Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Griff]

1. NEW: Many changes to experimental Theater View skin "Obsidian Beta".

What was that word, SLICK ?

No, this is Dyyyyyyynaaaaaamite.

I love it.

Thanks

[rpalmer68]

1. NEW: Many changes to experimental Theater View skin "Obsidian Beta".

Ah YES!  Thank goodness the main menu has changed to being horizontal!

Love the new look, one thing initially is that I think the "Back" on the top roller should need an enter to go back, otherwise when you roll around the roller you suddenly end back at the main menu without actually wanting to go there!

Lookoing great though, will test more tonight and add any more comments I have then.

Richard

[Matt]

I wonder if the "View By" roller's items should just show under "Audio", "Image", "Video", etc.

It's sort of pointless showing the breadcrumbs when you're at the first level, and back is just to the left.

[Matt]

I think the "Back" on the top roller should need an enter to go back

Well, if you're drilled way in, this makes it so a few quick lefts gets you back to the root, which I like.

[edit: and my wife got (and liked) this right away well I silently watched]

[rpalmer68]

I wonder if the "View By" roller's items should just show under "Audio", "Image", "Video", etc.

It's sort of pointless showing the breadcrumbs when you're at the first level, and back is just to the left.

Agree

[Mike Noe]

What was that word, SLICK ?

No, this is Dyyyyyyynaaaaaamite.

I love it.

Thanks

Echo....ditto...whatever.  It rocks.

[park]

I like it too. I think that "Search" should be on the top roller though. I keep going into it by accident when scrolling through my views.

"Toggle list style" was hard to find too. I was looking for it and so went into every group, but many wouldnt even know it existed.

I still think that hitting left when you are at the left of the list, needs a visual cue to show the user that they will go somewhere.

[bennyd]

1. NEW: Many changes to experimental Theater View skin "Obsidian Beta".

I like it but the items should be scrollable via the mouse, now you can only go left/right with your keyboard.
(Maybe like the 3D view, that you can drag the row to the left or right)

[raym]

Awesome!

My thoughts:

- I agree with the other posters: You should have to hit Enter on "Back", "Home" and "Search" before taking you there. I had no idea what was going on at first.. kept getting thrown out!

- Playing Now should always be available from the Top roller.

- The only thing I miss from the last build is that it's not clear anymore at a glance what view I'm in. For example, when I enter "Video" from the main menu, I know I'm in a video view, but which one? Maybe replace "Video" at the top with the actual view name I'm in (followed by the sub-categories as it is now).

- Please consider moving Search to the main menu. I think it makes sense there.

- Play All should be called "Controls" or "Options" or somrthing along those lines. Took me ages to find things like "Toggle list Style" and "Reshuffle".

- The title for Playlists should be "Playlists" rather than "Home".

- Hitting right arrow on the top roller shouldn't take you to the main menu. This breaks how "previous" or "back" works everywhere else in the system.

- PLEASE allow verticle cursor wraping. For long lists, there's a lot of scrolling to reach the bottom (if we're to obey the 5 button remote theory that is!).

- When first entering theater view, you need to hit an arrow key to activate the menu. Also, the last main menu item selected is not being remebered when you toggle (shift+F11) between T'view and Display view.

This is EXCELLENT!!!!!


 

[lalittle]

I hate to be a bit of a downer on this, but as a long time Theater View user I want to give my honest reactions to this new paradigm:

Graphically this is looking very slick, but I really miss some of the information that the old system showed, and the navigation behavior seems a bit "funky" to me now, with the changes being counter to "cursor-only" navigation.

I think the biggest issue I have with the new system is the elimination of the "always present" breadcrumb path.  With the old system, the breadcrumb path was present at all times as I drilled in.  With the new system, the path is only visible if I specifically navigate to the line above the main list, at which point the breadcrumb path appears.  I'm not sure why this is the case given that the space isn't being used for anything else -- why not let the breadcrumb path remain visible?  I understand the desire to keep things "clean looking," but not at such a noticeable expense of ease-of-navigation.  The result of the current behavior is that at any given moment, one cannot just glance up to check where they are, which is something that I do ALL the time.

