Murphy's dashboard

Murphy started following the idea "Default column width setting" in Irradiated Software.

Murphy shared an idea in Irradiated Software on November 19, 2009 13:29:

Specify background and icon size in FinderMinder

I really don't like how Finder seems to save settings for every individual folder and I can never seem to get them all coordinated again. For example, I have changed the backgrounds of several folders to particular colors, and now I want to make them all a default color again. I want to be able to set some master background color or image that will apply to every folder. Finder gives the option to "Set to default" the current folders preferences, but this does no good because it wont override the existing settings for other folders, and it gives no options to clear the current settings of a particular folder. This basically means they are all stuck being different from one another.

Also, ever since Snow Leopard has given the ability to resize icons right from the slider on the bottom, I have managed to set different icon sizes for nearly every folder. Again, I wish there was a way to set a master setting using FinderMinder that would override all of their custom settings and make icons in every window a certain size. In case you do want a particular folder to have settings that are different from the master settings, the should be a program exclude list as well.

Murphy shared an idea in Irradiated Software on November 19, 2009 13:17:

Tiled-window mode

What I like most about SizeUp is being able to quickly resize windows to perfectly use up all of my screen space. I usually have something like a PDF open in Preview on the left side of the screen taking up about 70%, and Dictionary or TextEdit on the right side taking up 30%.

However, sometimes I want to be able to make the Preview window a little bigger, and I wish when I expanded it horizontally, the Dictionary/TextEdit would shrink horizontally so they still perfectly took up screen space. To accomplish this, I think SizeUp should have a "Tiled-window mode" or something where all of the current windows are forced to occupy all of the screen space. Resizing the edge of any window would also resize a neighboring window so that your wallpaper never even has a chance to peek through.

Also, it would be easy to switch the positions of programs, so that if you suddenly wanted the window on the left to switch places with the one on the right, you could just drag and drop one into the other's place and they would automatically switch places. It would be as easy as rearranging gadgets on an iGoogle page.

Murphy started following the idea "Automatic snapping on moving to screen-borders?" in Irradiated Software.

Murphy started following the idea "Feature request: deactivate SizeUp while certain apps are in focus" in Irradiated Software.

Murphy started following the idea "Need a Feather to songbird to become a simple player like winamp classic = winamp killer" in Songbird.

Murphy replied on November 09, 2009 18:07 to the idea "Interface redesign ideas from Firefox 3.7 and 4 mockups" in Songbird:

I didn't know about this before, but the Linux ones have been posted as well: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Proj...

That Ubuntu theme for FF 4.0 really looks beautiful.

I'm not sure if there is an easy way to find out when there are important updates like these to the Firefox wiki, but this blog seems to post updates about theme progress, so I subscribed to the RSS.

Murphy replied on November 07, 2009 14:50 to the idea "Make a fusion between Miro and Songbird" in Songbird:

I don't think they should fuse their code into one piece of software; I think it would be better if they just formed a kind of partnership where they link to one another and maybe try to share some code or interface design choices so that it is easier for people to discover both and use them side by side. Their goals are so similar that anyone who uses one would probably like to know about the other, so both websites should at least but links at the bottom of their home page just like thepiratebay links to Miro and Firefox to help spread the word.

Murphy started following the idea "Songbird should actively search for missing codecs during imports" in Songbird.

Murphy replied on November 03, 2009 19:23 to the idea "Interface redesign ideas from Firefox 3.7 and 4 mockups" in Songbird:

For those interested, there are finally some Mac mockups available: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4.0_...

I must admit that I abandoned Firefox a while ago because it is just so slow on my Mac, and started using Chrome. But I think both browsers are very respectable. It looks like 4.0 will function more similarly to Chrome, but still has its own identity, both of which are great things.

