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General => MusicBee Wishlist => Topic started by: Steven on July 02, 2012, 09:11:30 PM

Title: Custom Views
Post by: Steven on July 02, 2012, 09:11:30 PM
This has been requested a few times in different contexts and recently in connection with having an easily accessible way to load customised fields for switching between a pop and classicial view of fields.
This version has support for saving and editing custom views based on one of the standard layouts (Track Details, Album and Tracks and Artwork). The displayed fields, sort order and layout specific settings (set in the Customise Panel Settings dialog) are all saved.
To save a view, click the Panel Layout button to the left of the search box/ Saved Views/ Save View To...
Once saved, you can adjust and save any fields/panel layout settings.
To switch views just select the view from the Panel Layout button

http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Steven on July 02, 2012, 10:00:30 PM
which view do you have active in the main panel at the time and how are you opening the customise panel settings window?
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: tom_dl on July 02, 2012, 10:03:45 PM
I have Albums & Tracks open and the error comes up if I use the little button above the up arrow on the scroll bar of the main window or if i use the panel layout button to the left of the search box.

Thanks for any help
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Steven on July 02, 2012, 10:09:27 PM
the link has been updated with the correction for that:

http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: tom_dl on July 02, 2012, 10:14:00 PM
Fantastic. Cheers
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: jistme on July 03, 2012, 12:36:02 PM
Thanks a lot for implementing! This is very handy.

But....
A good deed never goes unpunished ;-)
I experience some strange (erronous) behaviour in saving presets.

Example:
- create track detail view with columns 'Artist' and 'Title', save as 'at.mbv'
- add a third column 'Album', and save as 'ata.mbv'
- choose saved view 'at.mbv' to display, and it is shown looking the same as 'ata.mbv' (three columns instead of two)

And a small request; make it possible to delete presets from the same menu?

 
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Greb on July 03, 2012, 01:59:11 PM
When I select 'Play' or 'Queue' an album, it changes song's order.

EDIT Fake alarm. It works fine now.
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Steven on July 03, 2012, 08:19:05 PM
- create track detail view with columns 'Artist' and 'Title', save as 'at.mbv'
- add a third column 'Album', and save as 'ata.mbv'
- choose saved view 'at.mbv' to display, and it is shown looking the same as 'ata.mbv' (three columns instead of two)
the implemented behavior is it saves immediately on an action such as changing columns. I accept it could be confusing in some scenarios like the one you mention if you are not aware of that, so i will look to make it more like editing/ saving a document but i anticipate some compilcations so might leave it as is

i think the windows Save As dialog box allows delete and rename of files, but i will probably create a delete menu item
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: jistme on July 03, 2012, 08:31:54 PM
Ok, I get it.

Some good advice to others then:

When you want to create a new view, don't start from one you already saved and want to keep using (it will be overwritten), but start from a default view.
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Steven on July 04, 2012, 10:33:21 PM
does anyone else have an opinion about the intuitiveness of using this function?
at the moment any changes to a view (such as column changes) are automatically saved straight away, so if your intention is to make changes and then save those changes to another view this approach can be confusing until you know this. However I think keeping changes unsaved until you Save the view to a new name or exit MB leads to other scenarios where MB would need to be guessing what the intention was.

So what i propose is to keep the immediate saving of changes the same as now, and the function name was changed from
"Save View Settings To..."
to
"Copy Current View Settings To..."

Do you think that would make it clearer?
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: jistme on July 04, 2012, 10:52:02 PM
This is a tricky one.

The confusion will probably mostly arise from users wondering sooner or later what happened to there carefully created and saved presets.
Naming it copy instead of save will not prevent that.

Might it be possible to achieve it so that as soon as a change is made to a view, it is immediatly saved in a preset named for example 'last used' and so not overwriting the custimized preset?
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: mtone on July 09, 2012, 04:51:06 AM
does anyone else have an opinion about the intuitiveness of using this function?

The auto-save behavior is fine imo. I think the term "Copy to" is clear, but "Saved views" may not be . It can imply that you can "save" them (manually). Calling it "Current View" or similar might dissipate any confusion upon auto-save.

I like the feature, and I have some wishlist for it  ;D

1) Would it be possible to include the column browser settings (how many columns, and what fields) in the saved view? For example, if someone creates a view for classical, one may want to replace the Album Artist column to Composer instead.

2) Would it be possible to assign/remember a saved view to a library (so it changes when switching)?
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Roadrunner on July 09, 2012, 10:09:18 AM
I agree with jistme and mtone, that viewes called "saved views" will be expected to be save... It doesn't matter much, if you call the other function "copy to" or "save as". Standard editors usually put a "*" behind the name, as soon as the content changes and more important: The user will be asked if he/she would like to save it, when he switches to another one or closes the program.

In contrast to mtone, I'd prefer a really save view, which cannot be destroyed accidentally.
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: paq on July 10, 2012, 03:59:54 AM
Wish: When creating or editing a playlist, auto and static ones, one can choose to have the playlist displayed using a particular view. It would be nice to see the custom views in this list of views to choose from :)
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: tom_dl on July 10, 2012, 02:10:39 PM
+1 to paq's wish
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Zak on July 13, 2012, 03:23:48 PM
The confusion will probably mostly arise from users wondering sooner or later what happened to there carefully created and saved presets.
Naming it copy instead of save will not prevent that.
This.

If I spend an hour getting my view "just right", I will then save it because I want to be able to return to that view at a later time. If MusicBee automatically saves all further changes, returning to the view I (thought I had) saved is no longer possible.

The less irritating/frustrating behaviour would be for MusicBee to just discard any further changes unless I ask for them to be saved again*. As a user I'm going to less annoyed by "Oops, I forgot to save my settings, now I have to do them again" than "What the ____? What happened to the settings I saved before?! That's not the view I saved!! Grrr!1!". The first one is my fault, the second is the program's fault.


*And no, prompting me with "Your view settings have changed since you last saved them? Discard all recent changes?  Yes | No" every time I change something is neither less irritating nor frustrating.
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Steven on July 22, 2012, 10:12:44 AM
i have added custom view support for playlists and library filters, so you can now choose to set a playlist or filter to a specific custom view
also the custom views now remember the (album/artist) grouping that is set on the Artwork layout
its in the next update
Title: Re: Custom Views
Post by: Steven on July 22, 2012, 11:53:37 AM
this has the change as described above:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip