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[Matt]

A little about some of the changes in 9.1.315:

The new Action Window system will allow tasks to run while you do other tasks.  It's a ways out but think of things like ripping a CD or analyzing audio down there.  You can start an action by dragging files to any icon.  The functionality will be hammered out in the coming weeks.

Location bar toolbars have been removed because we didn't feel they added enough to justify the real estate they consumed.  There are two other customizable toolbars on the interface.  

Tagging mode has been redesigned to make it more obvious and to remove the need to toggle in and out of it.  The "New Artist" entry always being there is a bug that will be fixed soon.

Auto-complete combos are most places you type a tag value now.  Please let us know if there are other places.

Any suggestions are welcome.  Just try to be tolerant and patient, as we've got an end in mind, but are only part way there right now.

Thanks!

[crowfan]

Sorry, I posted my comments in the build thread before this thread was here....

I also really like the auto-complete drop-down list, it's great...

crow

[Rands]

Like I wrote, I like the direction the Action Window is taking.  My only suggestions would be to return the ability to "minimize" the top task if i wanted and maybe to be able to shuffle the tasks around.  For example, if I have something going in one of the task windows and it is .... uh nevermind, you guys already have this in there!  Nice!

[Tolga]

I LOVED the new tagging logic. I felt that it was important to be able to change the filters while you are tagging, therefore I was not using the "on filter" tagging at all, because it was not practicle to go back and forth.

Nevertheless, (here comes the bad part), I still want my tags to be more protected. (although I cvs them everyday). I don't want my wife, or kinds (I don't have any but I could) change all song names to "Yellow Submarine", while trying to select a song.

Suggestion
Keep the tagging toggle button. If it is off, I would have the check marks, but not the boxes. And no change would be allowed. If it is on, it will work as it works right now. filtering/tagging together.

Minor suggestion
use different color check mark (i.e. half tone), instead of "box" style check box.

An issue that got worse:
The check boxes mean even less space for filter/tag values. I need to select them, but I can't even see them. I suggested multiple solutions for that problem before, and I know that you experiment with auto sizing. For now, tool tips would be a simple temp. solution.


MC10 Suggestion
Access rights. I.e. let people create their own playlists, but don't allow them to change others. There will be people that have tag changing permission and people that don't, etc. Even for a single person, I would use a user identity to use MC as a jukebox, and admin identity to make database changes.

[antolod]

Good idea Tolga, I agree, lockable tags would be a very good idea.  Dittos on the "admin" and "user" access to the playlists and program control.

[pfeffermj]

I agree about not liking the possibility of 'accidentally' changing a tag.

It kind of scared me when I saw the check boxes out there in the open.

--Matt

[Matt]

You can't accidently change tags.  There's a popup dialog the first time you hit a box each time you run MC.

MC has never been completely "monkey click" proof and it's not really something we're shooting for.  In our defense, very few programs are.

With that said, if there are ways to make things more clear or less prone to user error, please let us know.  Hiding features or making it extra hard to make changes isn't good though.

[tlongacre]

Hmm, I'm using 313 and this morning I sure did accidentally change a bunch of tags. Mabye I'm more monkey-like than others?

Here's what I did and what happened:

I was ripping a CD.
I selected a bunch of songs in the Recently Ripped playlist and then clicked on Genre in the Tag Info Action Window. Changed the Genre to New Age, but something made the program "switch" and suddenly the Tag Info Action Window performed the change Genre action on every item in the Recently Ripped list.

Fortunately there were only 8 or 10 albums in there, but I had to go back and change all their Genres.

This is exactly the sort of mistake I would die if a spouse or child made. I at least knew how to fix it.

[pfeffermj]

gotcha.

I should have tried clicking on one of the boxes before I posted that.

I just tried it and it seems like enough protection for me.

Thanks for setting me straight.  

--Matt

[Matt]

Hmm, I'm using 313 and this morning I sure did accidentally change a bunch of tags. Mabye I'm more monkey-like than others?

Hehe.

JRiver's best working on MC 10:

I was ripping a CD.
I selected a bunch of songs in the Recently Ripped playlist and then clicked on Genre in the Tag Info Action Window. Changed the Genre to New Age, but something made the program "switch" and suddenly the Tag Info Action Window performed the change Genre action on every item in the Recently Ripped list.

This is a bug.  If you can pinpoint what happened and let us know, we'll fix it.

[Doof]

Tagging mode has been redesigned to make it more obvious and to remove the need to toggle in and out of it.

I'm not sure I understand this statement, because so far, I've had to toggle it on everytime I've tried to use it. I see that as long as I stay within the same view, it stays on, though... hmmmm... not really sure what I think about it. But my uneasiness stems directly from the fact that the location bars are now gone... I REALLY liked those... it enabled me to have toolbars close to the action. It was a nice departure from the standard where the toolbar is always at the top. It was nice to have those tools closer. And having the Tagging Mode button right where the tagging was taking place.

