getmusicbee.com
General => MusicBee Wishlist => Topic started by: 9cupsoftea on September 16, 2013, 09:14:46 PM
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I've just started using Musicbee to handle my podcasts (I use it for pretty much everything else already!) and I'm a bit surprised to find how limited and problematic the handling is so far - for my tastes anyway. I'd like to suggest some things I think would greatly improve it.
1. Mark podcasts as listened to after syncing - this was asked for a couple of times on the forum but was never commented on. I have limited space on my player (sansa clip 4gb) and syncing all of my 7 podcasts every time I want to sync music takes up unnecessary memory. If there is ANY way for musicbee to recognise when a podcast has been played on another device this would be perfect, but as I doubt there is, an option to mark as read upon sync would be a great alternative.
2. Show the episode title instead of the podcast title - Whenever I check for podcasts I have to click tiny little arrows to see if the title of the episode is one I've listened to. The long list of greyed-out old episodes makes it impractical to leave the options expanded, and the limited view available means I can't see important info when it's collapsed. (This also ties in to what may be a bug where the 'episode date' for every title is always today, when the actual latest show may be days old).
I think either bringing some of the episode information to the fore (without the need for expanding arrows), or even a more elegant solution where you can see the artwork of the show if you only keep the latest (or unplayed) episodes - as if they were single albums or tracks - would make a world of difference. I'm sure everyone would have better ideas on how to do this, and musicbee's handling of podcast and episode information is the worst aspect of it (and easily fixed I think).
(I know you can select an option to hide a lot of greyed out episodes, but this is only upon adding a podcast. It would be nice to have some customisability after adding.)
3. This is more a suggestion than necessary I think, but it would be nice to be able to choose podcasts to sync on the fly, separately from syncing music, without digging within options. The 'send to' option does this well enough, but for something as frequently synced and deleted as podcasts it might be a good idea to have a separate 'sync podcasts' option, where a simple checklist of your shows could be ticked or unticked, and syncing performed exclusively for podcasts.
I know musicbee was never really touted as a podcast handler, but I think so many people are using it for syncing music these days that it makes sense to have some more robust and sophisticated podcast options. Especially as it would only take a few ui adjustments to make it perfectly usable. Right now it's surprisingly weak and clumsy compared to the rest of the program - which is brilliant, of course!
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(This also ties in to what may be a bug where the 'episode date' for every title is always today, when the actual latest show may be days old).
can you give a specific link to a subscription that does this. If you are refering to the "episode date" for the subscription row then that is the date it was last checked
Also i dont know what you mean by "episode totle" vs. "podcast title"
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My mistake - I assumed 'episode date' was the date of the latest episode.
Here's an image with that I mean by 'episode' and 'podcast' title:
(http://s15.postimg.org/dhdex9msb/Untitled.png)
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2. Show the episode title instead of the podcast title - Whenever I check for podcasts I have to click tiny little arrows to see if the title of the episode is one I've listened to. The long list of greyed-out old episodes makes it impractical to leave the options expanded, and the limited view available means I can't see important info when it's collapsed. (This also ties in to what may be a bug where the 'episode date' for every title is always today, when the actual latest show may be days old).
you can limit the number of episodes displayed in the settings for each podcast - if you set it to 0 it would only show the unlistened episoded.
I cant magine many people would want what you request - is it something other podcast tools do? and wouldnt it be confusing as you would no longer see the podcast title
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I don't know if it's just me being stupid but for some reason setting the podcasts displayed to 0 doesn't work for me. I save the setting but it just doesn't seem to catch for some reason.
I should have explained a little better what I meant by showing episode title. A lot of podcast managers have similar settings to musicbee by default (such as itunes) but they get away with it through being customisable and other such things (itunes detects synced and played podcasts, removing a lot of the need to check episodes constantly).
Just to clarify, here's some things other podcast managers do that I think are a bit cleaner:
(http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/95000/95827/gpodder-1.png)
Gpodder (and others like juice) put the podcasts on the side, and show the downloaded episodes with a bit more space and information in the main panel. This would probably make musicbee's left panel a bit too cluttered, but a separate panel within the podcasts section would probably work. Perhaps horizontally like the radio stations panel, or another column.
(http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18iy18do2o9gajpg/ku-medium.jpg)
Itunes (and I think songbird) has a nice album art-like view for podcasts that I think would be more consistent with Musicbee's other views. The larger space to click on in order to drill down is a lot easier than the tiny collapsing arrows. It also looks a lot more colourful and modern.
Another option could be to simply have a column in the podcast view that shows current episode date and title. Then you could turn all drag and drop or 'sync to' behaviour for the podcast title to act like the latest episode (I hope that sentence makes sense).
Incidentally, I've also noticed that double-clicking podcast title brings up an error, when I expected it would play the latest episode (I had to double-click the episode itself to play it).
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Gpodder (and others like juice) put the podcasts on the side, and show the downloaded episodes with a bit more space and information in the main panel. This would probably make musicbee's left panel a bit too cluttered, but a separate panel within the podcasts section would probably work. Perhaps horizontally like the radio stations panel, or another column.
Seems like a track-broswer-like layout would do the trick. I agree it would be more user friendly than the current situation.
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I'd be very interested in seeing, or learning of, a few improvements with podcast handling too.
Currently, the default naming convention for saved files doesn't seem to include the episode date when saving, and there doesn't seem to be a way to change how these are handled. For example, having the ability to add tags in < > brackets after the save folder location would be perfect.
For example a new subscription entry was saved as '89- Bubble Houses.mp3' when my previous version of this was '2013-09-17 - 89- Bubble Houses.mp3'. Several of my subscriptions are not always consistently tagged but the Episode date is automatically in the feed so it's easy to mask and correct.
The Tag Inspector seems to see the ID3v2 Episode Date value, but I can't then apply this to either the Tags or Tags (2) panels. Would be great to see a little more functionality around these areas.
I have to also point out that aside from these issues MusicBee seems to be absolutely brilliant. Clean, powerful, much faster than what I have previously been using... Have used several media players for managing subscriptions and did so reluctantly as that was often the easiest way to have music and podcasts consistently handled. Am not a huge fan of GPodder and the like though so would like to have (what I think could be) the perfect all in one.
Thanks,
SJ
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Sorry to bump this old topic, but I've recently had to use Ubuntu at work and discovered, surprisingly, that rhythmbox (the default player) has exactly the kind of podcast handling that would be perfect for musicbee. It's a pretty basic music player otherwise, and nowhere near as good to use as MB, but this is one area I think Musicbee could take some design cues from.
(http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/L58KFDj9OCk/maxresdefault.jpg)
This is exactly how I suggested podcasts be displayed in an above post, as I think it shows more information, and allows far quicker and easier navigation and playing of podcasts. There's a list of feeds, and below it, a list of podcasts for each feeds with info on what is downloaded, dates, and podcast titles.
(http://iloveubuntu.net/pictures_me/rhythmbox%20297%20podcasts.png)
Adding podcasts is really easy: You click add, type in an rss url or just some search terms, and are presented with relevant results that have pictures and even descriptions. I have no idea how rhythmbox manages to do this, but it works really well, and as it is open source (linux only, though) I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to figure out.
I'm not sure about syncing from rhythmbox as I sync only from my home computer, but if Steven is still open to improving the podcast handling I would still strongly suggest a 'mark as listened' option upon sync. Again, sorry to bump this old topic, but I just thought this would clarify further some of my earlier suggestions.
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i still plan to do enhancements around podcast handling and suggestions are welcome
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i still plan to do enhancements around podcast handling and suggestions are welcome
I think a track browser-style setup would work well, as some have suggested, or possibly an artwork-view-with-tracks-at-bottom setup, only with less space for the artwork and more for the tracks.
One thing that would be really cool is if we could give MusicBee overrides for the album and artist fields, per podcast. Some podcasts have very inconsistent tags that bother my OCD tendencies, and sometimes I just don't like the tags that they come with. For example, the News From Lake Wobegon podcast comes with "American Public Media" as the artist, and once in a while I go in and change them all to "Garrison Keillor". Would be nice to be able to have MusicBee do that for me automatically.