Checking your location really requires the full path, not just the current spot, and this is now kind of a pain when using a simple "cursor navigation" remote.  I strongly feel that the presence of breadcrumb path is something that should ALWAYS be visible so that when an album is playing, I can instantly not just the album name, but the Genre and Artist as well.

Next, I discovered that in my navigation, I really never end up using the upper bar.  It therefore strikes me is that more functionality was lost than gained.  The new system no longer supports wrapping when scrolling upward, which was a highly useful feature.  I used to be able to jump to the end of a long list by hitting "up" from the top of the list, but this no longer works.  Also, it is now less easy to quickly navigate to the "all" category since this is no longer at the top of the list.  Holding down the "up" button now puts me to the top bar, at which point I have to scroll back down two spots in order to get back to the actual list.  Scrolling "down," on the other hand, wraps to the "All" category, which is inconsistent with the "up" scrolling behavior.

I also miss the ability to quickly navigate to "Playing Now," which used to be visible in the left hand menu when playing an album, and therefore quite easy to access.  It now takes some actual navigation to get to the PN screen.

I'm curious -- are the people who like the new the top bar using simple "cursor navigation," or are they using a mouse?  I think that most people who need to use Theater View in a Home Theater type environment will be using simple up/down/left/right navigation.

Overall, I find the new system rather "unpredictable" in many ways, with a left or right navigation move taking me somewhere I honestly wasn't expecting depending on whether I'm on the list or one of the upper bars.  With the new system I sometimes end up backing up one or more levels accidentally.  This is something that really didn't happen with the previous paradigm -- navigation was always quite intuitive, I was never "surprised" by where I ended up, and up/down scrolling/wrapping was consistent in either direction.

All that said, the horizontal main menu is certainly very pleasing, and I'm not against the "upper bar" in general -- I simply find that the current navigation behavior is not as intuitive as the previous system, which leads to "surprises" in where I end up.  In my personal use I find that there was a net loss in overall functionality.

Larry

[park]

I hate to be a bit of a downer on this, but as a long Theater View user I want to give my honest reactions to this new paradigm:

I think the biggest issue I have with the new system is the elimination of the "always present" breadcrumb path.  With the old system, the breadcrumb path was present at all times as I drilled in.  With the new system, the path is only visible if I specifically navigate to the line above the main list, at which point the breadcrumb path appears.  I'm not sure why this is the case given that the space isn't being used for anything else -- why not let the breadcrumb path remain visible?  I understand the desire to keep things "clean looking," but not at such a noticeable expense of ease-of-navigation.  The result of the current behavior is that at any given moment, one cannot just glance up to check where they are, which is something that I do ALL the time.

Checking your location really requires the full path, not just the current spot, and this is now kind of a pain when using a simple "cursor navigation" remote.  I strongly feel that the presence of breadcrumb path is something that should ALWAYS be visible so that when an album is playing, I can instantly not just the album name, but the Genre and Artist as well.

Larry

I agree with these points. I didnt know that we had breadcrumbs until i went up to the top roller to leave the view. Having to click up then back down one is pretty frustrating.
I like that breadcrumbs are centered with the current position in the middle. That is much better than old breadcrumbs. How about having the rest of the yet to be explored categories show up to the rigth of the current breadcrumb (perhaps slightly greyed out), so that you can see where you'll go next. Then we have both breadcrumbs and the category list in one place. That would be great.

I also agree that having "Video" (or whatever media type) in the top roller isnt really useful info. Better to have "Home" since that is where you just came from. And I agree that the name of the current view would be better than "View by".  And "Controls" is a better name than "Play all".

I also agree that you should ditch the "right"  goes "back" idea. That is really annoying.

Perhaps when you put the toggle list style in the top roller, you could call it "View as" and then it would launch a second roller with the 3 viewing styles.

[JimH]

When you post, would you let us know how you use Theater View?  Remote, keyboard, mouse, touch screen.

