Author Topic: Follow cursor and autoscroll  (Read 13036 times)

Dinovic

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Hi. First of all thanks for creating such a nice manager and player!
I'm coming from foobar and really miss the "Playback follows cursor" toggle which automatically queues the next song to the selected one from your playlist. I use it very often because I don't work with the keyboard that much. I mostly work with a wacom drawing tablet.

I really hope someone can implement it. If you don't understand how it internally works here's the steps that happen.

1. Bind a function to the eventlistener which checks whether a song has finished playback.
2. In the function you check if a different song than the finished song is selected. If so play that song. If not use the default action after a song completes(play next, shuffle).

Another thing is since I can't scroll with my pen tablet, I'd really love an option of using the middle mouse button as a way to scroll up and down the playlist, using the scrollbar is too cumbersome to select and drag with the pen.
I know the middle mouse click currently is set to find Artists or Songs by the column you click on. I was hoping you could configure the behavior yourself.
If someone could implement it, please don't make it like Internet Explorer's autoscroll where moving the mouse a little bit up/down, while you hold the mid mouse button, causes you to scroll the entire document in a blink. Firefox's autoscroll behaviour is what I'd hope to see.

Small usability features like this would really help. Thanks for your time.

Benny//

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I'm also a pen tablet user and these features would really make my experience with MusicBee more pleasant.

Steven

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i will look to do the "Playback follows cursor" request but one question i have - what if you select a file then decide you dont want it play, and you want the default next to play. At least with MB there isnt a very easy way to have nothing selected. And having a play with foobar i couldnt see a way either. So it seems to me with this option enabled you are forced to keep selecting the next file or stuck having to wait until the current song has finished before being able to select another file

Dinovic

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Hi Steven. Thanks for your time and work, I really appreciate it.
Quote
what if you select a file then decide you dont want it play, and you want the default next to play.
The "Playback follows cursor" is a toggle which you can activate or deactivate at any time. If you don't want it to skip to the song you've selected you either disable the toggle OR you select the current playing song.
When the current playing song is selected it defaults to the normal behavior.

Quote
So it seems to me with this option enabled you are forced to keep selecting the next file or stuck having to wait until the current song has finished before being able to select another file
Actually it is not at all like this. When nothing or the current song is selected as the next song it defaults to the normal playing behavior(play next, shuffle, repeat...) and what's very important it should automatically select that song so it doesn't go in a loop. You are not forced to select anything next.

Also to keep in mind is that when you make a selection it should not queue that song directly. Only queue it to play next when the current playing song has actually finished. There must be some way to bind this method in the event when a song completes.
Also the selection should only be one selected song and not multiple, foobar automatically picks the last selected song if there are multiple selected.

To write it down in simple to understand code(i made up the names):

Code
if(song_selected && song_selected != song_finished){
    queueNext(song_selected);
}
doNormalBehavior();
selectCurrentSong(); // So it doesn't play in a loop

I hope it's clear to you now.

Steven

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the change is already in the last version i posted:
http://www.mediafire.com/?a7480xtqxw1655q

if multiple files are selected, it selects the first one. Otherwise its as you describe. The option is set in the Now Playing preferences
Last Edit: January 29, 2012, 02:13:57 PM by Steven

Dinovic

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the change is already in the last version i posted:
http://www.mediafire.com/?a7480xtqxw1655q

if multiple files are selected, it selects the first one. Otherwise its as you describe. The option is set in the Now Playing preferences

Thanks for your quick response and ultra-fast implementation!
I tried the file out, but when I activate the "Playback follow cursor" toggle it just skips to the next track and not the one I selected. Am I missing anything?


Steven

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Thorbjorn

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Is this supposed to work only in the now playing panel or in the main panel as well? I have been using it for a while, but have just recently noticed it also works in the main panel, which is quite annoying. Makes it kind of useless if I can't select anything in the main panel while I'm playing music. Haven't noticed it before so is it a new bug or is that just how it's implemented?

Steven

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it is intentional - i dont make use of this function myself so would rather have other people comment on whether they think it takes away from the functionality too much if it only works from the now playing panel.

Steven

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i think i will leave the behavior as-is for 2.0 of musicbee but change it in 2.1 so it only applies to the Now Playing panel and see if anyone objects