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A request i made some time ago http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=9925.msg59303#msg59303
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A request i made some time ago http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=9925.msg59303#msg59303
thats now implemented in v2.2
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_2/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
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Thanks Steven!
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This has the amended GUI for the podcasts panel, where navigation of the subscriptions is separated from the episodes and each subscription shows the subscription picture.
The search box can be set to filter the subscriptions or the episodes.
Also there is an option on the device synch settings to mark synchronised podcasts as listened
http://www.mediafire.com/?w3gh8o0zcyj8faa
Please treat this as a preview version, so keep your existing musicbee.exe handy in case you need to revert. I would still want to know about any bugs or comments - i am not planning to make further changes for this but that depends on comments
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Great update, it obviously still has bugs but looks very promising! Much better than the old view.
Bugs i've encountered so far:
1. Bottom of the Subscriptions list is covered with a gray rectangle.
2. Subscriptions list has no scrollbar.
3. Subscriptions list can be resized only in fixed increments.
Helpful screenshot http://i.imgur.com/0YIdYU8.png
Some details:
4. Subscriptions list header buttons should be right aligned.
5. New episodes counter should be shown only if there are new episodes (because it would make it easier to discern at a glance which subscriptions have updates). That would however leave a nasty gap between the cover and the title, so maybe the indicator could be displayed on the corner of the cover with some distinctive bg colour like red or blue.
6. Covers should have borders if UseArtworkBorders is set to true.
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You got rid of the podcast directory dialogue, Steven?
Also, I don't understand how Mikebo got the subscriptions panel to the left; my panels display vertically.
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Subscription panel seems to be following the track browser panel orientation
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Yep, you're right - thanks.
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Subscription panel seems to be following the track browser panel orientation
Surely those should be separated?
I also can't find the podcast directory.
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Subscription panel seems to be following the track browser panel orientation
Surely those should be separated?
I would even argue that a horizontal layout in podcasts is unnecessary.
For me a layout like this would work best
(http://i.imgur.com/deVIP18l.png) (http://imgur.com/deVIP18)
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Subscription panel seems to be following the track browser panel orientation
Surely those should be separated?
I would even argue that a horizontal layout in podcasts is unnecessary.
+1
I agree. Scrolling space seems a lot more useful for the list-like nature than sideways space in this instance.
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i took out podcast directory because i didnt think people would actually be using it - am i wrong about that?
it wasnt intentional that the subscription list follows the track browser orientation so i will fix that.
I guess vertical orientation will work better for people with widescreens so it should be configurable
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5. New episodes counter should be shown only if there are new episodes (because it would make it easier to discern at a glance which subscriptions have updates). That would however leave a nasty gap between the cover and the title, so maybe the indicator could be displayed on the corner of the cover with some distinctive bg colour like red or blue.
there is an option to sort Listened Subscriptions last if you click the button to the right of the + sign
i think the layout bugs all relate to the vertical track browser orientation which is something i overlooked
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i took out podcast directory because i didnt think people would actually be using it - am i wrong about that?
If it had a search feature I might use it a lot. As-is, it's pretty clunky, though I have used it when I have a good idea what I'm looking for.
maybe the indicator could be displayed on the corner of the cover with some distinctive bg colour like red or blue.
+1
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i took out podcast directory because i didnt think people would actually be using it - am i wrong about that?
it wasnt intentional that the subscription list follows the track browser orientation so i will fix that.
I guess vertical orientation will work better for people with widescreens so it should be configurable
I would definitely like a search function, but only if it works well. The previous (current?) one was really clunky, and most of the podcasts I listen to weren't listed. I think the search function needs to be both comprehensive, and make it easy to subscribe to listed feeds (to take out the fuss of finding and copy pasting weird rss urls). If that can't be done effectively, though, it's probably better to just leave it out.
As I mentioned before though, rhythmbox for ubuntu has a great search function. Somehow they can search the itunes store, which is without doubt the biggest directory, and if they can do it, I'm sure it could be implemented into musicbee.
