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[Skillsadam]

Hey guys, kudos on such a great product. 9.1 is a powerful yet very accessible tool that has really become indispensible. That said, Hairstyle continues to lag behind, I can understand that, but I'm proposing a handful of changes that (I'm guessing) would be fairly easy to implement:

1) Don't presume what we're using it for.... What I mean is, give the user control over the front menu of hairstyle and what buttons appear there. For example, I don't want to have go Playlist -> Evening Music to launch that playlist, I want it on the front. Or, I don't want to go Media Library -> Audio -> Artist (grouped) to get there, I want it on the front page. Same with videos and images, let us set up our front menu and the steps below it.

2) Give us some way of seeing what track is playing besides going fullscreen. We've got a time that we can skin, can't we get a track info that we can skin?

3) Simplify, simplify, simplify..... Playing Now is pointless, just one more option that takes up space on the front menu. I can't see what track is actually playing now there. Any play controls I have on my remote (next, previous, stop, play). I don't need all those options on the left, let me get rid of some if I choose to. This really holds true throughout Hairstyle. There's way too much stuff everywhere and I can't get rid of any of it. I want to be able to play music, look at pics and watch movies at most, if there's anything more powerful I want to do, I probably shouldn't be doing it in hairstyle.

4) To accomplish this, give us a configuration program.... "You're nutty!" you might be saying, but listen.... Create a handful of commands, i.e.:
"File browse" - Browse directories and get lists of files
"Playlist launch" - self-explanatory
"Menu browse" - Open a sub menu with any of the options above.

and let us dictate what each one does, so I could build something like this:

MAIN MENU:
Playlist Launch - Evening Music
Playlist Launch -  Rock
Menu Browse - Artists
    File Browse - Artist
    File Browse - Artist (Grouped)
File Browse - Movies
File Browse - Pics

All you would be doing is leveraging the information in 9.1 and building these actions, treating them as buttons that we can dictate how they act (or what and where they act upon) and then letting us skin them.

skills

[gpvillamil]

While you're at it - get rid of the bezel around Track Info when it goes full screen, and make it really easy to toggle between that & hairstyle. A dedicated function key and a button on screen would be great.

Updating Playing Now so that the highlight actually follows the current track would also be great.

[Monkeyboy]

Totally agree with everything you have said.
Hairstyle is a great idea, but the only reason I don't use it much is becuase it is awkward.
Not being able to see the song playing now is my biggest gripe.

[jeffl012]

Agree - it's too complicated. I hate to say it but the Windows Media Center interface is a good example to follow.