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[Matt]

I'd like to improve Gizmo's Playing Now screen for v19.  It's a challenging problem because it needs to work on small phones in portrait and landscape mode, and then it needs to scale up to tablet size well.

At a bare minimum, I'd like star ratings for the current track, a cleaner look in landscape mode on a phone, and optionally a volume up and down button.

The stock music player on Android does a lot of swiping actions to change between tracks, playlist vs file view, etc.  Swiping between a view of the track list, single file, and extra controls like volume, rating, etc. might be neat.  It can be a little hidden unless you put a tab control at the top or similar (like the stock News application on Android).

JRemote looks really nice and it puts the playlist next to the image in landscape mode:


Any other ideas?

Thanks for any help.

[HTPC4ME]

  As an android family, we're happy to hear this.
We've seen the cool updates to jremote, myriver etc, and thought maybe you forgot about us Gizmo users.E

Excited to see where this goes!

[Castius]

New layout would be nice.

I wouldn't mind more swiping. I don't think a tab is 100% necessary.
I think google is doing a pretty good job showing how this can work.
The google music app is a ok example. But i can see you guys putting jriver touches to it.

i'd say that i'd like to see good notification and widget support.
user support
and better zone switching features.

[stewart_pk]

I would defintely like a volume up and down on the Playing Now screen please.
Oh I'd love a Playing Now view to the lock screen option added. Many adroid media players seem to do this these days like Poweramp for example.

Thanks for asking for customer opinion's regarding this, you guys are defintely the best!

[WinoOutWest]

As an android family, we're happy to hear this.
We've seen the cool updates to jremote, myriver etc, and thought maybe you forgot about us Gizmo users.E

Excited to see where this goes!

Ditto all of what he^^ said!

[toomanybarts]

When you say "Ratings" do you also mean the ability to edit the ratings?  If so, that is what I would like the most!!
I moved from iphone to android and really miss ratings my songs when I'm out and about with JRemote.

[WinoOutWest]

When you say "Ratings" do you also mean the ability to edit the ratings?  If so, that is what I would like the most!!
I moved from iphone to android and really miss ratings my songs when I'm out and about with JRemote.

Ditto all of what he^^ said!

[Hendrik]

JRemote looks really nice and it puts the playlist next to the image in landscape mode:

Thats a pretty common layout for landscape mode, at least on tablet-sized screens. I think Gizmo could do really well with it.
If it works on a phone screen is another question, though. I'm not too sure about how the layout would be ideal for a phone, since i don't use it on phones much.

Its not uncommon to have different layouts on phones and on tablets, though, even if more effort to maintain.

[marko]

Posted over there, before I saw this over here...

I knocked up the attached landscape mock-up this morning.

Of course, for now, I just need it on my phone, and need it to be legible when I'm driving and it's three feet or so away on the windscreen.

How you get that to scale nicely between 4.7 phone screens and 10.1 inch tablets, I've no idea. The extra space on the tablet allows for so much more functionality too

What I have learned over the years though, is that J River are second to none when it comes to bridging these kinds of divides, so no pressure, but hurry up eh

-marko

[struct]

Why can't there be a phone and a tablet version? There really should be as the expectations are fundamentally different.

[csimon]

I've left Plugplayer way behind now but I always thought its Now Playing screen couldn't be beaten.  It's hard to put my finger on it, it's basically exactly the same layout as shown above, I guess it's just the choice of font, spacing, and size of the cover art which is not completely filling the area. See attached pic.

[csimon]

Please make sure transport controls, volume control and seek bar are nice and easy to hit!  Too many players, especially on a tablet, have minute buttons.

[jmone]

I'm really keen on adding some more features such as streaming Radio and TV (see pic) so it matches what you can get with Library Server clients.  You can make them appear but at present they don't work.

[Hendrik]

Hey Nathan, how is that related to the playing now screen? No hijacking the threads!

[jmone]

Woops - You noticed the shameless feature promotion! 

[jmone]

Regarding the Playing Now Screen, one thing that is worth considering is Video.  At present Gizmo hands this off to a separate video player so the controls are different from Gizmo.  It would be good to try to keep this in house but I'm guessing this is not so easy.

[Hendrik]

There is no real separate video players, its all handled by Gizmo itself.
The playback is done by Androids player, but the UI is all Gizmo, it has the same weird looking white-on-white buttons.

[zeusl]

Hi
I love Gizmo and often use it for music, what I miss is:

1. Controls in nofikations fields and / or Lockscreen
2. Changing the song via the headset. Double-tap the play / pause
3. Saving songs on device aka Offline mode (Like spotify)
4. Ability to see the tracklist for an album when I search, without having to play the whole album.

/Zeus

[WinoOutWest]

Hi
I love Gizmo and often use it for music, what I miss is:

1. Controls in nofikations fields and / or Lockscreen
2. Changing the song via the headset. Double-tap the play / pause
3. Saving songs on device aka Offline mode (Like spotify)
4. Ability to see the tracklist for an album when I search, without having to play the whole album.

