Announcement

**magnum80** · 5 December 2010, 12:15

Originally Posted by thrusk View Post

Just a few thoughts & ideas, but I think these suggestions would GREATLY improve the user experience in Winamp...

== Easy stuff... ==

Right-click menu

Generally
- Make info window, playlist and library browser menu options more consistent and intuitive

(i.e. a track is the same context, regardless of where you reference it from - e.g. at present you can only browse to file on hard disk via media library, and can only call up MusicIP mix from info window - this should be possible from PL, ML or info window).

From library browser:
- Play after current (override shuffle mode) - like CTRL+ALT+J window

From playlist:
- Find in media library

Note: All my wishes apply to Winamp using the Bento skin

My 4.1 wishes

A) consistent context menues: I second thrusk's general idea to make context menues (right mouse click) more consistent across all ML panes/windows. I'm missing the Ctrl + F (find file on hard disk) in the playlist. So far I only found that option in the track pane in the ML.

B) Cursor keys in album pane: Another tiny thing that strikes me is that I can't use my keyboard's cursor keys to freely navigate the album pane. Only up and down works. Would be awesome to see left and right work as well.

C1) One click rescanning: On the lower left corner is a button labeled 'Media library' leading to ML options. It would be so cool if the button could be splitted (e.g. 80% 20%). The 80% part stays the same and the 20% part becomes a 'rescan watch folders' button. So I can rescan with one click. Even better, that button would be animated (e.g. spinning circle) while rescan is in process. That makes rescanning super easy.

C2) Even easier rescanning: An option to include 'remove missing files' into the rescan process (as first step before rescanning itself).

D) Drag n Drop Playlist and ML Playlist: It would be super cool to have drag n drop enabled between playlist and a ML playlist. So I can drag n drop songs from the current playlist pane to a ML Playlist pane in the middle. That would be a super time saver.

Thanks for reading!!!!!1

Winamp FTW!

Cheers
magnum80

**socialoutcast** · 6 January 2011, 06:32

winamp madia library does need improving. fix the rescan feature wo it would actually pickup new music. also add better media library database tools to the wish list.

**thrusk** · 19 January 2011, 09:42

Another note along these lines...

Clicking on artist/album in the File Info pane - should navigate to that artist or album in the ML, not the web browser (which I guess most people don't bother with). Or at least make it optional...

i.e. everything should tie winamp and its ML together nicely - at present it seems quite disjointed to say the least! It can be so much better easily!

ps. and by "should", I mean "would be nice" IMHO :-) But these are kind of standard & intuitive app behaviours, and hopefully most people will agree...

**socialoutcast** · 24 January 2011, 03:12

Does it seem like winamp development has kinda plateaued? Anyway, I'm curious because I look through the release notes on new versions and there seems to be more bug fixes then actual improvements. Few improvements such as better support for more pmp is good, but there is no improvements in regards to ease of usablity. This is what holds me back from recommending winamp to my less-then computer savvy friends and family. As a result, I feel WMP is better in the usability department (easy use). Though neither sounds as good other completely free media players like Aimp2 and FooBar2000.

Therefore, I believe better media management should be taken more seriously to gain users. I wish that winamp had better tools to help in managing my music. The state of winamps music mangement is that when I add new music from outside winamp, i must drop the entire library and then rescan everything back in. This takes too long even for a 2,000+ songs.

**thrusk** · 5 April 2011, 15:40

socialoutcast - nail on the head... personally I think slickening up Winamp's UI & media management should be their primary focus.

Make it SLICK!

**DrO** · 5 April 2011, 16:06

you want it slick but you want all that fluff mentioned at the start - seems somewhat contradictory.

-daz

**thrusk** · 6 April 2011, 10:55

That fluff (= valuable user feedback?) in my opinion would make it slick, by tightening up the UI. To be more integrated & intuitive... IMHO

Some examples:
* if you right-click a track, you would expect to get the same options, regardless of where you click. At present these are different, depending on where you click.

* if you click the album name - you get taken to a web page. Would be better to take you to the album in Media Library. Chances are users would want to play other tracks from the album - not read the artist's bio. Same with artist name.

* media library browsing is slow with large libraries (27,000+ files). Could this be sped up with better algorithms/data storage? e.g. importing the same library into musicip - typing searches and browsing albums gives results in a split second. (However, it lacks iPod integration so I'm sticking with Winamp for now.)

**DrO** · 6 April 2011, 11:04

i should have put a smilee on the end of my previous post as it was meant in jest.

i'm not the person you need to convince though if i had my way all of the ui would be made consistent (with somethings having been done towards that over the last few years) but it's hard to do so when people now expect certain things in Winamp in certain places (alas a downside of the longevity of the player) and as soon as it's changed to improve things that version becomes the spawn of evil and everyone reverts to 2.91 or whatever old version and refuse to change even if it was for a valid reason to change things.

as for the browsing speed, 5.61 feels faster to me than it has done before though i hardly use the ml as it doesn't suit my way of playing things. which then leads to the other issue Winamp has in that it tries to do too much for too many different types of people and can fail overall and you cannot make one piece of software that'll suit everyone's needs (unless you add config options on every behaviour which then over complicates things - as seems to be the view of many about Winamp over the years).

-daz

**MrSinatra** · 6 April 2011, 11:48

i actually think winamp is near perfect as is. there are things it needs, but mostly imo bug fixes and small UI improvements, see my sig.

i think some of the above posts are just wrong. my winamp always finds new music, when doesn't yours? do you want it to update instantly automatically when files are added to the HD? do you have it not found when u tell it to rescan? did you know you can add just a folder at a time?

and i like the album/artist going to the browser. you have to remember there are tons of possible views in winamp, which view would you have it go to? how many panes, etc...? it wouldn't be the easiest thing to code, and the next thing users would demand is they be allowed to specify the view it went to. winamp has more pressing needs than this.

**thrusk** · 6 April 2011, 15:00

Good points raised here...

As far as my suggestions go I'd summarise by saying, it just feels a bit disjointed* and could use some tightening & speeding up.

* Disclaimer: Don't shoot me for saying that, but we know that UI design has come a long way since Winamp was launched, and there are a lot of cool usability ideas floating around. Personally I know my way around Winamp - but when considering this - I feel it could be improved to keep with the times.

(And if it was ever re-done in a cool new way, we could still give the die-hards a skin to make it look & feel like the old way (as with 2->5)).

Does anyone know what's on the development roadmap?

Announcement

Media library improvements

Media library improvements

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment