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[Doof]

After a couple of posts I made last night, I started thinking about the useability of MJ. I figured I'd start a thread about ideas we had that could make MJ easier to use, both for the advanced user, and the new user. Here's mine. (Keep in mind these are only my opinion - obviously - and are open to discussion)

1. Make Smartlists easier to use. Replace the current "artist=[Rush] ~n15" with something more user friendly. At least on the surface. Currently, MJ's implementation of this is a little backwards. The advanced stuff is right in your face, and the friendlier Wizard-type interface is buried under an "Advanced" button. The worst part is, there's nothing under Advanced that you can't do from the basic view. It currently only displays a summary.

2. Redesign the Options screens. From scratch if need be. Some of them are simple. Others are (sorry guys) a convoluted mess. Especially the Tree & View Settings screen. It wasn't bad until the Sorting options were added in. The sorting options were a godsend, but they were just crammed into that small little space with a crowbar, and the useability suffers because of it. I'd much rather be able to drag one of the sort criteria up or down the list rather than click twice (once on the Edit button and once more on Move Selected Up/Down) for every spot I want to move an item.

Also some of the options are just not explained very well. I consider myself an MJ poweruser, and I only just figured out what "Display image location:" (under Tree & View) was. Other options that aren't well explained (or should be redesigned):

Update tags when file info changes : What is this? Why would I not want this to happen? Why would I want it to?

Alternate playback modes : I understand what this is all about, but I daresay it's only because I was around (and participating in the discussion) when it was added. I'm not sure how clear this would be to a new user.

The rest aren't too bad.

3. Library Printing : I could have sworn there was once an option to choose between either all fields, or visible fields, but now that doesn't appear to be the case. Anyway, there should be an option for All Fields, Visible Fields, and Custom, which gives the user the ability to choose which fields get printed at print-time.

That's all I can think of for now. I know I had others in my head earlier this morning, but I think this post is long enough as it is. I'll post the others later as I think of them.

[nila]

I agree and I have another one:

You guys have a little drop target right about the media library view.
This is GREAT. but I only just discovered it, and I've been using MJ for like 5 months. It's too small. it needs to as default be bigger so that everyone sees it with a right click option to make it smaller so people who know it's there can make it less of a space consumer.
And for the search I agree as well.
It could easily be split into two option choices.
One a drop down list with all the fields in it, another with a text box for the search criteria.
Then maybe let people click on options like: 'search' 'add to search (to build up a more specific search)' 'clear'
Then the advanced button have the single command line that there is now for power users to just do straight searches.

[Jaguu]

Doof,

Also some of the options are just not explained very well. I consider myself an MJ poweruser, and I only just figured out what "Display image location:" (under Tree & View) was.

Would you mind explaining it for me? I was wondering myself yesterday about it and was not able to figure it out! Thank you!

Jaguu

[JimH]

It's the image that MJ displays when there is no image associated with the track.  The default is the surfing jukebox.  You can change the default to any image you want.

Probably should be named: "Default image for Playing Now Display" or something more descriptive.

Doof,
Your comments about reorganizing the options are certainly valid.  It's a consequence of adding options.

Jim

[Doof]

Doof,
Your comments about reorganizing the options are certainly valid. It's a consequence of adding options.


Yeah, and that's the thing. People just keep on asking for new features and options and you guys are so great about granting wishes. Eventually something's gotta give.

[Matt]

1. Make Smartlists easier to use.

The idea is that most searches are simple things like "dylan" or "trip jpg".  For those types of searches, it's hard to beat the keyboard.  Sure, complicated ~n type things are hard to use, but I'm not sure enough people want to do elaborate things to justify bringing them more to the front.  What do other people think?  Are you actually making smartlists and using them?

2. Redesign the Options screens.

How about cleaning up the pages that are there, and then adding an "Advanced" page with one of those things like IE uses for Tools -> Options -> Advanced ?

Bigger drop target

We try to make as little visual clutter as possible.  Is there any way we could make it more obvious without increasing the size or making big popup balloons?

Thanks everyone -- we really appreciate the help.

-Matt

[Doof]

How about cleaning up the pages that are there, and then adding an "Advanced" page with one of those things like IE uses for Tools -> Options -> Advanced ?

I like that idea.

The idea is that most searches are simple things like "dylan" or "trip jpg". For those types of searches, it's hard to beat the keyboard. Sure, complicated ~n type things are hard to use, but I'm not sure enough people want to do elaborate things to justify bringing them more to the front. What do other people think? Are you actually making smartlists and using them?

I use Smartlists all the time. For a lot of different things.

I agree that we need a quick and dirty way of doing searches, but I also think that in order to quickly win over the newbie, it needs to be easy.

