Steve/Jim:
(Another one of my verbose posts)
I've one thing to say "WOW!". What an awesome build this was (haven't even been able to try the one posted today yet).
With that said I'll just post some minor nitpicky things for enhancements/fixes when Steve gets back. But first, on with the kudos.
I stessed tested a number of things last night and was NOT able to get MJ to fail w/some minor exceptions. My MJ Library shows the exact number of songs as my iPod does....that's just so nice and clean
. OK, now the nit-picking:
1. I saw GUI lock on formatting, it'll be nice to see that fixed.
2. Don't know if you added this in today's build, but for consistency's sake, it would be nice if the Delete dialog had a progress bar as well, rather than just "Deleting Files"
3. I *really* tried to get MJ to crash on sync (transfer all files, 1796 songs) and for the most part I couldn't. I was able to minimize MJ and do other stuff. One thing I did notice halfway through sync or so, whereas earlier in the sync I was able to maximize MJ and get both MJ and the sync dialog, halfway through sync, I could only get the sync dialog--MJ would not display behind it. When sync finished I could only get MJ back up by right-clicking on the task-bar and selecting Maximize. So there's something slightly funky.
4. There is a minor bug with syncing files that have foreign characters in them. I uploaded my entire library, everything worked fine. The files w/foreign characters where properly renamed w/the "#" sign. They played fine on iPod. I then added another Album to my library and did another sync w/Transfer All Files checked. In theory it should have zoomed through ALL songs but the new album I added. This didn't happen. All songs that had foreign characters were re-uploaded like they didn't exist on the iPod. It didn't cause any problems (meaning I didn't have dupes on my iPod) but it slowed sync down just slightly. I imagine for people w/lot's of music w/these characters this will be a problem. Basically what I think is happening is MJ isn't recognizing the song as being on the iPod because the file name is different. Probably just need to do a comparison w/what the new file name will be once transferred. Hope this is making sense.
5. Any chance of changing the transfer speed from Kbps to MBs? It'd save a little real estate and is easier to read. Minor, but see what others say.
6. The "format for MJ" Msgbox test is confusing. It mentions other applications, but it doesn't mention at all that you'll be losing all of your data on the iPod. Probably want to warn users about that.
7. Repeat, but I'm thowing it in for good measure: the Upload Files progress dialog is different than the sync progress dialog. I prefer the sync progress dialog, can we make them consistent. Also, consider getting rid of the updating the status on Queued files. It seems to slow down the upload. Suggest refeshing at the end, or at the beginning change all to "uploading", then change to "complete". When the entire download is finished.
OK, that's it for bugs (pretty brief), now for enhancements still pending
1. Synch by Artist/Album
2. Pretty icons
3. It was mentioned about doing a check to see if the ipod was formatted for MJ automatically. Could this be done by simply adding a file to the iPod when formatting that the MJ plugin checks for? Then, when the iPod is connected and that file is not present, a wizard could be launched prompting the user to format to MJ. This is what Xplay does. It doesn't have to be a big file at all, stick it in an MJ folder on the root. Just a thought.
4. I know this is a biggy, but the UI for interacting w/the iPod is really kind of clunky overall. By that I mean that functions are hidden in right-click menus and not readily evident. One thing that you might consider is a frame in the bottom of MJ that is displayed when the iPod is selected. You're already doing it when you display the Upload Files button, what about displaying that whenever the iPod is selected and adding Sync, Format, and "Advanced Tools" there. Some of the Advanced tools to add would be ones available in Ephpod (probe for lost music, rebuild iPod database, check for dupes etc.)
5. Another shout out for improved syncing w/respect to tag changes. This is the functionality where if you edit a song's tags in MJ, and you do a sync, that song should be updated on the iPod. Right now the only way to do this is to delete the song from the iPod and reupload it. Sync needs to check for last updated date, if it's newer than the version on the iPod then it should be changed.
OK now for the good news. I've done a lot of ephod & Xplay recommendations on Apple's Site and ipodlounge. I've held off for recommending MJ until things are stable: well, they are stable!!!! I'll be pushing MJ bigtime!!
Thanks for the awesome work guys.
Adam