/Zeus

I agree with all of these points but wow #3 would really change the way I use Gizmo and how often.  I dare say I could get rid of syncing if this was a feature and replace my "local" music player with gizmo not mention making the whole " transfer some tune to my phone" process a whole lot less effort.  I likey!

[csimon]

3. Saving songs on device aka Offline mode (Like spotify)

Actually, that's something that I would love, in lieu of MC on tablet devices on anything other than Windows - the ability to cache the Gizmo *views* and playlists to Gizmo and then to download *media* to Gizmo for playing locally/offline. Basically a handheld sync I guess, to the standard Android library maybe, but using JRiver view schemes.

That's what's absolutely frustrating about every other media player, on PCs, tablets, OS, Android, whatever - the extremely limited Artist/Album/Genre menus. Sometimes not even Genre.

I would like the experience of MC but on a mobile device. JRemote is the best interface so far - Gizmo is lagging way behind. But no local play when out and about or in the car.

But hey, this is a Now Playng thread...

Double-tap on cover art to play/pause.
Swipe left or right to change songs, swipe up or down to change volume - as well as the transport buttons, seek bar and volume control slider.

[Fabricio]

I have hope. New design.

Thanks for asking users.

[nitephlight]

A feature that I've long desired but eventually produced using views from gizmo home screen is navigation from a playing now track to

a)  playing now playlist (the current feature blocks the cover art and is difficult to  select)
b)  jump to artist or full album from playing track,  much like the button on the pc application in file list view

c) add to On the Go playlist- currently im using MCWS to playlist edit the top of recent played to bookmark playlist but it is not as reliable due to lag in server updating gizmo views and smartlists

[carbo]

My requests:
- Ability to control amplifier volume
- Ratings
- More control on the information displayed (fields selection)

[contium]

I'd like to improve Gizmo's Playing Now screen for v19.  It's a challenging problem because it needs to work on small phones in portrait and landscape mode, and then it needs to scale up to tablet size well.

It would be nice to be able to lock the display to portrait or landscape as well.

[fitbrit]

Please make sure transport controls, volume control and seek bar are nice and easy to hit!  Too many players, especially on a tablet, have minute buttons.

Yes, my Android tablet's volume buttons are ridiculously hard to find. Please let's have a slider.

[flac.rules]

Sounds great!

I dont know how feasible it is, but would it be possible with some kind of customization? I would like some custom buttons in the gizmo interface, that can run custom commands (like mcc-commands and so on)

[toomanybarts]

My requests:
- Ability to control amplifier volume
- Ratings
- More control on the information displayed (fields selection)

+1 for ability to rate songs

[flac.rules]

My requests:
- Ability to control amplifier volume
- Ratings
- More control on the information displayed (fields selection)

Yes ability to control the amp and fields selection would be great.

[syndromeofadown]

I would like to see most or all buttons removed from the playing now screen and replaced by one button that switches directly to the commands screen. But...
the command screen could be more like a remote instead of a list like it is now. here is an example an android remote that works nicely on all sizes of screens:
I find digital knobs really nice to use on touch screens.

[Fabricio]

Anything new?

[Matt]

Anything new?

Baby steps.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=85766.0

[marko]

The new buttons and progress handle are welcome, but in landscape, they are demanding even more screen real estate, resulting in a thumbnail so small it's hardly worth the bother...

[Fabricio]

Baby steps.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=85766.0

ahahaha 

Thanks,

Fabricio, from Brazil.

[nitephlight]

The new buttons and progress handle are welcome, but in landscape, they are demanding even more screen real estate, resulting in a thumbnail so small it's hardly worth the bother...

super this. i lock rotation when gizmo is open just to fill the screen with album art (even if its sideways), other than that loving the new buttons- especially for those of us with inverted themes, it is MUCH appreciated

[AndrewFG]

My requests:
- Ability to control amplifier volume
...

This would be nice but maybe it is not possible (??) The phone would need to send a separate i/r command to the receiver (and I'm not sure if phones even have i/r transmitters). But at least in the case when you are playing at fixed volume to a receiver, then Gizmo should not display any volume slider or up/down buttons.

[WinoOutWest]

The new buttons and progress handle are welcome, but in landscape, they are demanding even more screen real estate, resulting in a thumbnail so small it's hardly worth the bother...

Ditto this.  In landscape mode on my phone the cover are is pretty much useless.  Can we not have the cover art on one side of the screen and the details on the other when in landscape mode?

[stewart_pk]

Oh I'd love a Playing Now view to the lock screen option added. Many adroid media players seem to do this these days like Poweramp for example.

Although Gizmo has a "lock screen" option, this has yet to be implemented as I requested

[Hendrik]

I've been thinking about the playing now screen, and in landscape mode it truely is rather ugly right now.
Given that a phone is rather small, I'm not sure if i can shrink the buttons much.

So how would you envision it to look?
I can shrink the buttons a bit, maybe make the seek bar take less space...

Much room is taken away by the header line. Maybe instead of the "Playing Now" text it should include the artist/album/track information, so there is more room for the thumbnail?

