So over the last week or so I have been looking at the recent updates to both the plugin and the readme and have been taking some notes.
Here they are:
- about the interface
This button will add a star to filter out presets that have a hotkey assigned to them.
But at every subsequent click it will just be adding other stars.
I think it would be better if it would toggle between one star vs. no star.
Then also the 'close' button next to it could be removed.
Shouldn't it be: (separated by ; )
It doesn't require two semi-colons, or does it?
A nitpick:
Personally I find the bold text not so nice to read. Perhaps make it regular. Maybe in a nice blue colour?
And perhaps make the header say: 'Preset description:'
These two buttons are next to each other:
But one pertains specifically to presets, the other more to (changed) settings. A novice user would not understand that.
It would help if the 10 buttons on the left and the 4 on the right had some more obvious visual separation.
Maybe something like this:
This doesn't seem to work properly.
When selecting a predefined preset and use 'Rename/Edit' to edit the preset and then save it, the indicator will not say 'customised by user'.
(I'm not even sure it is supposed to be allowed to edit a predefined preset?)
When selecting a predefined preset and use 'Copy', make some change and save it, it will highlight 'User preset', not 'customised by user'.
So when should 'customised by user' get highlighted?
But, this also goes to the point that I have made earlier: Why not keep things simple, and use only two concepts of presets:
Just 'predefined preset' and 'custom preset'.
There are now: Predefined presets, Customised predefined presets, Customised by user presets, Shared presets, Own presets, and Custom presets.
(and maybe I missed some more)
This one says 'shared presets'.
But in fact it is about 'custom presets'. If a preset has been shared with somebody or not is irrelevant here.
And there is no such thing as presets that
can be shared with other people (or different installations) vs. presets that
can't.
(well, some will work and some won't, depending on what custom or virtual tags it references, but that's a different matter?)resulting pop-up balloons with texts like these certainly make no easy read:
These two buttons both pertain to 'custom presets':
The 'export' button specifies it is about custom presets, the 'import' one doesn't.
And the export balloon mentions 'user presets', while the import balloon mentions 'shared presets'.
Why not name these buttons: 'Export custom…' and 'Import custom…'
And make both balloons use the words 'custom presets' instead of 'user' and 'shared'.
b.t.w.
If you
do believe it is important to have a certain type of preset being described as 'customised predefined preset', perhaps change it to 'modified predefined preset'?
I think it's equally bad, but it would at least create some extra linguistic distance between it and 'custom preset'.
I think I understand part of the reason that this all came to be is the effort to stuff a lot of explanatory information and variables into the user interface. (both in buttons and balloons)
But I think the interface itself should be as clean and non-confusing as possible.
The same goes for pop-up balloons. They disappear after a couple of seconds and should be brief and comprehensible.
Any further explanations can well go into manuals.
Which brings me to another suggestion:
Have a 'help' button in the main panel. (or maybe a 'documentation' button)
Which leads to a webpage that contains detailed and updated information on the buttons and functions of AS&R.
- - -
- about the forum topic & the plugin webpage:
Personally I like it if a plugin forum topic (the first post), or a plugin webpage contains a direct download link and perhaps a very brief explanation on how to install it.
Neither the AT&RT forum page, nor the plugin webpage has that, and the user will need to do more clicking to get to that.
Not a big problem, a user may be asked of to make some effort, but I think it wouldn't hurt making things a bit easier.
Not only for novice users, I would also like it if could download a new plugin version by simply clicking one link in the first forum post.
(or maybe Phred could add another link in his signature ;-)
- - -
- uninstalling the plugin
Uninstalling the plugin using MB's configuration panel does not remove the folders 'RU' and 'ASR presets'
Shouldn't it?
- - -
- about the readme.txt
1.
The readme text has a chapter on updating the plugin.
For updating a portable version of MB it explains that it allows for updating the plugin itself only.
But under 'OTHERWISE' it does not explain what gets updated exactly.
So is that updating procedure in fact identical to doing a clean install of the plugin?
Are predefined or custom presets affected in anyway?
2.
There is a chapter: UPDATING THE ASR PRESETS:
1 – Open MusicBee. From the menubar > Tools > Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools > Advanced Search & Replace.
2a – Click the "Install All" button to install all predefined ASR presets. This installs all predefined presets and will update to the latest version any preset(s) that have already been installed.
OR
2b – Click the "Install New" button to (re)install predefined presets which were created or updated by the plugin developer since the last time you installed or updated them by either of two methods.It doesn't say anything about how the user would acquire these updated predefined presets.
And I am assuming that the 'Install new' button does not have the functionality to download new presets by itself.
(which would not be a bad idea?)
So there probably should be some steps added to the tutorial about downloading and extracting files?
The same goes for the related buttons in the interface itself.
When a user clicks the 'Install new' button (and predefined presets are already present), it will just say that nothing was changed:
not giving any explanation to the user about the mechanics behind it.
He would have to guess that a newer set of presets should have been downloaded first.
I'm not sure about how to improve on that exactly, but one option could be to have that button opening a filebrowser that defaults to the location where the plugin is looking for 'updated presets'. That would make things much more obvious to the user.
And pressing 'Install all' can result in this:
So it's a successful error? ;-)
Also, contrary to what it says, nothing was updated in this case.
It will also say this if you click the button and hadn't downloaded any new presets at all.
- - -
I'm sorry if all this comes across at criticism.
While it probably is in a way, I really like the improvements that have been made over the last couple of weeks/months.
So this is just another effort in trying to help making things even better…