[version 0.5]The Album Thumbnails list style to me looks like a thumbnails view where the tumbnails grouping is always made by the Album field.
Sometimes it's better to be able to group by different library fields. For example, in classical music more than albums it's the work that makes sense. And with Pictures and Video the Album field is often useless anyway.
It would be nice if:
1) one could set which field to group by when using the above mentioned style (I'll call it "Group By this item").
2) the list style would have a layout like the famous iTunes one (see
http://robydago.interfree.it/iTunes.jpg, sorry I had no covert art for those albums...)
If creating the iTunes style layout is too complicated, JRiver could keep using the current MC style for it, but at least implement a way to set the group-by item; otherwise, the current implementation IMHO is not useful for anything else the music albums.
My idea to implement this new feature is this (to be added in the View Scheme dialog:
http://robydago.interfree.it/mc12.2.jpg):
|- Step 5: Group Thumbnails options --------------------------------------|
| |
| Group By this item: [drop-downlist-containing-all-Step1-created-items] |
| |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------|
The drop-down list should be populated with the names of all items created in 'Step 1' in the View Scheme dialog.
Then "Album Thumbnails" could be renamed in "Group Thumbnails" and selecting it would create a view like the one available now, or hopefully like the iTunes one, but grouping by what has been selected as "Group By this item" (instead of always using "Album").
A note: the approach of putting this new option in the "View Scheme" dialog, would mean that one could have only one Group Thumbnails setting per scheme. Maybe it makes more sense to set it as a view setting so that, once saved, different settings can be applied to the same scheme. To do it this way, everything I wrote so far should still apply, with the only difference that the "Group By this item" option (the drop-down listbox) should be added to the "Customize Current View" (
http://robydago.interfree.it/mc12.2.jpg) dialog instead of the "View Scheme" dialog, and that only library fields names would be selectable in the "Group By this item" listbox.
But I think that having this option in the "View Scheme" dialog is better 'cause it would mean that one could group not only by library fields, but by all Items created in the Step1 section of the View Scheme dialog.
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Topic: Request: a more useful "Album Thumbnails" view (Read 2451 times)