Re: [Muine] Groups and the main UI

[Jorn Baayen <jorn nl linux org>]

> The problem I have with the current set-up (And it is the only problem!)
> is that sometime I want to play "That sneaker pimps album". Of course I
> can't remember the album name, so I end up scrolling through my whole
> collection looking for it because the dialogue is ordered by album name
> and I can't change it to be by artist. Thinking about it, I guess this
> really shouldn't be a problem since I can just type "sneaker" into the
> search box - but I've never actually used that ... maybe I just need to
> adjust myself to using it that way ..?

The "add album" window is intentionally ordered & searchable by artist..
to make that possible.. 

I think an artist-only window would be fairly useless, as you'd still
want to choose one album .. 

> 
> The mock-up I posted addresses a similar type of problem - but for
> different entities. Imagine I want to play "Ice Cream by Sarah
> Mclachlan" - currently this is a pain since I have 3 albums by her, and
> no idea which one it's on ... If I could list my music library by
> artist, or song name [As in my mock up] then I could find it easily. 

Hrm, well, the idea is that you use "Add song" for this.. you'd type
something like "sarah cream", et voilą, there it is.

> 
> It can also help when a user wants to listen to a particular type of
> music, ie this morning I'm in the mood for Jazz. You could then just
> browse your music groups, find your jazz "group" and play that.

Yeap, we definitely need an "Add group" kind of window. But I'm not
thrilled about the idea of putting them all in one window.. also as they
are quite different things .. 

> 
> There is an obvious correlation between groups and "genres" here as it's
> the only clear use case I can see for "groups". However, I think on
> reflection that having *just* genre browsing would be bad as personally
> I've never been able to classify my music in such a fashion that it
> makes sense (A lot of my music could fit into more than one of my genre
> "moods"). Being able to set up groups with real-time criteria would rock
> (MP9 calls these "AutoPlaylists"). For example I could set up an group
> that contained:
> 
> Music of genre Dance
> AND Music of genre Trance
> AND Music of genre "Alternative Dance"
> 
> Which songs comprise that group are generated at playtime so they
> automatically take advantage of new music you've brought into your
> library that matches the criteria ...
> 
> All of this gets a bit complicated to use though ...

Yeap, the idea was to have something like that.. probably something
like.. having groups of the genres in your collection by default. And
have the ability to edit/remove/create new "automatic" groups.. and it
wont disturb the cleanness of the rest of the UI, as this stuff is only
in the groups editor anyway ..


Jorn

>