Question about Album art browsing

JohnWPB · 08-25-2006, 04:51 AM

I have done my research, and created a nice looking album art page. I have album art in ALL 897 album's folders, a taks in itself beleive me!

When browsing through the album covers, and selecting one, is there a way, when that album is selected, to swith to a list view of the songs, instead of the thumbnails with only 5-6 letters of the song's title showing!?! I don't care if selecting the album needs to take me to another screen entirely where I can have a list of songs to scroll through.

I am aware of the PLFORMAT and DLFORMAT commands to change the way the file name is displayed, I am looking to do something similar, but with how the list is shown in the first place.

I just have not learned all the capabilities of RR, and work around to figgure this one out.

RichP714 · 08-25-2006, 11:49 AM

My Sterno and Gel skins do this:

http://mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=84214

actually, when you fire up audio browser it's in list view (until you select and artist)
when you single click or scroll and enter an artist it switches to humbnail view for the albums...when you enter an album it switches back to list view for the songs.

To get the single click working you have to modify the ondirclick (see readme) and to get the thumbnail switching working you have to make three different copies of your original browser.skin and switch between them according to what folder level you are in.

Enjoy!
Rich

JohnWPB · 08-25-2006, 08:26 PM

Rich, I will check that out later tonight, Thanks for the tip!

JohnWPB · 08-25-2006, 11:23 PM

Ok, I looked at your skin, and the readme file you included with it. I am doing things a little differently here. I have mine set up, so when you click on the album cover, on the normal broswer skin, it goes to the skin with album thumbnails. This is all working so far. All I need now, is to be able to click/double click on an album cover, and bring the songs up in a new skin in list view. How can I "carry over" the song list from the double clicked album, to the new screen?

Here is the code I am using in the ExecTbl right now:
"ONDIRCLICK","LOAD;audio_browser.skin||BROWSE",aud io_album_cover.skin
(I have the skin names correct, the board is changing them to look like above and adding extra spaces)

So with that code, when I am on the "audio_album_cover" skin, and a directory is selected, it does indeed take me to the "audio_browser" skin, but it just shows whatever was there in the first place, and is not pulling the songs over from the album cover that was selected.

Thinking about this now, it gets more complicated. Faith Hill has 3 albums, Just clicking on here name in the ROOT of the Album art browser, takes me back to the standard browser list skin. For this to all work, it would need to go one folder deeper to display the individividual albums to be selected before carrying the songs over to the standard browser screen.

I am starting to think that what I am trying to do is just not possible.

RichP714 · 08-26-2006, 09:49 AM

Well, I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to do, but here's a few things to consider...

Do you have show icons enabled in RR.INI

You remapped ONDIRCLICK using EXEC.TBL, and are trying to make double clicking (same as BROWSE) do something, but ONDIRCLICK will intercept the first click, you might have to make a button (like I did with the folder enter button) and remap BROWSE (for that skin) to what you want to do.

You say when you double click the Album art it loads the correct skin but not the correct folder (the BROWSE part of the command you're invoking) it's either the above, or if the skin that's loading has an SD entry (that delimits icon size, display type, default folder) if you leave off the default folder the skin will inherit that information from the previous skin, and should BROWSE (or enter the subfolder) such as:

SD,00,02,140,140
instead of
SD,00,02,140,140,C:\blah blah blah

Just some things to think about.

Good Luck,
Rich

JohnWPB · 08-27-2006, 02:59 PM

I am still going in circles here... It HAS to be something stupid I am missing.

What I am trying to do, should be pretty simple:

From the standard browser page, click on the album cover, and go to a "artist browser page" that shows the album covers (This is Working)

On the album cover art browser, click on an artist, and then go to a either back to the previous browser page, or a clone of that page, if need be, which shows the songs in list format, not as icons.

The problem I may run into is, when clicking on an image in the artist browser, if that is the ONLY album for that artist, all is well to go to the list view.

HOWEVER If I click on an artist that has 2 or more albums, in a sub folder, I need to browse down one directory further, to click the actual album to go to the list view page.

I have my folders set us as follows:

Artist 1
---Album 1

Artist 2
---Album 1
---Album 2
---Album 3

Artist 3
---Album 1

Some artist have only 1 album, and some have more than 1 album.

I hope this makes sence....

RichP714 · 08-27-2006, 03:35 PM

I THINK I understand, but I'm not sure....you say from the standar browser page you click on an album cover, but the standard browser page is in list view, how can there be covers, and If you've changed it to show icons and your folder structure is Artist/Album, then how can you be clicking on a cover from the Artist level...?

I think the key to what you want to do is manipulating the SD command.

/, (SD) Directory List Properties -- (May be Extended later)
/,
/, a Disp w h Path
/, -- ---- ---- ---- ----
SD,AA,MODE,ICOW,ICOH[,PATH]

The above defines extra propperties for the folder List on the current skin.
AA is the Alignment of the Directory List (00=Left, 01=Right, 02=Center).
Disp Mode sets the mode of display (00=Normal List, 01=Thumb Preview Icon List, 02=Thumb Preview Icons).
ICOW defines the Width of the Icon to display on display modes 1 and 2.
ICOH defines the Height of the Icon to display on display modes 1 and 2.
PATH defines the Directory/Folder location to display initially (OPTIONAL). If not present the path
from the previous screen is used.

Mode 00 should give you a list view, and mode 02 should give you icons.

The use the double pipe (||) like you did in keytbl.ini to include a browse command with the skin loading.

If you post the skin file that's not working we can look at it.

Rich

JohnWPB · 08-28-2006, 02:17 AM

Sorry, guess that does sound a bit confusing!

On my standard browse/list page, I have an area that displays the album cover for the selected album, just a single image. When clicking on that image I want to go to the full thumbnail view. When clicking on that in "album mode" I want to return to a list view, with the songs of that perticular album that was picked, displayed in list form.

The problem I am having now, is the directory structure thing I mentioned above. I have about 50% that have a single album in the artist folder, and the other 50% are multiple albums in that artists folder. Figguring out how to tell when an album is clicked, to go to the song list (single album) or to go one directory deeper to display all the srtists albums, to them click on one to go to the song list.

RichP714 · 08-28-2006, 11:29 AM

OK, I get it now, unfortunately what you want to do is beyond me, maybe somebody with more experience can tell you if you can use boolean expressions, or you might have to do a bit of scripting to get that done...

Rich

JohnWPB · 08-28-2006, 01:21 PM

Rich, I appreceiate all your help so far! I just hope someone that knows if this is possible or not, and hot to implement it if it is possible will chime in.