[park]

I'm using a remote control

[bennyd]

I'm using the Mouse (+ scrollwheel), no keyboard

[JimH]

I'm using the Mouse (+ scrollwheel), no keyboard

Matt thinks improving mouse support should wait until major changes are completed.  So please standby for a week or so.

[raym]

I think as long as JRiver continues to support the "old style" skins and that they continue to be as flexible as they have always been in terms of customisations (thru the xml), then it really shapes up to be an excellent system that has finally got the potential to make EVERYONE happy!

Cheers.

[Griff]

Well, Ive played with this last night and part of today and I am totally happy with it.

I see minor issues, but Im sure the Team sees these too and will fix in the next couple of builds.

Thanks

Test mach.= mouse and remote            HTPC=remote



Matt:

Got Dynamite (video background) to run in this skin.

So coooooool.

[Mr ChriZ]

I like where this is going, although it does make part of the bit that I skinned last night redundent, DOH!

Btw the round skybox doesn't work with the MC logo IMO.

[Mr ChriZ]

The text for the roller menu is appearing behind the graphic ListSelection.  I think it should be the other way round.
[Edit]  This isn't always reproducable.

Any chance of the option of a small drop shadow on the text?

[Mr ChriZ]

Even with the high quality drawing option turned on text is fairly jagged in MC Theater View.
If you look at Windows MC the text is smooth at the edges, like it's font smoothed.
This I've tested on two Vista Machines.

[Matt]

Even with the high quality drawing option turned on text is fairly jagged in MC Theater View.
If you look at Windows MC the text is smooth at the edges, like it's font smoothed.
This I've tested on two Vista Machines.

Take a screenshot and zoom in.  You should see that we are using screen smooth fonts (which is no small task since Windows font drawing doesn't support alpha).

I believe the amount of font smoothing can be configured in Control Panel.

[glynor]

I just spent a bunch of time setting up some test Theater View Schemes (annoying that I can't copy/paste somehow, unless I missed that feature-add) and then playing around with Obsidian Beta.

Wow.

I really like it.  Way, way, way more than I thought I would.

It definitely has some bugginess, which I can report after I spend some more time and figure more things out.  But the idea of the implementation is just divine.  Amazing job, Matt.  Really.  Kudos, and I bow to your greater wisdom.

Because I can't let any compliment go unpunished... One little bit of weirdness that I figured out right away is that Page Up/Down doesn't work as you'd expect when you've selected the roller.  It makes sense why it works the way it does (based on the system's heritage), but it doesn't act like you'd expect intuitively.  I'd say that when a roller is selected and you hit Page Down, it should jump you back down into the file/tag listing area.  Page Up should probably either just do nothing (if the Top Roller is selected) or kick you back up to the top Roller if you are on the secondary one.

There's a bunch of other weird stuff too, but I'll get to that later.  For now, I'm just impressed to no end...

[glynor]

PS.  Can we get some automation commands that execute MC's reaction to all the major Theater View keyboard commands?  In other words...

Up, Down, Left, Right, Page Up, Page Down, AppsMenu, and Enter?

I have these mapped via Girder right now using Keyboard emulation, which is much slower than all the other "direct Windows Messages" calls that I use to control MC.  If I had a way to call these commands via Windows Messages when MC was open (instead of the default keyboard emulation), I suspect that Theater View would act way snappier with my remote.  As is, it still feels very laggy.  It is very snappy when using a keyboard, but the remote is a split second slower, and it feels just slow enough that you always end up with extra keypresses.  Plus, then I don't need to always make sure Theater View is on top and I can just send the Windows Messages directly to MC regardless if it is open.

Now that Theater View seems like it might start rocking again, I want to have it all, of course!!

[Magic_Randy]

I like the direction. Becoming slick and very intuitive. I've been using the mouse - & keyboard when necessary.

[lalittle]

I like the direction. Becoming slick and very intuitive. I've been using the mouse - & keyboard when necessary.

I don't think that mouse users notice the navigation oddities that remote users do.  Given that Theater View is most likely targeted more at remote control users (tyicial home theater setup), and therefore at simple arrow key navigation, could some of the mouse users possibly try it without the mouse?  I think that more "non-mouse" navigation would help get the navigation dialed in.

Thanks,

Larry

[gappie]

just gone for a few days. the changes on thv are overwhelming . great job.... got to play



 
gab

[rpalmer68]

I'd agree with pretty much everything Larry said above, especially the breadcrumbs not being displayed all the time.

I'm using Theater View with Netremote, but other than jumping directly to specific views  (hence the reason I;d like the breadcrumbs) I pretty much navigate with the arrows & enter.

Richard

[park]

Just keeps getting better. Still lots of feedback though.

Build .89:

1. Top Roller: View name changes to show the last selected item of a category. (Ie. Starts as "Video", then becomes "Comedy", then becomes...)

We have duplicate info here, and we still dont know what category we're currently viewing. Please make it so the the name of the current caetgory gets shown in the top roller, and leave the breadcrumbs always turned on (as others suggest) to show where we've come from.

2. Left at the left of the list takes us up to the current view category item.

I think that hitting left at the left of the list is ok to take us back up a level if there is a sign there to show us that's what it'll do. Why not put a 10 pixel left arrow in the center of the left edge of the screen and have it highlight when you hit left to go up a view.

Alt. suggestion: Left at left of screen should take us to the breadcrumbs roller, rather than the view roller. Then we can hit left to go to the previous breadcrumb, and we dont even need a "back" button in the top roller.

3. Breadcrumbs.

I think this was suggested earlier: Please put all the categories names of the view into the breadcrumbs list from the very start. Then as we drill down into the categories, have the category name change to the name of the item we chose. That way the breadcrumbs serve to show us where we're going as well as where we've been.

4. Press and hold enter button (on remote control) for 2 secs to launch the options menu for a thumbnail. A quick single click on a thumbnail will drill into the next level.

I keep suggesting it and no-one has reacted to it yet. Don't you think it's a good idea? 

5. "Play all"

Complete agreement with everyone else. Call it "Controls".

6. "Playing now"

Should be on the top roller at all times.

[glynor]

4. Press and hold enter button (on remote control) for 2 secs to launch the options menu for a thumbnail. A quick single click on a thumbnail will drill into the next level.

I keep suggesting it and no-one has reacted to it yet. Don't you think it's a good idea? 

Won't play nice with Girder, which has to be programmed to know what to do when a button is pressed and held.  Generally it reacts by doing nothing for a while and then sending key repeat commands.

[gappie]

5. "Play all"

Complete agreement with everyone else. Call it "Controls".

but then the behaviour should also change. now when i hit the right button/arrow key, it starts to playback all without selecting anything from the second row. could it also be an option that it uses the last used from the play all menu.

[gappie]

one small thing... i have been playing around with the skin. when i use navigation in the root, it gives back some info which is used by the skin for the cubes. when using the rootroller it does not give this back. iow the cube does not change...

 
gab

[raym]

1. Top Roller: View name changes to show the last selected item of a category. (Ie. Starts as "Video", then becomes "Comedy", then becomes...)

We have duplicate info here, and we still dont know what category we're currently viewing. Please make it so the the name of the current caetgory gets shown in the top roller, and leave the breadcrumbs always turned on (as others suggest) to show where we've come from.

5. "Play all"

Complete agreement with everyone else. Call it "Controls".

6. "Playing now"

Should be on the top roller at all times.

I support these ideas. 

Just to make sure I'm on the same page with respect to the term "Category" in the first item above, I take this to mean the name of the viewscheme you're currently in right? Well anyway, this is what I'd like to see in the header of the top roller and yes, breadcrumbs always active for audio/images/video/playlists.

Cheers!

[glynor]

Am I the only one who actually disagrees and thinks the current system/name for the "Controls" is good?  Or would be, anyway, if it remembered the last selection and renamed itself to always show the most recent "control" you used.

[jmone]

I've been pretty quiet on this one as I find the existing presentation layer fine but it is now starting to look interesting....Here is my 2cents (V90, RC User).

Overall it quite like the look / feel though the test will be how the rest of the family can use it to navigate around and play their media.