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this should address the layout issues with vertical orientation - its now the default layout for the podcast panel. If you are finding cases where the main panel is not sizing correctly (for any node, not just podcasts) then please let me know as i had to make a change that affects all panels
http://www.mediafire.com/?w3gh8o0zcyj8faa
For the podcast directory, there is a public api for accessing the iTunes store for podcasts so i will look to intergrate that.
I am planning to provide filtering based on the iTunes podcast categories (Arts, Comedy, etc) and on selecting the category it shows all the available subscriptions along with a picture and subscribe button and ability to listen directly from the directory panel.
At this point i doubt i would be able to incorporate NPR and Digital Podcast Directory into the same panel
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In vertical orientation the Subscriptions list scrollbar appears only after resizing the window, switching to a different node and then back to Podcasts will make it disappear again.
Also it takes colors from Controls.ScrollBar instead of Panel.ScrollBar
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I have an issue since applying this update where, when using artist view, when I drill down into album and tracks view I see this:
edit:
image removed to reduce clutter
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could you send me your settings file (help/ support/ view settings) as i cant reproduce that
edit:
dont worry - i know how to now
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this should address the scrollbar issue and the artwork drill-down issue:
http://www.mediafire.com/?w3gh8o0zcyj8faa
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this should address the scrollbar issue and the artwork drill-down issue:
http://www.mediafire.com/?w3gh8o0zcyj8faa
Thanks. I don't seem to have the issue anymore.
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i've added back in the Podcast Directory functionality, which has been done now based on searching the iTunes store podcasts with a much nicer interface than the current version
http://www.mediafire.com/?w3gh8o0zcyj8faa
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one more enhancement - you can now additionally filter by category when scanning the podcast directory:
http://www.mediafire.com/?w3gh8o0zcyj8faa
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That podcast directory is definitely way nicer than before. Thanks, Steven!
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That is awesome! I've been listening to podcasts all evening - something I haven't done in a loooong time!
Is it intentional that the columns are not sortable by ascending/descending though?
It's no big deal, but I usually have newest episodes at the top!
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Great! But only if you know what you're looking for. It would be awesome if in addition to search you could also browse podcasts sorted by popularity.
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> It would be awesome if in addition to search you could also browse podcasts sorted by popularity.
I initially thought the same thing, but I've changed my mind. If you go to the directory (http://podcastdirectory.com) and use their own filters - Eg. podcasts -> comedy -> popular or ranking (remember to also set your language and type) - the list is actually quite bad; some podcasters obviously know how to 'game the system' and get to the top of the lists. Their recommendations are terrible too.
I got on far better by using the keyword search in Steven's dialogue.
One suggestion I'd make is to try to get the search to do partial word matches, if possible.
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If you go to the directory (http://podcastdirectory.com)
Is that listing the same as iTunes podcasts?
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> Is that listing the same as iTunes podcasts?
Ah, I hadn't noticed that Steven had switched to the itunes directory API; the categories still exactly match those from the podcastdirectory.com. I guess that all the big directories contain more-or-less the same podcasts as each other. But I don't know if iTunes would give better results than podcastdirectory.com for popular or rated (and I'm going to install iTunes to find out!).
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i'll add a button to sort the results AZ - otherwise it will use the default popularity sorting as set by the iTunes store
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One thing that would be really cool is if we could give MusicBee overrides for the album and artist fields, per podcast.
Album is already overriden with the subscription name so there shouldnt be any inconsistency with that.
I have added an Author field into the subscription definition, and that can be flagged to override the artist on each podcast
For the podcast directory i have added an AZ button - by default it sorts subscriptions by popularity but clicking the AZ button will sort alphabetically
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This is perfect!
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I have added an Author field into the subscription definition, and that can be flagged to override the artist on each podcast
Fantastic, thanks!
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Is there a way now to browse all available podcasts?
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One small issue. I want to subscribe to this podcast http://www.starshipsofa.com/feed/ and MusicBee says "Unable to verify the validity of this URL".
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did you try opening the url in a browser? it doesnt work for me
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Yes, it works from the browser (Internet Explorer).
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i cant help you i'm afraid
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It works in IE and in Chrome, but it takes a long time to load. MusicBee seems to drop out faster. Timeout expired?
