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[knickelfarz]

I don't know if this has been addressed before...

How about using different "ThumbBackground" images for folders and files? I think it would be easier to navigate if they could be differentiated better...

[Chris Shaw]

Is there any way to control how tracks are displayed in the list view when you get to the bottom of the tree? At the moment, they seem to come up as [ARTIST] - [NAME], but I'd much rather see [TRACK #] - [NAME]. Could this be adjustable? In fact, could we have an option not so show tracks as the last level? That way, I could have a view scheme which only presented entire albums, or I could choose the way tracks were presented by adding a calculated field called [TRACK #] - [NAME] and setting that as my last column.

I'd like Hairstyle to remember my view mode at each level of the tree. When browsing albums, I usually like to see thumbnails, but when browsing tracks, a list is much better. It shouldn't remember for every tree location, just for each depth of each view scheme.

A hot key for Back would be nice. I suggest Backspace as it's the one Windows Explorer uses.

[chrisssssl]

i would love it if i were able to set/save different views when browsing the music files.

ex.
default to audio library/artist album view when i launch hairstyle
list mode when searching artist/album.
thumbnail mode for artist view.
back to list mode for tracks.

also:
1)play an album with a single click.
2)when you play a track it goes to full screen view... but pressing esc takes you back to mega me instead of hairstyle.  while i can navigate easily back to hairstyle.. people using the system dont understand it.  perhpas if it had the option to just stay in hairstyle.
3)perhaps ability to launch different hairstyles for different media types.
4)thumbnail cache
5)some sort of image for the "back" button.  the ? is rather ugly.
6) more track info in the now playing. (year, track number, time, ability to choose tags i want to see)

overall i love the hairstyle feature... id love to see it grow.  it truly makes using my htpc/jukebox easier.

[slikvik]

I'm still not sure that Hairstyle is going the right way. I can't stress enough how unintuitive some of it is to people.

1) I suggested SPACE to select files, but you have used it to PLAY. Why? SPACE is used in lot's of apps to select. Hairstyle should be no different.

2) Start Selection, Stop Selection? No need. Just use SPACE.

3) The way that LEFT and RIGHT cursors drill through menu's is confusing. You can't combine drilling AND navigation with just two keys. Cursors are for navigation. Onscreen buttons for DRILL BACK and ENTER for DRILL FORWARD (plus maybe TAB key and BACKSPACE key as extras.)

4) SHOW FILES. What pupose does this serve? ENTER maybe?

5) Most importantly. What is this new audio list? ALBUMS GROUPED, FILE TYPE etc etc, and then a list of GENRES? Isn't that slightly jumbled together and presumptious, not to mention that my view schemes are not listed.

I've just upgraded to v10 in a heartbeat because I love your program, and don't take this as being a complaint. Hairstyle is the single most important part of your program to me and I have spent hours trying to work out the best possible BASIC usage. I think what I have suggested works. Please think through my operation suggestions.

Regards

Vic

[Matt]

Start Selection, Stop Selection? No need. Just use SPACE.

5 button use is one of the goals of Hairstyle, so it works well with a remote rocker pad.

The way that LEFT and RIGHT cursors drill through menu's is confusing. You can't combine drilling AND navigation with just two keys

TiVo does, and they're one of the best.

SHOW FILES. What pupose does this serve?

You're probably right -- this may just be clutter.  Anyone else?

[Platu]

Please don't remove the Show Files button since I use it all the time. When I'm navigating in Hairstyle and enter into a view scheme, I usually have other view schemes to drill down into. But often I need to see all of the files at the level I'm at, in which case I use the Show Files button. I'm not sure if I explained this clearly enough but let's just say that it is necessary feature for how I have everything set up in Hairstyle. If there is a better way of implementing this functionality, I'm all for it but please don't just remove it.

Platu

[slikvik]

Hi Matt,

Start Selection, Stop Selection? No need. Just use SPACE.

5 button use is one of the goals of Hairstyle, so it works well with a remote rocker pad.

OK I agree. But, if you would set SPACE as the way of selecting files, then people with more than 5 button remotes could customize Hairstyle themselves and remove those buttons from the screen.

The way that LEFT and RIGHT cursors drill through menu's is confusing. You can't combine drilling AND navigation with just two keys

TiVo does, and they're one of the best.

Again I agree that it can work well providing you are only dealing with 1 drillable list on the vertical. The fact that there is a music list and a functions list that are both drillable is what causes the 'messyness'. You can be intuatively drilling into your music list with the right cursor but when you to go back, the obvious left cursor takes you over to the functions list. Ok, I'll press left again and try. No, that now takes you back through the functions list.

SHOW FILES. What pupose does this serve?

You're probably right -- this may just be clutter.  Anyone else?

Agree, Hit ENTER or RIGHT on any group should list all files below that group as well as any sub groups.

Matt, have you seen the showshifter interface? The WHOLE program has been designed for 5 keys and I was wondering what your opinions where on it. I know the program itself is nowhere near as good as MC, I'm just talking about the media selection and control part.

Regards

Vic

[nila]

Could we have a view somewhat like this:


Where it has cover art, artist name and album name then track listing.
myHTPC has this view scheme too and it's GREAT. MC is currently lacking it


Also,

This makes a LOT of sense to me - use buttons for the player controls instead of text and they can all fit on screen permenantly.
The layout in that shot is VERY clear and informative with a lot of controls.
CD info is always showing with just the tracks scrolling, can change cd drives easily and quickly, can COPY THE TRACKS to the computer straight from that screen - VERY IMPORTANT feature in my opinion.

Also, WHY do we no longer seem to have view schemes in hairstyle? We seem to have lost the ability to configure any View Schemes which makes NO sense since View Schemes are the main thing that make MC stand miles ahead of it's competitors.