1) Inital Screen & Down Button:  Can the also please perform the same as enter.  I found I'd select Audio / Video etc then for some reason press the down button (that does nothing) instead of enter
2) Type Sceen & Up Botton:  Likwise when on the Top Roller of (say) the Audio section the Up Botton does nothing, can it be the same as "Back"
3) Views Roller:  I'd not have the second roller but would access it from the TOP roller like you do with the controls roller.  Simple reason is that for us we tend not to change Views all the time so having this roller appear when navigating up is odd.
4) Details View:  I really like the new Details View with the Big Graphic and Text Underneath, but will the Text be selectable (eg at present it shows my Videos with Year, Time, Size, File Extension - But I may want to have Name, # of Views etc etc)

Thanks
Nathan

[glynor]

I also really like the new Details view used for the "Album level" and would like the same thing to be available for many of my other Video view schemes.  For example, having the same thing for my TV Shows view scheme (which contains Series/Season categories) would be great when you've drilled down to the file level, with the "big picture" being a stack-like icon of the different thumbnails instead of the single cover art image.

I imagine that the current logic shows this view when you open a view where all the listed files have the same cover art.  Could this instead be configurable on a per-view basis and included in the Options --> Theater View setup dialog?  I wouldn't want this for my Movies view in Theater View, but there are quite a few non "Artist/Album" views where it could come in handy.

A simple way to configure it would be to have a "File Listing Layout" combobox with these three options: Automatic (default, and acts like it does currently), Individual Style, and Album Style.

[jmone]

FYI those interested, I've started to play around with the skin and combining features from the Blue Too - you can get bread crumbs, times etc...

[raym]

Hitting up arrow from the top roller really needs to allow wrapping to the bottom of the list please. 

Am I the only one who actually disagrees and thinks the current system/name for the "Controls" is good?  Or would be, anyway, if it remembered the last selection and renamed itself to always show the most recent "control" you used.

Actually, that's a really good idea. That way, those who wanted "Playing Now" or whatever on the top roller could do so.

[JimH]

Hitting up arrow from the top roller really needs to allow wrapping to the bottom of the list please. 

I agree, if it doesn't cause other problems.

[gappie]

Am I the only one who actually disagrees and thinks the current system/name for the "Controls" is good?  Or would be, anyway, if it remembered the last selection and renamed itself to always show the most recent "control" you used.

no you are not, and i agree with the last part 

could it also be an option that it uses the last used from the play all menu.

 
gab

[lalittle]

1) Inital Screen & Down Button:  Can the also please perform the same as enter.  I found I'd select Audio / Video etc then for some reason press the down button (that does nothing) instead of enter

I think this would probably work nicely.  It would essentially match the behavior of the previous skins, where the "right" arrow would work the same as enter from the main menu.  Since the main menu is now horizontal, it logically follows that "down" would now start to drill into the menu.

2) Type Sceen & Up Botton:  Likwise when on the Top Roller of (say) the Audio section the Up Botton does nothing, can it be the same as "Back"

As already noted, I think that "up" from the top bar should instead wrap to the bottom of the list, which gives quick access to the last item in long lists.

Larry

[Matt]

There's an ongoing argument about whether every arrow key that's not being used should do something.  Right in a menu, down at the root roller, left and right in a message box, etc.

The counter-argument is that if you navigate quickly, or press one too many times, things change you don't expect.

I'm not sure what's right.

[raym]

I'm not sure what's right.

For me, it's all about this: arrows should be for navigation only. So, I actually don't mind if down is used for Enter on the root menu or left/right is used to exit a message box etc. These all relate to navigation and actually help simplify the overall experience. All this is almost right anyway IMO. Only thing missing for me is UP from the roller. This should take me to the bottom of the list (as others have said).

What I do have issues with is when arrows are used for initiating Playback Controls INSTEAD of Enter - as is the case currently with the Context menu. As you've said, the biggest problem here is:

...if you navigate quickly, or press one too many times, things change you don't expect.

There's greater implications here too because you can unintentially blow away your current playlist in the process.

Thanks.

