moshy's dashboard

Hello,

I've uploaded a new version, give it a go!

You should be able to change it back if you go to Now Playing List preferences.

There's this one:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-1030...
and here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Fire... – moshy, on August 20, 2009 05:31

yeah .. pretend that last canvas isn't there – moshy, on August 19, 2009 13:03

I've been thinking that if it takes a while, it might be worth skipping 1.9.1 and going straight to 1.9.2, which I believe will come with a 3D context for <canvas>. This could mean an OpenGL powered coverflow, which would be awesome.</canvas>

No worries ;) – moshy, on August 19, 2009 11:07

Hello!
the new version of Now Playing List shouldn't start downloading all the tracks from a web playlist now. However it also won't queue them up either, I'm afraid it's either one or the other... Let me know if it's still downloading everything for you.

Firstly,
I love the way this thread has taken a life of it's own!

Secondly,
I've released a new version, which addresses most people's concerns. The three big improvements are filtering/searching is independent of the list, shuffling is integrated (no more disabled shuffled buttons, and extra randomise buttons) and column sorting works.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the feature where double clicking on a track queues it up, instead of replacing the now playing list. I was soo close, but there's a weird bug in Songbird itself preventing me from doing the final step. I shouldn't be telling you this but go to about:nowplayinglist for a taste of what I was gonna do. That page won't do anything though, it's just there to look pretty for the moment.

Cheers!

Wow thats a lot, thanks for the early feedback.

1. NPL repeats the first song many times
OK, I didn't spot this first time round (that's why I need testers)

2. I am aware the columns jump around heaps, I thought I'd tackle it later since its not as important

3. I got rid of all the preferences because they didn't really apply anymore, I'll put them back in where they make sense

4. DnD from filters is supposed to work .. wierd

5. Switching modes is difficult is because now there isn't really a distinction between then two, they both just display what is now playing. I know you could say synchronised/unsynchronised are modes but its more an internal implementation detail. Can you tell me your reasons for wanting to do this?
(Also you can just click the x button and it will empty the list and go to 'unsynchronised', or at least it should)

6. Overriding double clicking: I'm more concerned about fixing glitchy behaviour at this point, but I definitely haven't forgotton.

7. Believe it or not, this seemingly simple idea might actually be the most difficult thing to do, with the code the way it is, and will be the last thing I look at .. sorry

OK there's a new version uploaded, except you'll have to wait for Songbird 1.1 Beta 2 to use it (unless you download the nightlies).

@JeCh

1) "Personally I prefer to have the tracks sorted and in shuffle mode skip through the list up and down."
-- Well this is exactly what happens in the main window anyway. The reason why I do it like this is because lots of people like to use the now playing list as a queue, which requires the it to show the songs in the order they are queued up. If I did what you described, I would have to resort back to having 'modes' which didn't work. This way the transition from 'now playing' to 'queue' is seamless and doesn't require switching modes.
If you and others have strong objections I'll see if I can make a hidden preference or something, but I would rather get it working as it is first though.

2)
I've thought about making a column with the queue position as a number like Winamp, this is significantly more difficult than it looks due to the fact that a single playlist can contain the same track multiple times.

3)
Yeah, I hope to get a beta out soon so people can test it and see if there are better ways of doing this. Basically whenever the user starts playing a new playlist, the now playing list synchronises to it.

Thanks for your comments!

@Erik Ch

What you are talking about is probably best done in a separate feathers add-on. I'm not opposed to it, but it's not really one of my priorities now. Currently I'm concentrating on rewriting it from the ground up to work with Songbird 1.1. It should be a whole lot better by then.

There is a new version that works with Songbird 1.0, but I want to test it first before I upload it officially. You can get it here. Feature-wise it's not that much improved though.

I want to do a radical rewrite, but my plans depend on a patch to the core. I'll try and do that myself and see if it gets in, then maybe I'll be able to do what ruipenunes suggested......

Because this is a third-party add-on, and not part of the core, it will always feel and behave in an unintegrated manner. The best I can do is try and make improvements where it is actually possible.
The next version is going to have some more options:



I think there are more requested still ...

I like these ideas, unfortunately it is impossible to get the songs to appear in the order they are going to play in when shuffle is on. This means that I can't do a lot of what you suggest. – moshy, on December 10, 2008 10:33

Hello Moshy!

Thanks for paying attention to the suggestions made. I think the new version is a step forward, although there's still a lot to get better, as the add-on is yet a little buggy.

Anyway, I've been testing it, but only now did I have the time to post here.

I found a significant number of bugs. Which leads me to think that somehow one should make a reflection on why is this add-on needed and what it should exactly do.

In my opinion it should simply keep track of what was played, what's playing and what will be played, and of course give the user the chance to add new songs and change the order they're supposed to play.

