Thread: Need Your Opinion for Playlist support

IMO you should provide the option for playlist editing in-car. I can't count the number of times I've wanted to add a song, or remove a song from a playlist, so I conveniently do so at the next stop light, presto.

As you said, a combination would be the best scenario, the option to import playlists from iTunes, and then edit them in-program.

ok so now i have determined that i am going to implement both methods of playlist creation. I will support itunes-exported (xml format). speaking of xml formats - i am planning on writing a xml parser that will look for names of songs and then match that to what is in your library. this will give you the option to export your playlist from any app that can export to xml. This will also let you import a playlist that contains songs that may not appear in your library (in case you were to make a playlist off of your laptop that has songs that you haven't yet transfered to your car). i plan to make this feature optional (in the case that you create a playlist from your laptop that contains songs that don't currently reisde on your car, but will at some point). In this scenario the parser will just do a direct port of the playlist and skip songs that don't exist during playtime.

Of course then i plan to implement the ability to add/delete songs to these playlists. The idea i have is to have as few buttons to press as possible to get this done. my idea is to have a button that gives you an option to add the currently selected song to a playlist, this would intern bring up a list of saved playlists, select one bam. while listening to a playlist, you could select the song you no longer want in that playlist and hit "remove" to automatically drop it out of that list.

here is where i need your opinion again. with the aforementioned plan, there is no option to create a playlist from scratch. My biggest concern for implementing the feature to start from scratch is the naming of said playlist. unless someone has a keyboard hooked up at all times, which i am assuming most people don't, then it i will have to implement an onscreen keyboard (yes i know there are onscreen keyboards out there for most OSes, but i those can be very cumbersome to get to quickly). So here are my options for this use case:

1 - continue with the plan above, allowing only the modification of already saved playlists.
2 - provide the ability to create playlists from scratch and then let the software auto-gen a name for the playlist (somewhat like what ipods do with the On-the-go playlist naming convention)
3 - bite the bullet and code an onscreen keyboard to allow the user to name the playlist anything they want
4 - screw the user! let them find their own keyboard solution!

right now i am leaning toward option #2 as that woud give the most functionality with the least amount of overhead.

please let your opinons/wants be known!

I would like the ability to create a playlist from scratch, and I think #2 is a good ideain that regard, and maybe you could allow the playlist name to be changed when and if a keyboard is hooked up.