I'm just joining the beta now (thanks for opening it further) so some of these are just first impressions things:
1. I personally don't like the underlining on the left area (Start, Playing Now, etc). This seems inconsistent (i.e., the Action Window items don't get underlined) and it seems like you're trying to bring the web paradigm to a normal application, and I don't see a benefit to this. I think the color highlight is sufficient.
2. I hope the final version supports backing up and importing the old database automatically.
3. It seems like the font used in the Options screen is not getting ClearType applied to it. The font in the main window looks fine.
4. There are a few problems with the was switching views works. If I have the main MC window displayed in monitor#1 and press CTRL-3 (Display View) then MC correctly shows it in my monitor#3 (since that's what I told MC to do). But, if I now press CTRL-1 to bring back the main view it also is displayed in monitor#3 and not back on monitor#1. This is different from MC11.
5. Another problem with Display View is the new controls that overlay when you mouse over the window. The problem is that these controls cause the displayto be resized smaller. This resize operation is somewhat annoying just because I moused over that window. One possible solution is a delay such that the controls are overlayed for some amount of time (15 secs?) so you can use them, but if you then mouse back out quickly enough the resize operation doesn't occur.
6. I'm still having a delay in cover art when playing from a Library Server with lossless WMA files. I suspect the art isn't being displayed until the entire song is downloaded, but with lossless files this takes a while. On the server I have all cover art also stored at folder.jpg files, so it'd be great to be able to tell MC to use these when they exist to get the cover art faster.
7. In MC 11 when I was in Display View then MC wasn't shown in the Taskbar. In MC 12 it is shown there. And, yes, I did check the Minimize to Tooltray option.
That's it for now. Well, aside from saying, as always, VERY NICE JOB.
