Vagskal, thanks for the comments, I will comment on each of your points:
a) The app seems to freeze up with long album lists while loading images. Sometimes it even crashes in this situation.
-I will look at this issue before the next release, may be a memory issue. The app may run out of memory while downloading.
It has been reported by others too.
b) It should be possible to cancel a preload images process to be able to navigate.
-I know. Will add this, as well as a progress bar.
c) In the list and small image list views the set sort order is not respected, i.e. a view set to sort albums by date imported is sorted by album name in those views, but sorted correctly in thumbnails view.
-The reason is that I reorder the results in order to present it as a sectioned and indexed list.
Could add an option to present list as unordered, but you would loose the section headers and alphabet navigation on right side.
d) In the "header" when showing the tracks for only one album the MC field [Album artist (auto)] should always be used (even if the file list is filtered by a "track" artist). For an album with an [album artist] manually set, i.e. [Album artist (auto)] = that album artist, "Various" is shown if there is a guest artist on one track. - The [Date], or [Year], field should also be shown in the header. Could the bitrate also be shown?
- Fixed in next release
e) In file lists the [Artist] should also be shown for each track, at least if it differs from [album artist (auto)]. In the case of a list of artists the items should be separated nicely (item1, item2, item3 & item4).
- Fixed in next release, always showing artist even on single albums
f) It there is just one item on a level, that level is skipped and the subsequent level is shown directly. Fine. But the top bar still shows the info for the (first) skipped level, not the level you are actually on. I think the top bar should always show info the accurate level. Otherwise I miss the info I have added for that level in an expression (such as album rating and year info for albums).
- Its possible to display every sublevel even if it has only one item. That was actually how it was in the first version.
I can add this back in as an option.
g) Album cover art that is not square is displayed/cropped in a strange way in the grid, i.e. for a large box set where the height is much larger than the width the upper and lower parts of the cover are just cropped. I think it is the same for artist images, but I am not sure since they are retrieved automatically.
- Images returned from JRiver may vary in size.
I am currently not doing any resizing on the device, but may change this if performace is not affected.
It would be nice if the images in the grid could scale if you "pinch" or do the opposite of that.
- Thats a pretty cool idea actually:)
Have you seen iPeng, an app to control Logitech Squeezeboxes (you can run it without Squeezeboxes, the playback devices; you just need the free Logitech Media Server)? It has a very nice interface and is now integrated with a browser to look up bios, album reviews and lyrics within the app. The author is really friendly and helpful.
- I used iPeng quite a lot when i had a SB touch, it`s a really great remote.
I personally prefer a cleaner interface. iPeng use a lot of screen space for play controls and navigation, quite similar to the iTunes ipad remote.
When i first started developing JRemote for the ipad, I wanted to use a similar layout, but I`m not so sure anymore.
I quite like to use the whole screen for the actual browsing.
Anyway, iPeng is a really good source for inspiration.