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[RhinoBanga]

It can be downloaded here:

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/plugins.pl?type=10&start=0&end=10&page=1


Here's what's new:

Added dynamic grouping (set in the Options/Grouping tab).
Added ability to specify tile icon size.
Moved custom image size setting from Artwork options tab to Icon View tab.
Reworked registry keys to be more consistent.
Reworked popup menu.
Changed popup error messages to be modal not modeless.
Fixed issue where AV was setting the icon in MJ/C dialogs.


Note that the icon and tile view size registry keys have changed so you will have to reset these values in Options to your preferences.

[Ilmar]

Hi

My Tile View is superbly configured now! Great work RhinoBanga!

What a mountain of work you must have gone through for the latest build.

Grouping works fine, but I think for the most part I will have it turned off, as it isn't ideally suited to my album naming scheme (I confess, I confess - I shouldn't put the Artist name in the album name.)

The ability to group by Genre might have possibilities?

The Tile view is way better, but could do with lifting the restiction on 500 pixels wide. I now have my icons at 100x100 and the info spaced and on separate lines.

Ilmar

[RhinoBanga]

Grouping works fine, but I think for the most part I will have it turned off, as it isn't ideally suited to my album naming scheme (I confess, I confess - I shouldn't put the Artist name in the album name.)

I generally keep it on year as I like to see what other albums came out at the same time.

The Tile view is way better, but could do with lifting the restiction on 500 pixels wide.

How big a monitor do you have?

I'll put up a version that sets the limit to 1024x1024.

Look for it in around 30 minutes.

[RhinoBanga]

Also I am thinking of adding colour/bold/itallic support to the text in the icons/tiles.

Do you think that'd be usefull?

[Ilmar]

Hi

I was going to suggest a bold options but didn't want to sound like I was complaining! LOL

Yes this option would be great, colour too, can't wait!

One other thought would be a leetle button next to the search field to clear entries?

OH, and the grouping option for buttons, they are invisible, presumably a skinning thing?

Ilmar

[RhinoBanga]

Hi

I was going to suggest a bold options but didn't want to sound like I was complaining! LOL

Yes this option would be great, colour too, can't wait!

LOL ... you always complain!   I will get onto it after I refactor the artwork loading which is what I am working on now.

One other thought would be a leetle button next to the search field to clear entries?

I don't understand.

OH, and the grouping option for buttons, they are invisible, presumably a skinning thing?

If it's MJ/C skinning you are referring to then probably.   Switch it off to see if they appear ok.   If not then let me know.

[Ilmar]

Hi

I use a 1024x768 15" LCD monitor, saving up for a 19" LCD! With the MJ tree panel and in tile view, I have 630 pixel width for Tile view. You have something different?

The little button: when you want to clear the search string from the search bar? At the moment I highlight with the mouse and hit the delete key. One click would be cool.

Will checkout the skin thing.

Ilmar

[Ilmar]

Hi

Checked out the skin thing and buttons appeared!

The buttons look like separated tabs, i.e. the bottoms of the buttons are truncated flat.

When I enabled skinning again, I lost my media library, and the grouping Enabled setting is persistant even on reboot.

Hmmm looks like I got a few problems to sort out... Will try to get it sorted before Autumn  ?

Ilmar

[RhinoBanga]

Checked out the skin thing and buttons appeared!

Thought they would ... there are a few problems with the skinning engine in MC/J:

1) Scrollbars don't skin properly
2) Tabs don't skin properly
3) Status bars are not skinned at all
4) Listviews are not skinned properly

So anytime you think there's a graphical error with AV your first step should be to switch off MC/J skinning.

The buttons look like separated tabs, i.e. the bottoms of the buttons are truncated flat.

Are you using an XP skin?  If so switch that off and see how they look.   I bet they look OK as I have noticed that XP skinners don't consider that tabs *can* be shown as buttons.

When I enabled skinning again, I lost my media library, and the grouping Enabled setting is persistant even on reboot.

