what we currently have. What do you all think?