[lalittle]

What I do have issues with is when arrows are used for initiating Playback Controls INSTEAD of Enter

It all depends on how you use Theater View, because I actually really like the "arrow = enter" behavior.  It allows me to navigate more quickly and use fewer keys to do what I want to do.  I can actually drill all the way in and start playing something with just "down" and "right" arrows (although in the new skin, the down arrow does not yet "select" on the main menu.)  For whatever reason, I've never run into the problem of blowing away playlists, but I can see where this would be a problem if you're moving quickly.  I'm honestly not sure what the solution would be, or even if there is one.  I suppose there could be an option to "Use arrow keys for enter," but I understand the potential issues with feature overload.

Larry

[park]

1. Top Roller: View name changes to show the last selected item of a category. (Ie. Starts as "Video", then becomes "Comedy", then becomes...)
We have duplicate info here, and we still dont know what category we're currently viewing. Please make it so the the name of the current caetgory gets shown in the top roller, and leave the breadcrumbs always turned on (as others suggest) to show where we've come from.

I support these ideas. 

Just to make sure I'm on the same page with respect to the term "Category" in the first item above, I take this to mean the name of the viewscheme you're currently in right? Well anyway, this is what I'd like to see in the header of the top roller and yes, breadcrumbs always active for audio/images/video/playlists.

Cheers!

I made a typo there. I meant to say:
1. Top Roller: View name changes to show the last selected item of a category. (Ie. Starts as "Video", then becomes "Comedy", then becomes...)
We have duplicate info here, and we still dont know what category we're currently viewing. Please make it so the the name of the current view gets shown in the top roller, and leave the breadcrumbs always turned on (as others suggest) to show where we've come from.

[park]

1. Regarding arrows and enter, I think that it made sense before when in lineup mode and a vertical navigation bar, but now it's extremely counter intuitive. I say lets forget it ever existed.

2. One more time, I'd also like to suggest that clicking left at the left-most oint of the list takes you to breadcrumbs instead of the top roller. The breadcrumbs are a navigation device. The top roller is more of a globla thing. The top roller should have "View style" (lineup/thumbnails etc.), "Home", "Playing now", "Controls" and the "Current view (name)". It doesnt need a "back" button.

3. When jumping between the list and rollers, sometimes I dont realise I've done so. It would be nice if when you move to a roller from the list, the whole roller flashed or glowed subtly for half a second.

4. Re: a long press on the enter key to launch a menu on a thumbnail. Glynor, I see this would be bad for girder users. However, how about a double click on a thumbnail to launch the menu? I really prefer thumbnails over linup view, but I'm finding it a nightmare not having access to the menus.

[lalittle]

1. Regarding arrows and enter, I think that it made sense before when in lineup mode and a vertical navigation bar, but now it's extremely counter intuitive. I say lets forget it ever existed.

I don't agree that this is such a critical difference.  We still navigate into and out of sub-lists using left/right just like we did before.  In fact, navigating/drilling into a genre, artist, album, and song is exactly the same as it was before, so why should the final "right click for enter" be any different?  I think that it works just as well now and is just as useful as it always was.

2. One more time, I'd also like to suggest that clicking left at the left-most point of the list takes you to breadcrumbs instead of the top roller. The breadcrumbs are a navigation device. The top roller is more of a globla thing. The top roller should have "View style" (lineup/thumbnails etc.), "Home", "Playing now", "Controls" and the "Current view (name)". It doesnt need a "back" button.

By this logic, why jump to a roller at all when backing out of lists?  Why not have back out to the previously selected item -- i.e. if you drill into "Jazz" and then to a Jazz artist, why not have "Jazz" highlighted in the list when you navigate back out again?  To me, jumping to any roller is just causing extra navigation work.

Larry

[lalittle]

Some thoughts on the current behavior of the highlight jumping to the roller:

*Note that the following refers to using the "list" style view in Theater View, not the thumbnail based view.

I finding it a bit "irksome" that when I start to drill OUT of a sub-list, my highlight jumps to the top roller, and I'm curious what the reason for this behavior is.  I'm wondering if I'm missing some logic here because to me, the current behavior is creating extra navigation steps to do simple things.  Here is an example:

- After drilling down to the "Artist" list in the "Jazz" genre, I decide that I'd prefer to be in "Blues,"  so I hit "left" to go back to the genre list... but this does not happen.

