Expandable View in the Artwork layout

[redwing]

My suggestion is to replace the current arrow keys    with a small scroll bar, something like this   

[Diederik]

My suggestion is to replace the current arrow keys    with a small scroll bar, something like this   

The problem with that though is that it will be quite inaccurate (highly sensitive) when there are lots of albums. Besides that, it would not be intuitive UI-wise; normally scroll bars are used underneath the section they apply to, not in the upper-right corner. Currently the only instance of MusicBee using one in the upper-right corner is to change the size of artwork, not to scroll through albums. This would therefore result in non-intuitive UI in my opinion.

Thanks for your thoughts on the issue though!

[mikebo]

The problem with that though is that it will be quite inaccurate (highly sensitive) when there are lots of albums. Besides that, it would not be intuitive UI-wise; normally scroll bars are used underneath the section they apply to, not in the upper-right corner. Currently the only instance of MusicBee using one in the upper-right corner is to change the size of artwork, not to scroll through albums. This would therefore result in non-intuitive UI in my opinion.

I like your way of thinking.

Assuming that we still constrain ourselves to one row here is my idea:
Lets say a full row displays an N number of albums. If the total number of albums is larger than N+4 (give or take) the arrows change direction and scrolling is vertical instead of horizontal and we can scroll full rows of albums. Easy to implement I guess but not very elegant.

I like your idea with the scrollbar better and if done right i don't think it would disrupt the look at all. What's great about the scrollbar, besides faster scrolling, is that it gives the users a better sense of how far along the list they are (and if you have 30+ albums that becomes important).
The scrollbar should only be visible when the mouse is over the row of albums, and it should fade in with a slight delay so that it doesn't interrupt vertical scrolling.
The scrollbar should be simpler than regular ones. It would only need a slider, arrows already are in the top right corner. It should be narrow

and expand on mouseover.

Horizontal scrolling (vertical too btw) should be smooth to give users a sense of direction when they scroll (this should be done anyway).
It's a lot of work but it would be worth it imo.


I would also like to propose some other changes:

- show a little bit of artwork of the leftmost album. Makes it easy to tell if there's anything more to scroll.
- show album count in top right corner IF they require scrolling AND 'show album count' in Artwork view configuration is disabled
- lower contrast for year text to shift the focus on the album title

And report some minor issues:
- play icon next to the album artist header has no anti-aliasing. The one next to the album title is fine
- album scrolling arrows are missing some pixels. Marked in red.

- if a skin enables artwork borders, they are drawn around album stacks (i know this doesn't necessarily belong in this topic but it's related and i don't want to make a separate bug report just for this)

[Steven]

whats wrong with Alumni's suggestion that the button increments a group of albums rather than a single album? Thats what i will probably change for this release. Also you can already hold the mouse down so it scrolls faster

[redwing]

The problem with that though is that it will be quite inaccurate (highly sensitive) when there are lots of albums. Besides that, it would not be intuitive UI-wise

It could be implemented that arrow keys of the keyboard can be used when the scroll thumb is selected to make the navigation more accurate. To me it's intuitive enough, but if that's the case Steven could improve it.

whats wrong with Alumni's suggestion that the button increments a group of albums rather than a single album? Thats what i will probably change for this release.

Personally I don't like those arrow buttons even if they could increment a group of albums. It gives no sense of how many albums the artist has and where those currently displayed albums stand.

Also you can already hold the mouse down so it scrolls faster

I don't see this working.

[Diederik]

I like your idea with the scrollbar better and if done right i don't think it would disrupt the look at all. What's great about the scrollbar, besides faster scrolling, is that it gives the users a better sense of how far along the list they are (and if you have 30+ albums that becomes important).
The scrollbar should only be visible when the mouse is over the row of albums, and it should fade in with a slight delay so that it doesn't interrupt vertical scrolling.
The scrollbar should be simpler than regular ones. It would only need a slider, arrows already are in the top right corner. It should be narrow

It would indeed be nice to have a better sense of where you are in the album list. I hadn't even considered the very minimal scroll bar you propose, and that could work with the overall look and feel of the Expendable View. Thanks for the mock-ups!

whats wrong with Alumni's suggestion that the button increments a group of albums rather than a single album? Thats what i will probably change for this release. Also you can already hold the mouse down so it scrolls faster

Alumni's suggestion would adequately resolve the problem I described. It perhaps won't be as elegant and precise as the scroll bar suggestion, but that is just my opinion. However, I don't see any increase in scroll speed when holding the mouse down.

[redwing]

Another solution to this would be to add unfold/fold button to the album list and allow it to display entire albums in multiple rows. Then navigating to a specific album won't be a problem as the current main panel scroll bar can be used. This would also make it easy to browse the entire album collection of a selected artist in artwork view.

[colagen]

This expendable view is a great addition : )

I strongly +1 the suggestion of mikebo to move the close button to the right, it's quite weird here on the left.

And secondly, i would suggest to remove the grey background color when "auto-pick panel color" is unchecked, in order to have something which will always match the current skin.
You could just add borders on top and on bottom, it would be enough to create a visual splitter. For ex for the top border you could put two 1px lines, one in black with a 20% opacity and just above one in white with a 20% opacity. Like that, you'll always have a visible line, whenever the skin background is white or black.
Or another solution would be to let the skin maker decides of the border and background color.

Here is an animation of those changes with the metro skin, and different ways to put the close button on the right, so you can judge yourself if those ideas are a visual improvement or not : )

[redwing]

I strongly +1 the suggestion of redwing to move the close button to the left, it's quite weird here on the right.

I don't recall I said anything about the button. Maybe somebody else?

Also the button is already on the left. I'd suggest you update your MB to the latest version: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Latest_Update

[colagen]

Ah yes, it was mikebo.
And i wrongly said left instead of right (i fixed the post, thanks), i guess you understand the idea, which is to follow a UI standard on Windows, which say "if this UI  block have a close button, you'll find it on the upper right corner"

[redwing]

If you edit any tags for tracks in artwork view grouped by (album) artist and click on the arrow buttons on album list, album covers disappear from the list. To fix this, you have to close down the expanded panel and reopen it.

[Steven]

trying now i cant reproduce this. I wont be able to look at it properly for a few days but if you are able to further define the conditions it happens it would be helpful eg. perhaps it only when you change the album artist

[redwing]

trying now i cant reproduce this. I wont be able to look at it properly for a few days but if you are able to further define the conditions it happens it would be helpful eg. perhaps it only when you change the album artist

As I said, it happens with editing any tag of tracks among the listed albums. You have to click on the arrow buttons on the top right corner of album list panel after editing tags, so the only condition is the artist should have more albums than displayed on the list.

[Steven]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/w37hzh4o95mlptj/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip

i have made the change where it increments the artist/ album scroll by a larger amount but as i dont have any artists with many albums its not easy for me to test. So if it doesnt work properly then let me know
This version also shows the panel layout button, even when the artwork header bar is hidden

[Alumni]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/w37hzh4o95mlptj/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip

i have made the change where it increments the artist/ album scroll by a larger amount but as i dont have any artists with many albums its not easy for me to test. So if it doesnt work properly then let me know
This version also shows the panel layout button, even when the artwork header bar is hidden

Wow that's so much better, thanks very much.

I especially like the album cover overlap effect, so you can see at a glance that there's more stuff.
Would it be possible to display the overlap in the opposite direction as well?
This is what it looks like for me: