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[AndrewFG]

Although I have been using MC for years, I have only just started to use Theater View (old dog new tricks etc.)

I was sort of expecting to find a drill down function on all Theater View screens; but I don't see it; so maybe I am doing something wrong (??)

So for example you are looking at Playing Now | List format, it shows you a list with the name of the track, album, artist, genre, composer etc. Now I was expecting that if you move the cursor to (say) the name of the artist and hit enter, that MC would take you to a view showing all albums by that artist. Or all albums with that genre. Or all albums by that composer. Or all tracks on that album. etc.

Does this function really not exist in Theater View? I can't believe it. But if so, can you please add it to the wish list?

[Matt]

Remember that Theater View is designed to be navigated with six keys: up, down, left, right, enter, and green button.  Or a touch screen.

This means there won't be magic mouse cursor hit areas that expose functionality you couldn't easily reach with a remote.

[connersw]

I was actually going to post this same question this morning, but I've been searching ways to make it possible.  I was think along the lines of making hyperlinks in the tags (which I don't think is possible either). 

[AndrewFG]

Remember that Theater View is designed to be navigated with six keys: up, down, left, right, enter, and green button.  Or a touch screen.

Exactly!!

For example: show the now playing list | cursor down to highlight (say) the artist name | press enter => takes you to all albums by that artist | cursor up/down to highlight a specific album | press enter => play/play all/add menu.

The use case (user benefit) is that if you are (say) playing a random series of tracks, and you hear one by an artist that you had forgotten about, and want to hear more of, then you can branch out of the random playlist and manually select to play tracks / albums by that artist.

Just so you know it: this is exactly the functionality that Squeezebox server had (rip) ...

Edit: as connersw just said, the effect would that you can "hyperlink" between tracks to play other tracks by the same artist, other tracks on the same album, other tracks of the same genre, other tracks composed by the same person etc. This is a whole enrichment of the playing process. It is much more dynamic and interactive. (Believe me, I have used it a lot on Squeezeboxes).

[pcstockton]

Remember that Theater View is designed to be navigated with six keys: up, down, left, right, enter, and green button.  Or a touch screen.

This means there won't be magic mouse cursor hit areas that expose functionality you couldn't easily reach with a remote.

Is there any thought of moving away from this at all?  When I am using MC I am using a mouse or JRemote.  I never consider using a remote with a computer for selecting music.  Volume, FF, Next etc, are all fine on a remote.  But using a remote to scroll through a thousand artists is tedious.

This has always been the problem with Theater View for me.  I use Theater View everyday, I switch it on after getting everything running in Standard View, or on JRemote.  Then I use Theater View as a display style only and control with JRemote where i have jump letters and much easier control of "Add to playlist", "Play next", etc.

Doing any kind of control within Theater view is tough even with a mouse.

To address your answer above, people might want to same "linked" behavior with the six button remote.  You could scroll down to the field and click the green button.  Same thing.

-Patrick

[Matt]

using a remote to scroll through a thousand artists

You can type navigate using the numberpad.

Or you could customize your views to use more nesting so you're not looking at lists of 1000s of things. 

Or you could use Search more.

[AndrewFG]

You can type navigate using the numberpad.

Or you could customize your views to use more nesting so you're not looking at lists of 1000s of things. 

Or you could use Search more.

We seem to have gone completely off topic versus my OP

[pcstockton]

sorry for the derail.  I would like to read more about this for sure.  Im into it.

-p

[AndrewFG]

sorry for the derail.

Ok.

I thought it might be useful to submit some pictures showing specifically what I have in mind.

NB this is intended SPECIFICALLY to work with the cursor keys on the IR remote and/or the same keys on the PC keyboard.

[Matt]

AndrewFG, it's an interesting idea.

There are a few challenges I see:
1) Enter expands and collapses large text fields in the file info panel to allow scrolling.  This is similar to how Theater View News works.  That means mapping enter to something that also switches views would collide and possibly lead to confusion.

2) It's not clear where to go for "Genre: Rock", unless to a simple file list.  This is because the views in the program are totally customizable, meaning there may or may not be a category view of genres (or any other field you're going into).

3) Many fields like Duration, Track #, Lyrics, etc. don't make sense to go into

These are probably all solvable.  I'm just listing my initial thoughts.

[AndrewFG]

1) Enter expands and collapses large text fields in the file info panel to allow scrolling.  This is similar to how Theater View News works.  That means mapping enter to something that also switches views would collide and possibly lead to confusion.

Well the Enter command could simply be context sensitive. Or instead of using Enter, one could consider Right Arrow as the drill down command. Or vice versa...

There will also be cases with multiple entries ("Composer: John Lennon; Paul McCartney") where the first Enter would have to expand the list, and the second Enter do the drill down.

3) Many fields like Duration, Track #, Lyrics, etc. don't make sense to go into

Indeed. I would suggest to differentiate between drillable and non drillable fields by visual means e.g. white or blue frame on the selection box "cartouche"

2) It's not clear where to go for "Genre: Rock", unless to a simple file list. This is because the views in the program are totally customizable, meaning there may or may not be a category view of genres (or any other field you're going into).

Hmm. I could imagine that even if the category view is customised to (say) hide Genre, when the user explicitly drills down on genre, it would nevertheless display the genre view. Because in this context the user is expressing a strong intent to see more information...

Or alternatively, if say the Genre category view is hidden, you could simply disable the link. And set the frame on the selection box "cartouche" to the disabled colour.

[locust]

It's not clear where to go for "Genre: Rock", unless to a simple file list.  This is because the views in the program are totally customizable, meaning there may or may not be a category view of genres (or any other field you're going into).

This got me thinking of MrC's tips of the week, specifically the one where he was detailing the magical properties of thumbnail text in a category view. Theatre view works similar to categories, does it not? All these linkable fields could drill down to one default, possibly user customisable view as long as it has one unchangeable default entry, [Name]

It could be a special top level nest, that a user could customise by nesting their own views under it. It would have to be invisible to the main view of theatre view when you start it up and only accessible through the links.