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There is definitely a problem with the podcast url verification.
MusicBee fails to add subscription for http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/feed/rss/. This link works in IE and Chrome and also I can add this subscription in gPodder for example.
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i will increase the timeout but with that one it only links to html pages not the actual mp3 file.
MB doesnt support that type of subscription
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Thank you!
The link before was the wrong one, sorry. This is the correct one: http://feeds.feedburner.com/clarkesworldmagazine/podcast. Same issue with this one.
Also, if it is possible, could you add a more accurate error description? "Unable to verify the validity of this URL" doesn't provide any information about the root cause of the error. I think it should present different error messages for different situations: a timeout that expired, unable to resolve URL, information found at that URL is not supported by MusicBee, etc. This would give the user an idea about what went wrong.
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this has the increased timeout period when validating the subscription:
http://www.mediafire.com/?w3gh8o0zcyj8faa
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Thank you! It works!
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Found a small issue. If you download multiple files, in "Downloads" view, vertical scroll works only for the first columns. "Progress" column does not scroll together with the rest of the columns.
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This is a huge improvement to a really valuable part of the MusicBee experience. Thanks a lot! ;D
One note: When I patched your file from Nov 1st (xxxxxxxxxx.mediafire.com/?w3gh8o0zcyj8faa) it overwrote all my MP3 encoding and device Auto-sync settings. Is this normal behaviour?
Also, a podcast that worked recently (Bleep podcast from Bleep.com) now doesn't work. This might be an issue beyond MusicBee though, as in the MusicBee podcast directory it says the podcast subscription link is no longer valid.
It is however present in the itunes directory: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bleep-podcast/id397113038
Bleep.com says to use this url to subscribe via RSS : feed://podcast.bleep.com/weekly_podcast.xml
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its http://podcast.bleep.com/weekly_podcast.xml
and the xml returned by the link is not valid xml so cant be parsed. I expect they will correct that at some point.
There have been no changes to the device settings and testing an update from v2.2 to v2.3 just now works fine for me
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Hi Steven,
Thanks for confirming the feed error for me.
I don't know what happened with my settings disappearing, but everything is ok now.
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v2.3 is now being updated on:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_3/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
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Hello
Thanks to Steven, I now have a replacement for Ziepod, the best podcast manager I have seen. Is it maybe not as rich from a feature point of view for the moment, but already fully usable to handle tons of subscriptions :)
I have seen the v2.3 preview and have some requests:
- in the list of subscriptions, can there be an option to remove the picture and use the space to display as many subscriptions as possible? By having the podcast name and description in 2 columns instead of one below the other.
- also, could there be a way to have folders of subscriptions to classify them? :) Like here in Ziepod: http://vvcap.net/db/-Rxqcc8_hhPYKepLJ711.htp
- when subscribing to a podcast with Firefox ( for instance), I can select MusicBee as the subscribing application, but then MB tries to "play" the XML subscription file instead of subscribing to it (see http://vvcap.net/db/s7d9HBdtOlpfOhE9ffcB.htp ). Could that be changed?
- if that was not possible, then could the "+" sign add a subscription by pasting the content of the clipboard (which likely contains the URL of the XML subscription file at that moment) and validate the field automatically, saving 2 clicks :)
- a button to refresh podcasts could also be nice (in addition to the right click menu entry)
- can the podcast directory search window be made resizable? it is too large for my screen actually
- is there a way to get to the page the podcast subscription came from (likely the URL in <channel><link>), if any? Either in the embedde browser or in the default one.
That's all for the moment, thanks a lot for your excellent work!
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- when subscribing to a podcast with Firefox ( for instance), I can select MusicBee as the subscribing application, but then MB tries to "play" the XML subscription file instead of subscribing to it (see http://vvcap.net/db/s7d9HBdtOlpfOhE9ffcB.htp ). Could that be changed?
- can the podcast directory search window be made resizable? it is too large for my screen actually
- is there a way to get to the page the podcast subscription came from (likely the URL in <channel><link>), if any? Either in the embedde browser or in the default one.
I will do these items.
