[Rhythmbox-devel] Revisiting The "Jukebox" Mode Discussion

[Dan8827 <dan8827 snet net>]

This past May there was considerable discussion of how to implement an
"on the fly" playlist - in other words, a way to queue up songs that
would be played next.  Is anything still happening in that regard?

I recently installed and spent a couple of days playing around with
Amarok, a KDE player.  It's got lots of eye candy, and has the much-
desired queuing up feature.  After using it for a day or so, however, I
came to the conclusion that Rhythmbox is much more efficient at slicing
and dicing my collection, and allowing me to poke around in it.

Compared to Amarok, Rhythmbox can appear rather plain, but I think
"graceful" is more accurate.  Thanks for making such a good player - the
attention to the UI has really paid off!

Anyway, the whole experience with Amarok got me thinking about how that
feature could be added to Rhythmbox's UI while maintaining all that
already works so well.  (The irony of Rhythmbox is that it's great for
letting me stumble onto some song that I had forgotten about, but I have
no way to tell Rhythmbox to queue it up next without interrupting the
song I'm already listening to...)

I decided to make up another mockup, available for viewing here:

http://img100.exs.cx/img100/6426/rhythmboxhopper6wf.png

It's quite different than what I had previously proposed last May, but I
think it's pretty close to the proposal that Gisli Ottarsson made.
(That's based on the descriptions from this list; Gisli's mockup doesn't
seem to be available any more...)

Here's a description of how it would work, some of which again is
influenced by the discussions last May:

Add a new item to the "Sources" list, called the "Hopper".  (I'm not
sure I'm crazy about this name, but it'll do for the moment.)

Selecting "Hopper" as a source causes the Hopper to appear as a new pane
below the Sources list.  The browser and library remain on the right,
and functionality of these hardly changes from "Library" view.  Songs
are dragged from the Library to the Hopper, and playback is limited to
songs in the Hopper only.  Display is limited to titles only - since the
user has dragged the songs there, only a minimum of information is
needed to remind the user of what the song is.  (Although I suppose this
could be a problem if I decide to build a playlist entirely of different
versions of "Mack The Knife"...)

Some further thoughts:

Songs within the Hopper can be reordered by dragging and dropping.

The "Shuffle" and "Repeat" functions/buttons still apply when using the
Hopper; songs could be played in random order, and playback could jump
back to the top when the last song is played.

Double clicking a song in the Hopper would immediately begin playback of
that song.

While Hopper is selected as the source, double clicking a song in the
Library will move that song to the next spot in the Hopper list, and
immediately begin playback of that song.

The "Jump To Playing Song" function is present in the Hopper - it will
jump the Library to the song playing from the Hopper.  Otherwise, when
one song in the Hopper ends and another begins, the Library does NOT
jump.  This allows uninterrupted browsing.

Right clicking on a song in the Hopper would bring up the same menu as
when right clicking on a song in the Library, but with an added item to
"Remove From Hopper".  (Dragging a song out of the Hopper might also
work.)

A button labelled "Empty Hopper" clears the list, to allow you to begin
building a new list from scratch.

The horizontal border between the Source list and the Hopper is
variable. Scroll bars would automatically appear in either pane when
necessary.

I suppose if displaying more than just the title were desired, there
could be the ability to customize which columns are displayed.  There
was discussion previously that at least ratings should be visible, so
that they could be easily edited.  I imagine most of us keep the left
side pane fairly narrow, but it can be any width, so the user would be
empowered to display as many columns in either the Hopper or Library as
they wished, and figure out how to balance that with screen real estate.

Any thoughts?

-- 
Dan8827 <dan8827 snet net>