Re: [Muine] [PATCH] Display album-name in PlaylistWindow.cs

[Lars Weber <lars digiterror net>]

[Sorry for picking this up so late, but I'm just catching up on some of
my lists...]

Am Samstag, den 04.06.2005, 06:53 -0700 schrieb Peter Johanson:
> On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 12:23:13PM +0200, Lars Strojny wrote:
> > 
> >  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > | Add Music                                                            |
> >  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > |   ---------------------                                              |
> > |  |  Search             |      (x) Albums      () Albums and Tracks   |
> > |   ---------------------                                              |
> > |                                                                      |

First of all: I don't like that mode-switching thing at all.  Not only
does it seem unintuitive, but it's also kind of a step backwards to the
"old" two dialog interface.

While it's certainly not an easy problem to solve, I think it should be
possible to design a nice single dialog interface without a mode-switch
in it.

> >  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > |  ------------------------------------------------------------------ ^|
> > | |   |xxxxxxxx| Lost in Space                                       |X|
> > | | v |xxxxxxxx| Aimee Mann                                          |X|
> > | |   |xxxxxxxx|                                                     |X|
> > |  -----------------------------------------------------------------  X|
> > |   * 01 - Humpty Dumpty                                               |
> > |   * 02 - High On Sunday 51                                           |
> > |   * 03 - Lost In Space                                               |
> > |   * 04 - This Is How It Goes                                         |
> > |   * 05 - Guys Like Me                                                |
> > |   * 06 - Pavlov's Bell                                               |
> > |   * 07 - Real Bad News                                               |
> > |   * 08 - Invisible Ink                                               |
> > |   * 09 - Today's The Day                                             |
> > |   * 10 - The Moth                                                    |
> > |   * 11 - It's Not                                                    |
> >  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > 
> > This is my idea of how it works. I hope it is self-explaining. 
> > What do you think about that?

While expandable track lists are certainly a possibility, I think that,
when leaving the option of mode-switching aside, such an interface would
also need to provide a way of displaying individual matched tracks
alongside or independent of their associated album.  It might look
something like the following:

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Add Music                                                            |
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
|            ---------------------                                     |
|  _Search: | space               |                                    |
|            ---------------------                                     |
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
|  ------------------------------------------------------------------ ^|
| | |xxxxxxxx| *Lost in Space*                                       |X|
| | |xxxxxxxx| Aimee Mann                                            |X|
| | |xxxxxxxx| > Show all Tracks                                     |X|
|  ------------------------------------------------------------------ X|
| |              * 03 - *Lost In Space*                              |X|
|  ------------------------------------------------------------------ X|
| | *Lost In Space*                                                  |X|
| | State Of Alert                                                   |X|
|  ------------------------------------------------------------------ X|
| | |xxxxxxxx| *Out of Space*                                        |X|
| | |xxxxxxxx| The Prodigy                                           |X|
| | |xxxxxxxx| > Show all Tracks                                     |X|
|  ------------------------------------------------------------------  |
| |              * 01 - *Lost In Space (edit)*                       | |
|  ------------------------------------------------------------------  |
| |              * 02 - *Lost In Space (Techno Underworld Remix)*    | |
|  ------------------------------------------------------------------ v|
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

This kind of seems doable though it's certainly not easy to implement
and there are quite a few details that still would have to be worked
out.

> I *still* think that for someone just wanting to add that one song they
> like, this is a step back. Currently if i want to add "Humpty Dumpty", i
> do "shumpty<ENTER>" and boom. i'm playing "Humpty Dumpty". Similarly, I
> often want to queue up individual tracks from various albums I have,
> based on their track name. "shumpt<ALT + Q>worry<ALT + Q>", etc.

Firstly and most generally, while it's certainly good to keep such
possibilities in mind, I don't think it's a good idea to really focus on
certain specific (power-)use-cases until you have worked out the overall
design.  Secondly, as shown above, the general idea of a combined album
and track selection dialog doesn't necessarily rule out the usage that
you describe.

Regards,
Lars