I've been watching this thread, 'humming and hawing' over whether to reply.
I also whole heartedly agree with the sentiments being expressed. The view header menu in v12 was one of its most useful browsing features. So much flexibility packed into such a small space and I really do miss it... being able to flit between pane and library browser views with a couple of clicks was so very handy, while now, we need to configure each view seperately in the tree.
We can't achieve a similar browsing experience with v13, it's a completely different experience altogether. So, as I'm not about to create a gazillion permutations of any given view scheme in the tree, I definitely feel that in this respect, MC13 has taken a step backwards. v13 isn't bad, it's just more limited than v12 (remember, we're only discussing library browsing here) and so new tactics need to be learned.
I just shrugged my shoulders and got on with it as I've got a pretty strong feeling that this one's not about to revert. You need to use v13 for a few weeks, adjusting and creating views as the need arises, and while that process is frustrating, you should find that as time goes by, you do less and less adjusting and creation.
Tell you though, I'd take the v12 view header options back in an instant because, even though I've pretty much done with adjusting and creating, compared to v12, I still feel I'm left short.
-marko.
rick, you posted while I was typing, does this help... ?
in v12, the view header menu would allow us to start off in, say, a pane view with an artist pane and an album pane.
Now, from the view header menu, you could jump directly to 'albums' which would load what in v13 would be called "Top > View As > album thumbnails"
To get the same in v13, you need to create a pane view, an album thumbnails view for albums and an album thumbnail view for artists.
You then need to switch between them by travelling over to the tree and selecting the new view layout.
In this example, selecting the 'artist' thumbnails would allow you to click through on any artist and see just that artist's albums, or, if you preferred, you could select the 'album' thumbnails and see a list of all available albums from all artists.
The beauty of the v12 system was that each 'view' could have independent thumbnail sizes and independent thumbnail text, and I'm also pretty sure (how quickly memory fades these days) that each could also have independent sorting rules applied too.
I'm telling you, v12 library browsing really was the mutts nuts!!
-marko.