I'd want to have around 4 as default in hairstyle under audio:

By Artist
By Album
By Year
By Genre

I cant work out whats happened here?

[slikvik]

I agree 1000% with Nila as this is the interface that works best IMO.

One point about the screenshots:

The little scroll triangles, letters, left/right buttons and the back button are all used to scroll/navigate through your library when they are highlighted and ENTER'ed. This means that when you use the cursor keys it will take you to the very button you want on screen (like player controls.) No scrolling or drilling with cursors, just screen navigation.
TRUE 5 key control with rigged but intuative rules.

I am also really perplexed as to this static viewscheme (blows my whole 'CDrip only jukebox' right out the window!)

Regards

Vic

[skidoo]

Bump, bump, bump. What Nila said!

I just discovered myHTPC, and there are many pointers hairstyle could take from it and then improve on.

[Chris Shaw]

The obsession with 5 button operation perplexes me slightly. I can see that it's the simplest way for visitors/newbies to use your system, but most remotes have lots more spare buttons we could use.

E.g. One key to play current item, another to select it, another to browse into it.
An Up/Back key

There should also, of course, be on-screen buttons to do the same functions but for speed of browsing, a few more buttons can do wonders

[skidoo]

The obsession with 5 button operation perplexes me slightly. I can see that it's the simplest way for visitors/newbies to use your system, but most remotes have lots more spare buttons we could use.

E.g. One key to play current item, another to select it, another to browse into it.
An Up/Back key

There should also, of course, be on-screen buttons to do the same functions but for speed of browsing, a few more buttons can do wonders

Huh? Perplexed? I think you just answered your own question. *** NEWBIES *** As in, the rest of the world. The non-geeks. They need SIMPLE. As in FIVE-WAY.

Extra buttons are gravy for us nerds, and can usually be programmed from remote to remote. That is, there doesn't usually have to be special custom support in Media Center. Excepting the assignment of hotkeys to all critical functions.

[sraymond]

But five-button and totally-functional-and-efficient are not mutually exclusive.  Why not have five-button navigation (which is not efficient or totally functional) as well as other methods of navigating?

Hairstyle already does this in part.  For example, a tab will take you between the list and the buttons.  Space bar plays selection.

Scott-

[Platu]

Does anyone know of a way to have Hairstyle default to specific views (thumbnails vs. list) depending on the category (audio, video or images)? I would always like to see audio start in list view while for photos & videos I would always start in thumbnail view. Can the xml file be modified to accomplish this? If not, I would love to see this functionality implemented in a future build.

Platu

[sraymond]

Does anyone know of a way to have Hairstyle default to specific views (thumbnails vs. list) depending on the category (audio, video or images)? I would always like to see audio start in list view while for photos & videos I would always start in thumbnail view. Can the xml file be modified to accomplish this? If not, I would love to see this functionality implemented in a future build.

Platu

No-can-do with the current Hairstyle.  But I think it's a good idea.

If you have a look at the main.xml in the Hairstyle directory, you'll see that it is dedicated to layout (presentation) and not functionality (i.e. presence of items, states, etc.)  I hope this changes.

Scott-

[Platu]

No-can-do with the current Hairstyle.  But I think it's a good idea.

If you have a look at the main.xml in the Hairstyle directory, you'll see that it is dedicated to layout (presentation) and not functionality (i.e. presence of items, states, etc.)  I hope this changes.

Scott-

Thanks, I hope it changes as well. I think this setting would be most logically located in the "Configure Hairstyle" dialog.  It gets a little annoying to have to keep changing it manually every time I leave and enter different hairstyle categories. So, what do you say guys? Maybe next build?


Platu

[jleerigby]

Bump -

There are a lot of good suggestions in here some of which have been implemented already.  I think I'll do a 'NocodeUK' on this thread later and summarise the contents in one easy place.

[Griff]

Also, after enqueuing, the files are still shown as selected, so it is easy to enqueue them again

This is my major prob. with hairstyle.

[jleerigby]

The change requests in this thread are now summarised HERE.

[Uwe]

JLee, thank you for this hard work. That's the specification for a great Hairstyle !

Uwe

[jleerigby]

Except for a great new skin, HS improvements in v10 betas seem to have slowed down lately.  One of the most common requests is for a button that will do a 'Play next'.

Personally I think the biggest single improvement to HS would be to simply allow me to choose which VS are shown in Thumbnail mode and which in List mode.  Along with Thumbnail caching this would be a major improvement.  At the moment I really can't use thumbnails in HS which is a major drawback for a HTPC interface IMO.

[Uwe]

bump
Yes, the skin is great, but I don't think building a new skin should have  the highest priority when making new improvements in HS. I don't understand why there is a new skin in HS, there 's a lot to do...
Uwe

[bennyd]

And when playing a TV channel or DVD, that the TV controls (Recording, Timeshifting...) and DVD controls (Language, Audio...) could be directly available in the menu without having to navigate through Playing Now/Display Options etc.

[Chris Shaw]

The Audio/Image/Video top level is nice, but could be more flexible. Since each one needs to correspond to a view scheme, you could have a check box for each view scheme called "Appear as a Media Mode". For example, I'd rather replace Audio with two called Music and Spoken Word.

If I select an album thumbnail on the right side of the screen and press Return, then Left, Left to go back up a level, then Right, the highlight jumps back to that thumbnail. I can see why this was done, and should behave like this for Tab, but I think Right should always go to the nearest item the the right. Otherwise it's rather counterintuitive.

Aaargh. I've just tried it on my plasma at a widescreen resolution of 1360x768. It all looks horrible. The buttons become rectangular. Single thumbnails look OK, but the 2x2 ones are squashed. Nasty.