Very strange ... the switching off/on grouping option works here.

[DocLotus]

Does this work on MC9?

The page it goes to says version 8!

[Ilmar]

Hi

Ouch, took 4 hours to rebuild the Library. Finding all those track 32's that MJ calls track 0 is a pain!

I have done a system restore to Friday, and installing the new AV again, I get a persistant "grouping on"

When the first version Tile width = 500 loaded this was not a problem. So either something changed with the version adjustment, or my system did a woopsie. and messed up my MJ files.

I will purge my system of MJ and AV, then reload MJ 30388 etc and see if that helps.

Ilmar

[RhinoBanga]

Does this work on MC9?

The page it goes to says version 8!

Yes it works quite happily with MC9.

J River changed all the plugins on their website to say "Download for V8 & V9" a few months back when AV didn't support MC9.

I changed AV to support MC9 and now J River has changed the prompts to say "Download for V8".

Currently there is no way for plugin developers to say what versions of MC/J their software will work with when submitting a plugin.

[RhinoBanga]

I have done a system restore to Friday, and installing the new AV again, I get a persistant "grouping on"

I'll look into it.

Also I may have a beta of 2.0.6 for you to try soon.

I won't tell you what it contains ... I'll let you see for yourself

[nila]

Finally got round to rebooting so I got to try this version out.

The grouping works amazingly.

It's a perfect tool to use to work out what albums still need covers, which dont, which ones have matching bitrates etc. which need replacing .

I never realised how powerful it was going to be till I tried it. GREAT tool I love it.

[Shelly]

Really awesome - thanks Rhino!!  Oh! the suspense to see what suprises 2.0.6 will bring!

Shelly

[nila]

Hmm - One thing,
would it be possible to decide if grouping is used for the overview screen and for the album details screen seperately.
I LOVE it in the overview screen as it has plenty of space and so it's a nice way to organise them.

For the album details screen though space is more scarce and so I'd prefer not to have it on there.

[nila]

ooh, ooh ooh
Another thing - The grouping works by what the current sort order it. For the details view this is easy to modify by clicking on a column header, how about giving us a drop down list for the icon mode that lets us choose the sort order.

I was thinking - to make it super easy - You have that drop down right now that has 'options' in it.
Why not turn this into a 'sort order' list with options appended to the bottom?
I think it'd work pretty well and would take up no more screen real estate

[nila]

Hmm - It's got a repainting error at times.

(skins are disabled for MJ).

I have it in MJ focused and it works fine. If I then bring an instant message into focus (using trillian) so that it covers a small part of the screen (AV) then click back on MJ to give it focus - the part of the screen where the IM was stays white. If I click on MJ itself in the task bar however to bring back focus then it repaints.

This only happens sometimes though and not all the time - just to make it really hard for you to isolate and fix

[RhinoBanga]

Nila,

Splitting the grouping is difficult ... as a compromise I will put a toggle on the right-click menu.

And talking about that you did know you can choose your sort column there too.

Finally If the painting issue happens sometimes and not others then it sounds as if someone is not telling AV to repaint.

[RhinoBanga]

2.0.6 is now available.

[Ilmar]

Oooo! - 2.0.6 has a pretty activity bar!!

.. but if I am not mistaken, you have tightened up on the memory management a few hundred percent!

The first image on the screen is "not found" i.e the one at the top, or the one at the top left. scroll down and back up and it may appear  :-/

I still have persistant groupies, I should have been a popstar  

Ilmar

[RhinoBanga]

That's how it's supposed to work.

It displays all images with the default item then in the background it loads what is visible and redraws the items ... just like what MC9 does.

Before the whole screen was suspended while the artwork was loaded ... this way your browsing experience is not held up by AV.


Try downloading/installing AV again ... I found and fixed the groupie issue.


P.S.  I like your default image!

[Ilmar]

Yes, I agree, but image number one never gets drawn !

Ilmar

[RhinoBanga]

Can you email me a screenshot please.

Also what is the image file it's supposed to be.

