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[Tolga]

I originally would write this as a reply to a prev. thread

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=MediaCenter;action=display;num=1058348242

but I thought it is a sufficiently different idea to have its own thread for discussion. I think it also addresses some of the issues mentioned there.

GOOD:

Album view is very useful if you play whole albums.

BAD:

There are two major problems I see with album view, that does not make it as useful as it should be for other tasks.

1) It does not help to select individual songs visually.

Even if I know that a song is in an album that I know very well visually, locating the album cover from album view does not help selecting the song. I use detail view (or name filter in 9.1) in addition to other filter (genre, album name, etc..)

2) Causes inconsistent selections

If you filter some songs in an album (i.e. rating=5), and click on some albums in album view, not only the songs with rating 5 are played, but the whole albums. Especially troubling is that album view and detail view selects different songs in this case. View change should not cause selection change.

Here is a simple, yet very clean solution to both of these problems.

Album View should be a filter (i.e. just like the album names filter). The lower window could be splitted into two, album view filter on the left, details on the right.


To locate a song, just like you would select the album name from album filter, you can select some of the albums in album view, reducing the number of songs in detail view. If you want to play whole albums, click play; if you want to select individual songs, select them from detail view.

In short:
I want to be able to use album view to help me to select individual songs.

Now is the time:
In 9.0 and before, this idea was more difficult to implement in MC, but I think it fits in new 9.1 scheme perfectly.

What do you think? Any disadvantages? Hey, MC folks; would this need a lot of change or is it reasonable to implement? Who would like this, raise your hands

[nila]

I just think album view should be more configurable.

It should have an action to allow you to set double click on album cover behavior.

We should be able to set it so that if we double click on an album when in album view mode, it will either play the album if we have it set to that,
OR
It will then just change to details view and filter the current view to ONLY show the current album so when we double click on the album we then get a list of all its tracks.


We also need a third mode similar to the one show here (click on number 2)
http://www.three-2-one.de/321apps/main/global/index2.htm
Where we have a list next to each album name of all the tracks in it.
Ideally the album would be put into a 'container' so that the cover is on the left, the list of tracks on the right and maybe some additional things in the 'container'.
A button to: Play Album,
we could right click on any of the songs in the list

etc. etc - it'd be toooo cool

[knickelfarz]

Album View should be a filter (i.e. just like the album names filter). The lower window could be splitted into two, album view filter on the left, details on the right.

To locate a song, just like you would select the album name from album filter, you can select some of the albums in album view, reducing the number of songs in detail view. If you want to play whole albums, click play; if you want to select individual songs, select them from detail view.

Mmh, I don't know if this is really consistent...If you already use a view scheme to filter out things, why again play a whole album by "click play" (where to click in this case?)...but maybe it would be a welcome feature for some people in this case...

Altogether, it's an interesting solution...I see only this disadvantage:

• Imagine you select an artist with twelve albums, for example, and your goal is to collect some tracks from every album for playing them...
  
• You will get twelve thumbnails on the left and a list with 120 tracks on the right.
  
• To make the tracklist smaler, you select the thumb of the first album, get the tracks on the right and select some of them.
  
• Now you want to select some tracks of the second album. You click on the second thumb and....OUPS, your selection for the first album has gone...

I think a list style with thumbnails and a track list next to the thumbs would be more handy in this case.
Please take a look at this example (It's a little bit older ("pre-pane-era"), but shows what I'm thinking of...).
With something like this, you're able to select as much tracks as you want without switching around. By clicking on the thumbnail, you can select all tracks next to the thumb, with [Strg] + [click on track] you can select or unselect single tracks. The list style can even represent "previous" filterings in a consistent way...

I'm a big fan of the "split screen" idea...but in this case?

[nila]

nice pic

[LonWar]

That's pretty cool man....

[Tolga]

Mmh, I don't know if this is really consistent...If you already use a view scheme to filter out things, why again play a whole album by "click play" (where to click in this case?)...

You are right, in this case it should not play the whole album, but only the selected files of the album. If you want to play whole albums, you simple use only filters that affect whole albums. (Album Genre, Album Artist).

[Tolga]

Altogether, it's an interesting solution...I see only this disadvantage:

• Imagine you select an artist with twelve albums, for example, and your goal is to collect some tracks from every album for playing them...
  
• You will get twelve thumbnails on the left and a list with 120 tracks on the right.
  
• To make the tracklist smaler, you select the thumb of the first album, get the tracks on the right and select some of them.
  
• Now you want to select some tracks of the second album. You click on the second thumb and....OUPS, your selection for the first album has gone...

I think a list style with thumbnails and a track list next to the thumbs would be more handy in this case.
Please take a look at this example (It's a little bit older ("pre-pane-era"), but shows what I'm thinking of...).
With something like this, you're able to select as much tracks as you want without switching around. By clicking on the thumbnail, you can select all tracks next to the thumb, with [Strg] + [click on track] you can select or unselect single tracks. The list style can even represent "previous" filterings in a consistent way...

I'm a big fan of the "split screen" idea...but in this case?

I see the merit of your idea as well. In my proposal, the album covers are not asssociated with the songs in them until you select a single album. On the other hand, your method is not very effective to visually locate the albums from a large list. I see no reason why not to have both, (possibly making your thumbnails smaller to save space.)

[knickelfarz]

In my proposal, the album covers are not asssociated with the songs in them until you select a single album.

Maybe that can be handled with something like this:

If you click on a thumbnail, it will not filter out the tracks on the right side to show only the tracks of this particular album - it will still show the whole tracklist but will scroll up/down, so that the first track of the particular album is on top...you don't have to scroll two times (once the thumbs, once the tracklist) and don't loose previous selections...

Both proposals have their pros and cons...I hope JRiver will decide that one of them (or maybe something different that does the job...) is worth implementing it someday