For the podcast directory i will make is smaller as i guess windows are being enlarged for your localisation.
For the home page of the subscription, i will add a new field. You will need to manually populate it yourself for existing subscriptions.
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http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_3/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
- home page for subscriptions which can be edited in the subscription definition - it will default to a value when the subscription is refreshed on startup. A home icon displays in the main panel and clicking it will open the home page in your default browser
- the subscription definition now includes a "grouping" field - it will default to the primary genre when the subscription is refreshed on startup. The grouping field can be used to filter the displayed subscriptions by clicking the new down arrow button beside the "Subscriptions" header in the main panel.
- podcast directory window made smaller to fit on 1024px screens
- you can now subscribe to a podcast subscription directly from Firefox (not sure how its done for other browsers)
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Thanks a lot, everything works fine here :)
And if I may insist for the last time, I promise: in addition and conjunction with the grouping, if there was all the same a way to remove the subscription image and the description, by just keeping the bare names of the subscription & the numbers of unread episodes, in order to display more subscriptions in the list, that would be the acme to me!
Cheers
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Subscribing from Firefox is a great addition! Is there some way for MusicBee to indicate that it's received the subscription? When I used it, it worked perfectly, but I had to go look at MusicBee to see that it had.
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Sorry if i'm being annoying with my criticism but it's all in good faith. I criticize because i care.
A home icon displays in the main panel and clicking it will open the home page in your default browser
I don't like how the title is now flush with episodes, it looks like a new episode with a funny icon . The title displayed as a grouping header would look much better (mockup (http://i.imgur.com/1Htis3h.png))
Personally i think the description panel would be a better place for the homepage link (also why this particular link opens in the system browser, while other links open in the built-in one. Can't there be one master setting to choose preferred browser?).
the new down arrow button beside the "Subscriptions" header in the main panel.
Great little feature but the arrow uses a different color than other buttons in the header and looks a bit out of place, at least on some of my skins. It is also easy to confuse with the sorting arrow, maybe a funnel icon would be more intuitive.
(http://i.imgur.com/hKl18ae.png)
It would be nice if the Subscriptions list had the same indentation and artwork border as the thumbnail browser.
Last but not least - new episodes counters. I was hoping i would get used to them but they're just so ugly. There already is "Controls.Counter" gui element so why not use that. It would look better and more consistent with the rest of the interface.
(http://i.imgur.com/TUOkjif.png)
Still i think the improvements that were recently made to the podcast section are great and i really enjoy using it.
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the following things have been done:
- changed the subscription filter icon
- home page icon no longer displays - its now accessed from right click/ Open Home Page
- option in the subscriptions layout to not show the artwork so each subscription shows on a single line
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_3/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
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perfect, thanks a lot :)
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Hi Steven
Would it be possible for you to find a way to mark episodes as "listened to" when they are listened to by streaming (by right-click or at the end of the episode streaming) ?
I'm currently listening to radio episodes via streaming (I just want to listen to them once, no need to download them for archive) and I forget which ones I already have heard :) But I don't want to delete the entry itself.
The problem is how to visually mark them? When still unlistened, such episodes will stay in grey without square mark, while downloaded and unlistened episodes have a square mark. Maybe striking them through?
Thanks
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@klint, afraid not
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> The problem is how to visually mark them?
Klint,
automatic
1)
When I start streaming, a little 'world' icon displays in the far-left column showing the location.
But it also indicates which podcasts I've heard. The disadvantage is that you can't clear it.
2)
Another way to do it would be to display the 'playcount' column. A '1' will display when you've streamed a track.
manual
1)
Display the 'love' column, and you can click in the column next to a track to mark it loved/banned
2)
Right-click the column header at the top of the podcast pane -> other fields -> choose the check-mark at the top.
A new column will appear to the left of the title with the check-mark symbol at the top.
If you click in the column next to a track, a check-mark will remind you that you've listened to that track.
Be careful not to click on the actual column header, because it will clear all current ticks.
Sometimes the ticks (which are white) are difficult to see depending on your skin. You can see them if you highlight the tracks.
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Thanks a lot for those tips :) I have adopted the "love" column.