Some small ideas for next version

[Victhor]

Some small Winamp ideas (potentially doable?) for next version
(there are a lot of other things thet could be improved, but I know time is limited and resources even more, so..)


Difficulty Level 1?

01 Add option in ML views (or in right click): Add after current (playing item) (to PL). Similar to "queue" but more consistent with the order of a builded playlist.

02 Add options on PL tracks: "All tracks by this artist" / "All tracks from this album". Similar to "Explore item(s) folder" but without leaving Winamp.

i.e.: This would be the result of selecting "all tracks by this artist" (it would re-use the Library view):



03 "Prev" and "Next" buttons on CT Preferences window:




04 Full suppport for transparent PNG in covers? (shows up fine in the Tag editor but loads wrongly in skin).





Difficulty Level 2?

05 Option to remove time from playlist (cleaner, minimalist, potentially loved by modern users). And possibly the Scrolling bar can auto-hide. Yeah, I know, all of it could be strange but maybe... look!:

No time - No scrollbar


Minimalist skin + Minimal PL:


06 Alternate background on PL:
(done with default Bento colors so it could be hard to see if your monitor is not properly set up)





Difficulty Level 3?

07 "treat TRACKS as albums" -> To have smart views (or even playlist views) where each song has its artwork and details visible, or to have it displayed like little artworks.. (like the "Small / medium / large icons" view of the library).

Ugly mockup (you get the idea):

[DrO]

Originally Posted by Victhor

01 Add option in ML views (or in right click): Add after current (playing item) (to PL). Similar to "queue" but more consistent with the order of a builded playlist.

already present if jtfe is present on the send-to menu via the 'move after current playlist item' option.

there is merit to having it on the combined play/enqueue button and /or also in the right-click menu (though only concern is over cluttering the menus) and was one of the things which the work done for the combined play / enqueue button was intended to allow for at some point (whether native or via a plug-in).

Originally Posted by Victhor

02 Add options on PL tracks: "All tracks by this artist" / "All tracks from this album". Similar to "Explore item(s) folder" but without leaving Winamp.

not sure how this one would work tbh.

Originally Posted by Victhor

03 "Prev" and "Next" buttons on CT Preferences window:

with further clarification this has now been implemented as per attached screenshot. also i've made changes so changing things between the skin and the prefs page will remain in sync (not something that has previously been done so that adds a bit more polish to the handling ).

Originally Posted by Victhor

04 Full suppport for transparent PNG in covers? (shows up fine in the Tag editor but loads wrongly in skin).

as we've found during chatting, this is already something that is working as long as the artwork is in the correct format i.e. png.

as we found from a bit of digging, changing / embedding the image via Winamp led to everything being converted to a jpeg version instead of maintaining the original format (which has now been fixed internally) and also that pasting was defaulting to jpeg - now changed to png to ensure we keep transparency.

so support already works, it's how Winamp does embedding / associating of artwork which is at fault in defaulting to a format which doesn't do transparency (with changes now made, but more work is required to ensure we're all correct).

Originally Posted by Victhor

05 Option to remove time from playlist (cleaner, minimalist, potentially loved by modern users). And possibly the Scrolling bar can auto-hide. Yeah, I know, all of it could be strange but maybe... look!:

hiding the time is simple but i'm really really not sure that's a good thing to remove.

auto-hiding the scrollbar is an interesting suggestion but is a bit skin specific to get it working ok as it'd possibly break classic skins. will keep it in mind but unlikely to happen for the time being.

Originally Posted by Victhor

06 Alternate background on PL:
(done with default Bento colors so it could be hard to see if your monitor is not properly set up)

it can be done, just requires some minor tweaks to the playlist drawing code to be able to use it. plus it does make sense for the main playlist editor to follow the style as well. so is more likely to happen (and is pretty simple to do).

Originally Posted by Victhor

07 "treat TRACKS as albums" -> To have smart views (or even playlist views) where each song has its artwork and details visible, or to have it displayed like little artworks.. (like the "Small / medium / large icons" view of the library).

as we've discussed off forum, it can be done but it involves a fair bit of work to just get something working in a library playlist view (effectively adding the means for a playlist view to be a limited library view). and getting something decent in the library could help to refine things before considering to do something like it in the main playlist. so am not committing to doing it but it's something that definitely has merit.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by DrO

...
hiding the time is simple but i'm really really not sure that's a good thing to remove.
...

Making it an option would be ok, imho. Although I've already requested adding info to that area (http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=379025).

[DrO]

the suggestion is for the main playlist editor and not the library playlists root node (which your suggestion was for ).

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by DrO

the suggestion is for the main playlist editor and not the library playlists root node (which your suggestion was for ).

No, I wasn't clear in what I was asking. I was referring to playlists displayed in the main playlist editor, but it would be useful in both, imo.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by Victhor

...

02 Add options on PL tracks: "All tracks by this artist" / "All tracks from this album". Similar to "Explore item(s) folder" but without leaving Winamp.

i.e.: This would be the result of selecting "all tracks by this artist" (it would re-use the Library view):

...

This is already in the ML local library views that have a search bar, except for the "History" view. Isn't that enough? Also selecting a command in one panel and having the results show up in another panel could be confusing. Especially if it results in the first panel being closed, as could occur with cPro skins (if the auto close tab option is enabled).

[Victhor]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

This is already in the ML local library views that have a search bar, except for the "History" view. Isn't that enough? Also selecting a command in one panel and having the results show up in another panel could be confusing. Especially if it results in the first panel being closed, as could occur with cPro skins (if the auto close tab option is enabled).

Yep, that's exactly the same option but my suggestion was to trigger it FROM the playlist editor. I thought that maybe 'cause PL is where you test and do some "quick" listening to new albums /artists it would make better sense to have those options there.

But like you say, displaying results could be irritating or annoying if you were using the other panel.

I still would use it, but we have to contemplate all possible uses and scenarios..

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by Victhor

I thought that maybe 'cause PL is where you test and do some "quick" listening to new albums /artists it would make better sense to have those options there.

I understand what you're thinking, it would simplify things (no need to search in the ML and then transfer the results to the PL editor, and the items in the active PL may not have been added to ML).

The search features of JTFE and the search bar in cPro skins does provide the ability to filter on data provided in the item title strings in the active playlist. A lot more typing is required, but you can get to the same result (if the required data is in the title strings).

[DrO]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

No, I wasn't clear in what I was asking. I was referring to playlists displayed in the main playlist editor, but it would be useful in both, imo.

as it had only talked about the ML, that's what i'd assumed it was about.


as for the other things in the few posts above, is good to know i'm not the only one who thought the view request would be somewhat jarring (and could be annoying if you're doing something in a view and it then gets forced to a library view).


and related to that from talking with Victhor, maybe we could have some sort of 'insert search here' action or something like that as a quicker way to run and use a library query with the main playlist. not quite sure if it could just be done as a menu action only or if it would need a bit more user input / UI in-order to help it along (sort of like a dropdown list or little list display).


as another thing which came up from talking was some sort of means to find a SHOUTcast stream quickly based on say the genre of an existing playlist item - is mainly then how to deal with the displaying of station results as to how to provide that to the user and allow for selecting from the search results when they were finally obtained.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by DrO

...

as another thing which came up from talking was some sort of means to find a SHOUTcast stream quickly based on say the genre of an existing playlist item - is mainly then how to deal with the displaying of station results as to how to provide that to the user and allow for selecting from the search results when they were finally obtained.

That and the possible plug-in you mentioned in another thread (for downloading station lists, searching them, etc.) would be handy new features people could get excited about.