[RhinoBanga]

Nevermind ... I've reproduced it and I'll fix it tomorrow.

[nila]

I think I remember someone asking you this ages ago Rhino and it was already built into MJ but I cant remember how you said to do it.

How would I choose a different default image for say: each genre?

I think u said it had something to do with using tokens but I cant remember what exactly

[RhinoBanga]

You can't do it with AV ... but I don't know about MC.

[RhinoBanga]

Version 2.0.6.1 is available.   here's what's new:

1) Added ability to specify grouping in either the Album Details or Overview screen
2) Fixed issue with hilighting text in the search control.
3) Fixed issue where the first icon was not being painted.
4) Fixed issue where sometimes the playback toolbar wasn't being created


Colour & fonts should be here in the next day or two as well ... I'm on a roll

[Ilmar]

Hi RhinoBanga

Looking Great !

Roll Rhino Roll......

Ilmar

[nila]

Hey
Been using the AV plug-in and just updated my db with new songs from MJ. Worked great.
I had it set to automatically flag them as 'new' once they were imported.
I then clicked on the imported date and BOOM - I had all my albums sorted by when they were added to MJ in easy to access buttons.
AMAZINGLY PERFECT functionality - easy and friendly and perfect for me. - I have 63 new albums since December 16th - that's a LOT. I had no idea that I had so many new ones but thanks to AV they haven't just disappeared into my collection and I can browse them by when I added them to my db (some are older albums that I only just recently acquired - dont worry - not 63 new release albums).

Anyway - I now have a slight problem unfortunately.
I want them grouped by imported date right now, but I want them all listed in order of Artist (or sometimes Album).

I can see this being a problem a bit in the future too.
At first glace, having the grouping done by the sort order seems great as a simple way to reduce the size of a straight forwards list into groups. Unfortunately for you, the grouping works as a MUCH more powerful tool than that as I now use it to:

• get albums grouped by when I got them
  
• group albums by bitrate (or bitrate match) so I can see which ones need to be re-ripped
  
• group albums into which have pictures and which dont
  
• group albums into Genre or year or Rank (grouping can work as a powerful tree)
  
  
  For many of these the grouping is used to divide the collection as a great tool, not to order them.
  In these cases I'd like to be able to re-sort the albums without the grouping changing.
  
  Two ways I can instantly think of doing this:
  
• 1 - Give two lists - one for grouping, one for ordering
  
• 2 - Give a 'stick' button that when clicked keeps the grouping the same as it is right now without changing it when we change the sort order. Unpressing this button would then make the list group in the current sort order. ( I Personally prefer this one)
  
  
  Any chance of this happening??
  
  
  Oh yeah - and I've found a big bug
  If you click on something like 'Duration' as a sort order, it comes up with so many groups that they totally fill the screen (this is in album details mode) and it is then therefore impossible to see any albums or to change the sort order (You cant right click to change it as all you can see is tabs).
  
  
  Well done on the whole 'grouping' idea though. I initially thought it would just help reduce long lists but it is in fact an amazing tool with MANY uses.

[RhinoBanga]

I'll have a think about secondary ordering ... programatically it's very easy to do ... it's just how to present it to the user ... BUT I have an idea

Also I know about the duration ... it's not a bug as such and I'll explain why.

When you click on a sort field the grouping code asks the album for the datatype of the field ... and it responds as integer.   Now integer fields do not follow the "Group Length" option and behave like the year does, i.e. use the whole value.   So that's why you have so many off them.   I just haven't figured out what's the best way to group duration but I am leaning towards:

<= 1 minute
<= 5 minutes
<= 10 minutes
<= 20 minutes
<= 30 minutes
<= 45 minutes
<= 60 minutes
>= 60 minutes


What do you think?

[nila]

Sounds good!
And glad to hear that you can do secondary ordering pretty easily.

Because I'm using the Grouping now quite a bit as an amazing tool
I just find that I want to be able to sort the albums but still keep the albums grouped in the same way.