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)