A comment on the idea "Album art media view ideas" in Songbird:

That is such a neat idea. I've always been unsure about whether or not it would be a good thing to have images of the artists in a media view because I try to not my perception of the artists influence how I feel about their music. They would definitely be fun to try at least, and as I mentioned before, it might not be too hard to do because it could use the images available on last.fm. They wouldn't be nice and cut out of course, but it would be a lot easier. In any case, your mockup looks really badass. :) – Murphy, on October 20, 2009 02:03

Murphy started following the idea "Auto-tag" in Songbird.

Murphy started following the idea "Rip a DVD (yes DVD not just CD's)." in Songbird.

Murphy replied on September 28, 2009 15:57 to the idea "Album art media view ideas" in Songbird:

Thank you for phrasing it as "people" coming up with rather complex concepts instead of "Murphy" =P.

Truthfully, if a really great media view was made I would probably use it all the time and rarely switch to any others, so it might seem unnecessary to have all of these different ones made into add-ons. However, I'm not sure what the perfect media view would be, and I think it is at least interesting to consider different versions and see which ones appeal to people. I continue making mockups to share ideas with people so they might have an easier time realizing an actual add-on one day.

I agree that existing software such as iTunes already has good media views, and I even posted some screenshots of it to show people what it can do in case they don't use the software. But even iTunes has a list view, a grid view, and a coverflow view, which shows that they don't know which one will be perfect for everybody. Which one of the three is your favorite? I know some people who use the grid view, and some people who miss seeing lists of their artists too much and use the filtered list views instead. All of my ideas are basically variations on these two types. In any case, I'm sure that at some point we will start seeing more media views come out, and maybe the team will even work on an official album art one. Until then, we can talk about which ones we like best so that developers might know what to focus on.

Murphy replied on September 26, 2009 01:07 to the idea "Album art media view ideas" in Songbird:

I made this mockup trying to make the simplest media view and interface for a music program I could. Maybe it could give people ideas for simpler feathers and media views.



I realized that the now-playing area of the program doubles a lot of information if you still have the song selected in the media view, so I excluded it and just tried to make the now playing information displayed as prominently in the media view as I could. In case you leave the now playing list and song, there is an arrow in the right side of the title bar that you could click to easily get back. I also wanted to show an album filter like this that is one cover wide because it uses space well, really makes the album you have selected stand out, and it would feel more like any other vertically-oriented list.

I described it in more detail here in case anyone is interested in this sort of thing.

Murphy replied on September 26, 2009 00:39 to the question "Ripping FLAC and cheerleading." in Songbird:

But if it were really random, there would always be the minutely small chance that the exact same song would be chosen again =P.

As for the flac ripping, I too am praying for OSX support. In the meantime though, there are some other programs you could use that are excellent for ripping to flac right now.

XLD is the program that what.cd recommends for ripping to flac in osx, and it is also great for encoding things to and from flac. You can check it out here: http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/ind...

And Max is another popular ripping program that can do flac as well: http://sbooth.org/Max/

With 2146 CDs though, you might have to worry about child labor laws when employing your daughter for the job :D. It might be worth it to rip to a few different computers to save time and keep your drives from over heating.

Murphy started following the idea "Call for developer: add-on to play podcasts & audiobook" in Songbird.

Murphy replied on September 16, 2009 23:34 to the idea "Album art media view ideas" in Songbird:

I can't try the Zune software because I use OSX, but I saw this screenshot of it today and I thought it was worth showing because it has a really nice design. I hope that people find all of these screenshots I keep posting as interesting as I do... What? What's that you say? No one does? Oh dear.

I like how instead of a service pane, they use a horizontal strip with all of the locations you can navigate to on top. I find that I spend nearly all of my time in Songbird and iTunes in my library, and the service pane is often just taking room away from the media. And I think the media view that they made is wonderful. It has a tall artist list like iTunes 9 has also added, but unlike iTunes, the album filter looks like it would really be worth using because it displays as an album art grid.



Microsoft doesn't really have have a track record of simple or pleasant interfaces, but I think this is pretty nice.

Murphy started following the idea "Space bar - Pause in Filter pane media view" in Songbird.

Murphy started following the idea "BookBird = songbird + ebooks + manage + bookworm" in Songbird.