I wonder how it would look if the track list is also shown in landscape mode.

Maybe I'll put a few mock-ups up later.

PS:
Primarily thinking about phone right now. May create a separate playing now page for tablets once this one is done.

[csimon]

So how would you envision it to look?

I've actually been thinking about this!

I also use JRemote and there are elements of the Now Playing screens on both Gizmo and JRemote that are great and others that are not so great. Can we think about doing a unified look for both??  (Requires LesPaul inpiut I guess!)

The portrait Now Playing of JRemote looks brilliant, with the cover art filling about 2/3 its area, slanted and with a reflection. It also has a sensible landscape view with the cover art again, not filling the entire area, that looks ungainly, but the controls are on the bottom line with the left of the screen taken up by the playlist. JRemote also has a problem in that the playlist is not accessible from the portrait view.

But I prefer the controls of Gizmo - they're more attractive, easier to hit and especially the progress/seek bar fills the entire width which is very useful for seeking within a movie as the resolution is higher, as opposed to JRemote's seek bar which is miniscule.

Do you want screenshots or do you have access to JRemote?

[csimon]

I'd like to see on both apps:

PORTRAIT

Cover Art and Track Info as JRemote, but with the controls of Gizmo.  Playlist accessible from this view.

LANDSCAPE

Cover Art and Track Info as JRemote, but on the left with controls of Gizmo on the right. Playlist acessible from this view (but not immediately shown).

[Hendrik]

I don't have an apple device at hand, no.
But I also wanted to avoid blatantly stealing too much.

I think the portrait playing now in Gizmo is OK, maybe not perfect, but certainly usable.
It might also benefit from moving the text inside the header line, I think i'll simply try that tomorrow and see how it looks.

Landscape is another matter entirely.
I love the new buttons, but they are rather huge and take away a lot of space from the thumbnail, leaving a lot of grey background without much use.

Personally I prefer the centered buttons even in landscape mode, but that way they take up more space

Following your idea, wouldn't the right of the screen be a bit...empty? with just the controls there?

[HTPC4ME]

mentioned this in the the theaterview request thread... a theaterview/gizmo view that's sync'd together would be stellar.

[csimon]

Well, we'd have to see how agreeable LesPaul is! But I know he too has struggled trying to get the Now Playing screen right, with people requesting different things and trying things out. From a user point of view, I don't see the problem with unifying these, they're not really competing products, JRemote fills a gap that is not provided out of the box, and there doesn't seem to be much point in several developers trying to work out different schemes and operating procedures and if different apps do end up being different then that ends up confusing the user if they do happen to have both.

[fitbrit]

I would really love to see Gizmo's Playing Now screen implement an MC volume slider too. Some Android tabs have AWFUL volume buttons that are not easily accessed in the dark.

[mhwlng]

I don't mind that you need to scroll the screen to view everything. (playlist,metadata etc.)

This is how I organized the playing now screen for various device sizes :

>> Screenshots of Playing Now Phone (Galaxy S4) <<

I.e. on smaller devices, the whole screen always scrolls in both landscape and portrait orientation.


>> Screenshots of Playing Now Tablet (Nexus 7) <<



I.e. on bigger devices, the whole screen only scrolls in portrait orientation.
In landscape (when there is enough room), there is a single plage where only some windows scroll (playlist, bio etc.).


Also there can be 1,2 or 3 columns in the playlist depending on if you are playing a single album or not.

[csimon]

Following your idea, wouldn't the right of the screen be a bit...empty? with just the controls there?

See this very, very, hastily patched together screenshot.

The Track Info above the controls could be more like the JRemote one below.

I think Playing Now needs to be clutter-free. You need all the essential information and controls to hand, anything more can be provided by popup/slide-in screens.

[Hendrik]

I guess that could work.
I have seen other requests about the metadata, that would accomodate it nicely. Would also leave some space in the landscape view to put a volume control even.

Playlist could scroll out from the side then over the coverart, instead of from the top which is next to useless right now in landscape.

Moving things around is pretty quick, I'll try to post some actual mockups tomorrow.

[jmone]

Gizmo looks good to my eyes on a Portrait Phone but on a Landscape Tablet the utilisation of all that screen space is relatively poor.  So what I'm not sure about is if there can be one design to suite both or if you end up needed two skins one for a Phone and one for a Tablet.

Looking forward to seeing some mock ups!

[robgil]

Gizmo is really bad to use when JR is in theater view, unless I am using it wrongly?
To navigate through menus shown on my telly requires a swiping action on my Nexus 7 and it is very hard to control, most times it will overshoot the desired catagory. Is there a way to slow it down?

[Hendrik]

Here is my first attempt for Playing now in Landscape:



And with playlist:


The buttons are still a bit too small. Trying to find the perfect size to fit in there for them.

If i assume the cover art is a nearly square image like this one, a 50/50 split also isn't ideal, and wastes a bit of space as borders around the image.
May try 40/60 or so, gives a bit more room for the buttons and text. Long artist/album already doesn't fit.