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[David353]

Maybe I'm doing something fundamentally wrong, but I'm having serious convenience problems with the JRiver GUI.

It seems that if I click on what I'm calling the Navigation Pane on the left (I don't know if that's your official name for it),   it shows the contents of that item I've clicked on,  in what I'll call the Current Tab.  In other words, the Current Tab now starts looking at what I've clicked on.

Sometimes though, I don't want to lose what is in the Current Tab.  Unfortunately, the Current Tab WAS looking at is now GONE from the current tab.  If I want to find it, it seems I have to navigate for it again. This is a pain.  No, back-arrow on the tab doesn't work -- it really seems to 'throw away' the former viewpoint of that tab.  I don't want my navigation in the navigation pane to be destructive like this -- I don't want it to create a condition from which it is a pain to recover from.

Can I stop this from happening?   One way I know is, Yes, by SUSTAINED FORESIGHT -- by protecting myself in advance by knowing that whenever I navigate,  I need to have selected a window whose current viewpoint I am prepared to lose.  But one should not have to have sustained foresight to operate a GUI

Surely I am doing something wrong?  Surely there is some other way to recover quickly from this problem?

Thanks.

[David353]

I'm making lots of playlists.  I'm a tango DJ, and I have to search through many, many audio files,  often construct playlists from old playlists and so on.

It absolutely doesn't work for me that one click on the navigation pane is irrecoverably destructive of the viewpoint of a current pane.

[David353]

Let me create an analogy to the experience I'm having.  It's like I'm working on a desktop with a filing cabinet to the side.  I need to take out several files at once and work with them on the desktop,  and must cross-process them in various ways.

Here's the freaky thing:  if I touch the filing cabinet at all --  open any drawer,  look into any drawer,  then LAST FILE I WAS PROCESSING on my desktop disappears from my desktop and is instantly and invisibly filed deeo in the cabinet again, wherever it was.  If I want to use it again on the desktop, I have to browse the filing cabinet for it again.  It may not actually be easy for me to even know where it was.

In other words, the act of browsing the file cabinet cause files to vanish from the desktop back into the file cabinet!

Obviously, this isn't an easy and intuitive way of working.

[RD James]

Have you tried split views?
You can also middle-click to open views in a new tab rather than replacing the current tab.

[JimH]

You could copy and paste files to a new playlist, even a temp playlist.

[blgentry]

Hi David,

What you are describing doesn't sound normal.  Any time you change to a new view, or new playlist, etc, the forward and backward arrows to the left of the tabs *should* work.  You should easily be able to click the back arrow there and be taken back to the view you were just in.  It's rather small and located to the left of the leftmost tab.

Speaking of tabs, you might want to open 2, 3, 4, or more tabs and work within them.  I do this frequently for browsing different kinds of media:  Albums in one tab, TV shows in another.

Or, as was already mentioned, using a split view might work well for you:  View > Split View
Once you split to two views, you can move the divider back and forth if you'd like to customize your splits a bit.

Sometimes I use split views when building playlists; it makes things a bit easier.  Another good way to build playlists is to use the right click menu with Send to > Playlist > your_playlist_name .  After you do this once, that playlist name will then be at the very top of the right click menu, which makes it nice and fast to add new songs to the playlist.

I'm only mentioning all of this other stuff to try to help you streamline your process if you'd like.  The real issue is that the forward and back arrows don't seem to work for you, or they are not visible for some reason.  Can you see the arrow keys?

Brian.

[David353]

Thanks guys for the information.

I am already using split views.

Middle-click works a charm.  The only thing is that my laptop alone doesn't seem to offer middle-click (though my mouse provides it).  ** Maybe the development team could make Alt-Click do the same thing, unless Alt-click is used for something else? **

bigentry, you are right.  For some reason I THOUGHT that the back arrow wasn't doing its job.  Either it was a momentary problem,  or I was mistaken itself.  Yes, it does work.  I really appreciate the tip about right-clicking to add files to a playlist!  I forsee myself using it regularly.

OK,  the situation is now MUCH more workable.  The back-arrow helps. Things still aren't perfect however, because that back-arrow gets me back to where I want, but 'clutters' that tab a bit.  It's not a serious problem, but I don't like it.  But maybe there is a way around it.

Let me explain.   In my tab I'm looking at playlist A.    While I browse and click,  playlist B is shown  and playlist A is now hidden,  conceptually to the LEFT of B in this tab   (yes a tab actually contains a CHAIN of views, only one of which is shown at one time.  There are two in the chain right now).  I click again and C becomes the end of the chain and visible, with A and B to the left and hidden.

I can back-arrow through the tab, back from C to B, back from B to A.  Now I can forward-arrow again -- now there is 'clutter' in this tab.  I don't WANT C and B in this tab.   They are just temporary artifacts of my navigation which I don't want to stay in the scene, causing clutter. I don't want this chain.  How can I clean it up?

It seems to me that the ideal functionality is to remove the current 'link' so to speak, in the chain of the tab.  However, the X button kills the whole tab.  What if Ctrl- X-button  did exactly what I said?  Wouldn't this be nice and clean?