One suggestion would be to have a "Don't show this again" checkbox on the popup window. Having buttons on it that actually do something helpful is awesome, though.

I love the new Action Window, though... much nicer to use now. I can't wait to see how it all works out.

[Tiberius]

1.New Action Window Love it. Would love it even more if it saved state on MC close. Would really appreciate the return of windowed mode though.

2. Tagging mode Good, pop-up warning is great. Moving from one view scheme to another or to playing now and back using back arrow on toolbar is causing tagging mode to toggle off, feature or bug? If bug I think I would probably like to be able to toggle it off manually after use.

[nila]

Tagging Mode.

Personally DO NOT like the fact that every single item that's not in the current display is no longer displayed as a tagging option so we have to create as new items, items that are already in our DB's making the whole process a lot slower. Hopefully this is only temporary.


I'm glad Matt got what he wanted and got the integrated browsing/tagging mode - its alot easier and nicer than two step mode.
Its also good that we can still turn tagging on and off though - it's a nice extra little security cushion


Location Bar

I'd always hoped this would be developed more so as to give us more user controls for the files we were dealing with as a file toolbar. Even as it was, I still used it regularly and liked it. I never heard ANY complaints about it so why was it removed? I understand that maybe personally it wasn't liked but surely removing it without seeing if people wanted it removed was a bit extreme?

Why not just give the user a choice of displaying it or not - if you really felt it wasn't that useful then turn it off as default - this wouldn't have to be in the options screen and could be something they set in the 'Customise Menu Bar'.
Having it right under the panes would give the perfect fast way to Rotate Images, E-mail them, etc. etc - it'd be mere centimeters from the files we want to perform the actions on.



Action Window

WOW. A LOT of work seems to have gone into this and you've done a great job on it. 'Playing Now' now says: Play Files though which to me makes it sound like a button to Play the files currently displayed - the old wording was a lot clearer.

[nila]

Also, the AW buttons seem to change order which makes it a bit more tricky.

It'd be great if they always kept the position so we could think of them as permenant buttons almost and know where to expect each button to be.

Also, to me at least the Action Window would make the most sense if it always stayed at the bottom

Definitely LOVE what you've done to it - great work!

[fretwalker]

Matt,
it would be nice if you could change back the icon size to 32x32 in the action window...anyway, I think I'll better wait a few builds adapting the custom arts until interface changes are (hopefully) finished.

Regarding waste of space:
In my opinion the location bar was one of the best interface changes in the last time because it saved space: So much icons I don't like to have permanently visible - just when I need them...and now I have to put them all (and there's actually not enough space) in the main toolbar - the bottom one is no consideration since it's use is anoying if your taskbar is set to auto-hide and I have to move the cursor in slow-motion if I don't want it to show up!
A real waste of space is the super-big Playerbar_Display.bmp: Imagine someone would make a skin that uses the playerbar-buttons and sliders that are used in 9.0 or 8.0 in the upper-left corner - that's possible and actually good-looking, I tried it...but in the end everyone would ask what the hell is this space consuming info bar field or what ever this iTunes clone should be good for???
We have a wonderful statusbar to display status-information - that's enough for me!

So in conclusion the most efficient layout for me would be:
   The Layout of 9.0 with panes and locationbars that can be disabled if someone really don't need them...

I really really hope that the optical accordance to iTunes (which was a real shock for me as I recognized it because I always thought this layout came from your minds)
is not as important as making MC really efficient and peculiar state-of-the-art!
Your always used argument of not making big changes anymore due to finalizing MC seems to be very relative in view of changes that are made every few weeks.

Regards
Eric


P.S.: BarImages.png shows no reaction on changes I make with it, why?
        Options.png shows no 32bpp transparency..?

[NoCodeUK]

Only got a brief glance of the new changes yesterday as I am in the process of moving house at the moment and have no inet connection at home (downloaded the new build from my parents house). Like the changes to the action window and like where you are planning to head with it.  Haven't tested the tagging mode yet but am very glad of the re addition of auto complete for tagging in the panes and lists...I have been waiting for this to return for a long time as I have always preferred tagging in the panes rather than the tagging window.

I agree with Nila that the Location bars had potential to be a lot more useful and it is a shame they have simply been removed.  One thing that could have improved them is if the icons could have been made specific to a view scheme e.g. that the stste of the bar could be saved.  Even if this was only done on a view scheme group level it would make it much more useful eg when editing images the location bar had image specific icons, when editing audio, audio specific ones etc.

All in all though some great and very welcome changes that were well worth waiting a few days for!!  Thanks for making a great program even better...If version 9.1 is this good Version 10 is going to be awesome!!

Adam

[LisaRCT]

I too like the 'Location Bar' and would prefer it being available in 'Options'.
A/W looks

I particularly like the integrated coffee-maker  

[nila]

I particularly like the integrated coffee-maker  

They forgot to add it!!
Next build maybe.