Let me try to describe the behaviour I'm thinking:

- Situation 1 - I open SB. Double click a song in the library or in a playlist. It starts playing. In this situation there should be a Now Playing option that basically would show the double clicked song and the ones who follow it in the library or playlist.

- Situation 2 - I double click another song in the library or playlist. The same thing happens, clearing the previous selection. However if I do this from within the Now Playing list I'm simply skipping the song that was being played and playing a new one.

- Situation 3 - I find a new song in the library or playlist that I want to listen to. I right click it and choose "Queue Now". By doing this I'm adding this song to the previously chosen selection, interrupting the song that was playing and starting this new one.

- Situation 4 - I find a new song in the library or playlist that I want to listen to. I right click it and choose "Queue Next". Once again I'm adding this new song to the selection, although this time it doesn't interrupt playback. It will only start once the current song ends.

- Situation 5 - I find a new song in the library or playlist that I want to listen to. I right click it and choose "Queue Last". This way I'm adding the chosen song to the end of the previous selection.

- Situation 6 - I'm checking the Now Playing list. I decide to change the playback order. I have the possibility to drag songs up or down and then drop them in their new position. This should be a possibility in every SB playlist, but not in the library.

- Situation 7 - I'm checking the Now Playing list. Just like it presently happens, I can reorder the tracks in the list by album, track title... However when I do this, I'm not reordering the entire library or playlists.

- Situation 8 - I close songbird, putting a stop to my selection. I open it again. The selection I had made is still there, so I can keep listening to it.

This is in a very simplistic way, how I think this add-on should behave. I'm probably forgetting something. If that's the case, I'm sorry.

Anyway, having this into consideration, here are some (re)suggestions:
- It should be possible to queue songs from playlists. Right now one can only do it from within the library.
- As I've said in my original post, I think the Play Queue should keep track of the tracks I've already heard, not only the one I'm listening to or the ones who follow it. Right now it still eliminates the songs as they get to be played.
- I think there should be an icon to represent Play Queue in the tree. It would look a whole lot better as it would integrate better with the SB design.
- Once again, as I said in my original post, I think that when I close songbird, putting a stop to my selection, I expect it to remember that selection the next time I open it. This still doesn't happen.
- The usual behaviour when double clicking a song is to eliminate the previously chosen selection to start a new one. This means, as someone said, that in order to prevent this behaviour, the user should be able to decide what a double click does or, at least, have the chance to undo the double click who ruined the selection made.
- If you think double clicking should behave as I've said before, then there should be a "Queue Now" option, that basically would interrupt playback, starting to play the new song without eliminating the selection made.

This is it. I hope this post, can be of some help to discuss what this add-on and Songbird should do on this matter.

Keep up the work.

@JeCh
Re Winamp: The best I've got as of now is right-click > Queue Last for that, which does the same thing.

Hi Cosmo,

does this still happen with the new version of the addon (0.6.0) and Songbird 1.0rc2, because a lot has changed in both since.

thanks.

Hello ruipenunes,
I'm finally getting round to you - I hope you get email-notified of comments!
Some things you said I really like and have implemented, some things you said I also like but haven't done yet, and some things just aren't possible.

I've done 'Play Next' and 'Play Last', except I've called them 'Queue Next' 'Queue Last' because the 'now playing' mode is different to the 'queue/custom' mode. For reasons on why I've designed the addon with two modes you can read this article that I wrote to explain this. I know it can be confusing to people coming from other media players. If you don't like this, then I'm sorry but this is the way it has to be for now.

I also wanted to add hotkeys to these commands but for some reason the code didn't work....

For 'Play Now' you can just double-click the track. I know you and lots of others said that double-clicking should add the track to the queue instead of just playing it but this would be a huge departure from the expected behaviour. I'm not sure what the behaviour in Winamp is though, but this idea could theoretically be done, it's just not a priority. I'll most likely implement it as an option later on.

I think that the addon already saves the contents of the playlist across sessions. By 'save' I mean not delete. Are you referring to the 'now playing' mode or the custom/queue mode? Because the 'now playing' mode will by definition start empty as Songbird starts with nothing playing.

A lot of the other suggestions such as changing the interface of Songbird are outside the scope of the extension.

I think it is also important to keep in mind that Songbird is primarily used to gather and organise music libraries. It is not a stand-alone player like Real Player (correct me if I'm wrong). What I mean by this is that you would never see a 'Songbird Player' embedded in a webpage for instance. Does this make sense?

Cheers!

Fixed in the next version of the add-on which has been uploaded. It no longer works with Songbird 0.7 though, so you have to be using 1.0RC2 or wait for Songbird 1.0 to be officially released.