- Instead, my highlight jumps to the top roller, and I remain on the Jazz "Artist" list.  I hit "left" a second time, which takes me back to the genre list, but my highlight is still on the top roller.

- I hit "down" twice to get the highlight past the second roller and back onto the list, at which point "Jazz" is once again highlighted.  Note that I'm now where I "thought" I would be on the very first "left" hit, meaning it has taken 4 keystrokes to do what "could" have taken just 1 keystroke.

- I navigate back UP again to get to the "Blues" genre.

- I hit "right" to get to the Blues artist list.

Now, compare that to the way I would prefer it to work, which would be (starting from when I'm in the "Jazz" artist list):

- I hit "left," which puts me back to the genre list with "Jazz" highlighted (rather than the top roller.)

- I hit "up" to get to "Blues."

- I hit "right" to get to the "Blues" artist list.

That's 3 hits instead of 6 -- half as many navigation steps, and I don't have to do this "down then up" maneuver to get to the Blues genre.

What is the purpose of always popping back to the top roller (or ANY roller) when backing out of menus?  Why not back out the same way we went in?  This seems much more intuitive to me than the the auto-jump to a roller.  Note that what I'm advocating was not possible when we had the vertical menu on the left, but now that the menu is up top and we don't have to move "though" the menu in order to move left, we can have extremely straight-forward left/right in/out navigation of the lists.  It seems like we're not utilizing a fundamental advantage that the new layout offers.

Or... am I missing some fundamental piece of the puzzle that makes the current behavior advantageous?

Thanks for any feedback on this,

Larry

PS.  Up/down/left/right navigation rules and behavior changes quite a bit depending on the view style being used.  We need to consider the list view style being used during these discussions.

[JimH]

Some thoughts on the current behavior of the highlight jumping to the roller:

I finding it a bit "irksome" that when I start to drill OUT of a sub-list, my highlight jumps to the top roller,

I think that's a bug.  Although if you use left when you're in the left-most column, it will jump to the top.  Otherwise you would have to hit the up or down arrow to get to the end of the list.

[lalittle]

I think that's a bug.  Although if you use left when you're in the left-most column, it will jump to the top.  Otherwise you would have to hit the up or down arrow to get to the end of the list.

Are you referring to using the list view or the thumb view?  Based on what you're saying, it sounds like your using thumb view, correct?  I'm using the list view, where navigating the currently showing list is done ONLY with the up/down keys (in list view, left/right keys are only used for moving into and out of sub-lists.)  When using thumb view, on the other hand, left/right is used for navigating the current list, and "enter" is required for moving into sub-lists.

I'm thinking that this may be why I'm noticing odd navigation behavior that others are not -- i.e. if you use a different view style, navigation works differently in some fundamental ways.  I think we need different navigation behavior for different list styles.  Is this possible?

Larry

[glynor]

Some thoughts on the current behavior of the highlight jumping to the roller:

*Note that the following refers to using the "list" style view in Theater View, not the thumbnail based view.

I finding it a bit "irksome" that when I start to drill OUT of a sub-list, my highlight jumps to the top roller, and I'm curious what the reason for this behavior is.  I'm wondering if I'm missing some logic here because to me, the current behavior is creating extra navigation steps to do simple things. 

This is absolutely necessary.  I use lineup view style.  Say I'm in Audio under my Indie genre.  I scan down through the list to some arbitrary location way down on the list (with is 9 pages long of just artist names currently), but then I want to get back up to the top roller to change something using the Controls/Play All button.  Without the left-arrow-jumps-to-top-roller method, there's no way to get back to the top of the list without up-arrowing forever, which is certainly not cool.

It is a needed shortcut for long lists, just as Jim pointed out.

The way I see it is that left doesn't actually navigate forward and backwards through the views.  Instead it goes "back" to the top.  Then, when you hit it again, it selects the "back" button in the top roller, but doesn't force you to push enter on it as a shortcut.