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A small tweak I'd love to have...
In the cover view, I would like to be able to sort by multiple attributes, such as sorting books by author AND release date, or sorting albums by Artist AND release date. It's nice to be able to look at all the album covers in Cover view, but trying to remember which album was released before which is annoying, because you have to look at the details, instead of just looking at the album art and visually knowing right then and there.
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I totally agree. Almost put this into 2.0.2, but the UI is still befuddling me.
We actually DO sort by multiple criteria, always, it's just that you can only set one of them (the first one). So, we sort by creator, then title, then release date, then scan date.
Obviously, there are lots of situations where you want more control than this - I sort my books on my real shelves by author and then released date, so DL2 doesn't work. The problem is in figuring out a decent user-experience for multiple sort columns. iTunes 7.7 has kind of a neat one with "Albums (By Year)" which will toggle to "Albums (By Artist)" or whatever in the list view, but they don't have as many sorting options to contend with as we do
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Inappropriate?I totally agree. Almost put this into 2.0.2, but the UI is still befuddling me.
We actually DO sort by multiple criteria, always, it's just that you can only set one of them (the first one). So, we sort by creator, then title, then release date, then scan date.
Obviously, there are lots of situations where you want more control than this - I sort my books on my real shelves by author and then released date, so DL2 doesn't work. The problem is in figuring out a decent user-experience for multiple sort columns. iTunes 7.7 has kind of a neat one with "Albums (By Year)" which will toggle to "Albums (By Artist)" or whatever in the list view, but they don't have as many sorting options to contend with as we do
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A couple of ideas jump immediately to mind. In the shelf view, add a + button after the sorting options to add "then by" and then repeat the sort options currently there. Add a - button or change + to - if cmd or opt is held down to remove a criteria. Or right-click on it to bring up a menu with remove or make changing the first one remove all the additional ones (though this could be annoying).
In the list view, leave clicking on the column header as it is. Add cmd-clicking on a column header to add another sort criteria. It's probably easiest to make the current sort become the secondary and make the new cmd-click column be the primary. This should work for triple sorts, etc. This is basically saying that a cmd-click does a stable sort, keeping the existing ordering in the event of a tie. You could make it work the other way, with adding a then-by and another then-by. For the UI, keep the arrows and add a number saying if it's the 1st, 2nd, 3rd key, etc. Doing a single click resets to a single sort column. I've seen this done in some apps, but I forget which. I wish more did it. -
We had this originally -- I've seen apps that do it, as well (and FogBugz does it, for instance). Honestly, even *I* find this kind of thing confusing, and I'm an "expert" user. I really want a less frustrating user interface for sorting, but Matas and I were unable to come up with one, so we punted until we could figure it out.
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Inappropriate?I suppose the cmd-click could be confusing, but it's unlikely to be done accidently. Did you try the proposed + button to the shelf view? I don't see that as confusing. The excel model of using a dialog box with + buttons and vertically listing the "then by"s also seems clear.
Another idea. Since it's easy to order columns in the list view. Have a button to sort in the order of the columns. Hit it again to reverse the sort. Don't allow different columns to be sorted in fwd or reverse order.
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I have not tried it yet. It's another UI element that's on-screen all the time. Those are considered VERY expensive in my internal design spreadsheet, but it may be what I have to do.
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Inappropriate?Lemme give my shot at this....
How about clicking on the current sorting criteria (in the bar) brings up a "Sorting Criteria" dialog box. It has 1 option to start with that allows you to select the first sorting criteria (Title) then the sorting option (A-Z, Z-A), with the ability to add others. I picture the box being something similar to what comes up in a window when you hit command-f; you can add new search criteria by selecting the search criteria, and the restrictor, plus you have the ability to add new criteria, or take them away, using the + and - buttons.
This is a twist of a well-known dialog box for Mac users, and should be easy to figure out since it's 1, 2, 3 sorting options.
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Boxes are kind of hard to control: is it a separate window? Just a view? Does it scroll? Is it modal, or can you click on the window?
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Inappropriate?Firefox 3 has boxes (like the "enter password" box) that seem to fold down from the top of the window it's attached to. I think this would be a suitable solution because it's attached to the window with the shelf you're sorting, you wouldn't be able to move it around (or resize it), and the window could expand as new sorting options are added.
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Inappropriate?Ah, Wil, you already have something similar to what I was describing setup for new smart shelves. The window comes down and allows information to be entered, with the ability to add and subtract criteria. If you changed the content to be sorting types, and with the option to sort different variables (A-Z, Z-A, 1-9, 9-1....) then apply that to the shelf I think it would be a solution that's easy to understand for the users. What do you think?
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Inappropriate?I dunno -- I don't want to do something modal for sorts... I'm very picky!
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Why not modal for sort? Seems like it would work, not be confusing and the smart shelf analogy seems apt. Just curious.
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I just don't like modal panels, avoid them as much as I possibly can. Very heavy-duty for changing a sort.
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Inappropriate?Here's another idea for the UI. Just sort by the columns as they appear in the list view from left to right. They are already easily reordered by drag & drop and changes in the list view ordering already affect the shelf view, so there are few if any UI changes needed.
Clicking in the title would still change the order a-z or z-a but wouldn't change the order of the sort fields. There could be a 3rd state shown without an arrow up or down to show that column is not a sort field. This would make it easy to stop a column from being used to sort, though that would be more confusing sort fields aren't in contiguous columns. Prepending to the arrow the number of the sort order field might help make it clearer. So the first column might have 1^, and the second 2^, and the third nothing, and the fourth 3^, etc.
While it might be confusing to see a column reorder also result in a row reorder, but it shouldn't be too disconcerting after a couple of times. Just an idea to consider. -
Inappropriate?Just updated to 2.0.5 and really want a simple Artist/Year and Author/Year sort option. It is just the way I think about my collections, and want my Library 2 to display it that way. -
Inappropriate?Multiple-category sort options really need to be added. At the very least, Creator should NOT be the default sort view for anything other than books (Title should be, in my opinion). You'd be hard pressed to find anybody out there that sorts their movies by Director or Producer, or their games by Publisher. Additionally, many non-books with information pulled down from Amazon don't even have a Creator listed, which makes sorting by Creator completely useless.
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