Best browseing method, post your ideas! (long)

**more mods** · 08-23-2004, 06:24 AM

What ever you do don't try to incorporate the browser into the player screen. Make it a full screen browser. Adding all those extra functions in the player, makes for some small buttons, and thats bad.

**Nic** · 08-23-2004, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Jackboot

I think an icon system would work best. A large folder icon for the band names, then icons of the albums within that artist's directory. The folder icons could be changed to pictures (of the band or album cover) if a JPG is saved in that folder. This would be quick, efficient, and the least dangerous/distracting way to load "discs" while driving. I'm actually very surprised that no software does this already!? The current methods are very very cumbersome when dealing with 400+ albums! I should have crashed and died by now...

A text input method is a horrid idea IMHO...this is far too dangerous and distracting for use while driving! Just give me my icon system!

this way would work great for me, most people have Artist/album/song.mp3, but i have genre/album/song.mp3, i could just create some pretty icons for each genre

**Alric** · 08-23-2004, 11:05 AM

I insist the more versatile method is that used by the iPod. You can traverse your entire music collection any way you want it. As individual albums, by artist, genre, etc.

**Confused** · 08-23-2004, 11:21 AM

The following (bad) ASCII diagram shows the basic browsing structure that is available within AIMEE.

There are option to Play and Queue either a single (selected) track, or all tracks in view.

Play will clear what's currently playing and add what you select, Queue will add what you select to the end of the current playlist, without interrupting playback.

In folder mode, it will recurse all sub-directories within the current folder when pressing Play/Queue all.

There are also options to clear the current playlist, as well as save the current playlist, which you can load later.

Winamp playlists will also be supported, so you can create playlists at home and play them directly from AIMEE, either one at a time, or queue up multiple playlists to play

Garry

Code:

[Browse by Artist]
 - [Untagged Information]
 - Artist 1
 - - [All songs by Artist 1]
 - - Album 1
 - - - Song 1
 - - - Song 2
...
 - - - Song 12
 - - Album 2
 - - - Song 1
 - Artist 2
[Browse by Album]
 - [Untagged Information]
 - Album 1
 - - Song 1
 - - Song 2
...
 - - Song 3
 - Album 2
 - - Song 1
[Browse by Genre]
 - [Untagged Information]
 - Pop
 - - Song 1
 - - Song 2
 - Rock
 - - Song 1
 - - Song 2
[Browse Folders]
 - Folder 1
 - - Sub-Folder
 - - - Song 1
 - - - Song 2
 - Folder 2
 - - Song 1
 - Song 1
[Browse Playlists]
 - Playlist 1
 - Playlist 2

**zPilott** · 08-23-2004, 12:08 PM

i dont see any way besides using text entry that will allow you to get two thirds of the way through the list quickly and easily. I plan on cleaning up my music library, but even when I do, I still plan to have over well over 100 artists, and scrolling through a list of that size is not safe while driving. Icon would look cool, and maybe even get more info on the screen (assuming that you remember what the album covers all look like) but what do you do when you want to search for a single artist or for a single song? you may not do this, but you can't have a media player with this ability. maybe you could, yourself, find and appropriate icon for each artist, but what icon do you use for a single song?

**GWRedDragon** · 08-23-2004, 12:19 PM

Icons are more distracting to use as a selection device than letters, given that you'll have many more icons than letters and we're all more used to recognizing letters than album covers...so it will take much less time to glance down and hit the ABCD button than to look down and recognize the cover of one album. And of course, with the letter buttons you only have to use a few to get what you want rather than scrolling through huge lists

**Confused** · 08-23-2004, 01:11 PM

AIMEE will also have browsing via OSK, which will skip down the list depending on what you type.

I'm finding myself wanting better browsing methods, which is why I'm trying to get AIMEE to have a good browsing mode.

Garry

**liquid_smoke** · 08-23-2004, 01:17 PM

Im all for Icons but not custom icons, album art will do fine. Who cares about an icon for a single song? I dont think when he said icons he was talking about using custom icons for each album and each track. Were not against the abcd buttons either, i think thats a great way to skip to a section of any kind of list, text or pics.

**zPilott** · 08-23-2004, 02:59 PM

I am just saying that to make things simple and efficient, you really want a unified interface. Meaning that the same paradigm should be used to select a song as is used to select an album. That is the only reason I was asking what you would do for individual song, if you were using icons.

**liquid_smoke** · 08-23-2004, 03:21 PM

Well it just seems kind of silly, unified or not, how would you tell one song from the next if all you saw was an icon? Songs should be listed as text, there really isnt any other method you could possibly use. I think the word "icon" was taken out of context, what i think he really ment is just pics for the albums (album art). The whole basis of this thread is to make things more simple and efficient. The same paradigm to select a song is the same as an album, icons or album art is just visual, not functional.