I keep thinking that if you just changed the "Advanced" button to something like "Search Helper" (for Search) and "Smartlist Helper" (for Smartlists) and then beef up the Wizards in that area to include the ~ modifiers (should be really easy), and the [] "" () & OR, etc. options (don't ask me how) that it would somehow present itself better to the new user. Nothing functionally changes (except that I could finally give up on having to learn what all of the options do!) but it somehow lends itself more to being user friendly instead of intimidating.

And then, once you've got all that sorted out, you should stick it into the Search Criteria for View Schemes. As it is, I wind up creating my Search Criteria in a Smartlist (using the Wizard) and then copy and paste it into my View Scheme.

One other point. Is the "Add Rule" option going to include user-made fields? I think there should be an easy way for users to include user-made fields in searches if, in fact, MJ9 is going to allow that.

[Mirko]

The idea is that most searches are simple things like "dylan" or "trip jpg". For those types of searches, it's hard to beat the keyboard. Sure, complicated ~n type things are hard to use, but I'm not sure enough people want to do elaborate things to justify bringing them more to the front. What do other people think? Are you actually making smartlists and using them?

I use smartlist quite often. Examples:

"Imported last hour"
"Eletronical Music 60mins"
"Eletronical Musci 1 CDR"
"Faithless"
"Empty genres"

and so on. I have a playlistgroup called "tools", where I put the first and the last one. The rest are helpfull for my listening experience ;-)

HTH,
Mirko

[nila]

Hiya Matt,
I agree about making things as clutter free as possible, I personally set up windows to work the exact same, my IE toolbar is totally done the same too with like the address bar put next to File/Edit/View etc. I love things to be clutter free and efficient to use.
The problem is though, if it's like this to begin with then it's hard for beginners to use. Big bold buttons jump out at us and make things easy to realise that it's there. A Big drop target would jump out at new users and say: Oh, look at me, use me, find out what I'm for. Users would then play with it within the first day or two and realise what a great feature it is. If there was then an option to resize it, users would realise what a great feature it is, work out how to use it, then resize it and tuck it away somewhere nice for them to use efficiently and quickly and for the users who will never be anything more than infrequent users they will leave it as big as this might suit their needs.
Take a look at this screen shot:

(I shrunk the screen shot to 1/2 size to make it fit better on most browsers and to not make the file too big)
If you look at the actual drop target on my resolution, it's tiny and looks more like a title for that section of the screen rather than an actual feature.
I think you need to just make it big as default with an option in the right click menu to resize it to one of three sizes, big, medium and small. I like things clutter free but for me personally even the size right now is too small. I think I'd put it on a medium size (maybe 1.5 or 2 x the current size).


For the searches, if you did it with a drop down list followed by a text input box, the first entry in the list that was selected by default could be: Search all fields and then any text inputted into the text box would work the exact same as it does right now therefore not stopping the power users. It would also contain stuff like: Title, Artist etc so a user could select artist from the drop down list, then type text in the box and it would just search artists. This would be ideal for the beginner.
The advanced tab could then work the exact same way it does where users can build up search strings.
By just adding the drop down list which wouldn't change the GUI much I think you'd make it seem a lot friendly for beginner users.

Also, for the advanced when we go to add a rule: Firstly I'm not sure if the word Rule itself is the best to use, Add Search Criteria or something makes more sense but that's a small detail, the main thing I wanted to say about this is the: Do What with selection: Play/Skip. These definitely dont strike me as the right words, when I first saw them I thought it was instantly going to just play anything I chose or skip it from my playlist. I think more appropriate would be: Show/Ignore or something.
Skip and Play refer too directly to listening to the actual music rather than finding it.

For the options screen I think you have the right idea

For Search Criteria on View Schemes, this is an area that definitely relies on the user knowing what to do a little too much. I think after the text field you need to have a little one of those cute '?' which when clicked explains a little what it does including some examples and possibly a list of all the syntax that can be used. Also, I think that screen in general, along with most others, should have a direct link into the help file explaining the screen as I still haven't worked out yet, even by playing (I'm sure I could if I read the help file but like a lot of users we do that when we're having problems, not when we want to learn about features) what 'Artist Album' is for. When I use it I seem to get the same trees as if I'd just used artist.
Also, there should be a button after it with like a wizard or something (similar to the 'advanced' button on the searches) that helps the user to build it up.


I think one of the easiest ways you guys could work on the GUI and general interface to improove it the fastest is to get someone into the company one day who's never used MJ before but who's reasonably computer literate (just to a normal extent, not a power user) and just get them to play around and see what they have a hard time with and what doesn't make much sense to them.

[zevele1]

The kind of IE=tools=options=advanced sounds BRILLANT

I use search quite a lot[p2p]

First search with the keyboard,but after the first result 'advanced' is of great help.
I use it to 'clean' and tag the results,so do not use smarlist but send it to playlist.

Maybe i'am wrong,and smarlist is the thing to use in this case.

But,like most of the MJ users,i am an average|PLS| user,not a power user.
Not even sure to use MJ at 50% of his capacity....