Murphy's dashboard

Murphy started following the idea "Private messaging users" in Get Satisfaction.

Murphy started following the idea "Create a private messaging system" in Get Satisfaction.

Murphy started following the idea "How about making this community multilingual?" in Get Satisfaction.

Murphy shared an idea in Get Satisfaction on July 15, 2009 23:38:

Bring back text that says how long ago someone replied to a topic

Now, when a topic appears in recent activity because it is "active", there is no way to tell if it is active because someone posted in it or because someone just pressed the "I like this idea!" button. I have to keep opening the topics just to check and see if a new post has been made. It used to say something like "[This user] replied 5 minutes ago", so I knew that a post had been made and I would open the topic to read it. Now, unless you are watching the topic and get an email response, there is no way to know if someone actually replied to a topic.

Murphy started following the idea ""Agree with praise" button" in Get Satisfaction.

Murphy replied on July 15, 2009 23:07 to the question "Are there plans to make a Songbird discussion forum?" in Songbird:

It just seems like now, every time I load getsatisfaction.com/songbird, all of the topics are the same except for the 6 displayed under recent activity. For people who come here often to discuss ideas, it can be hard to see what topics are actually popular with discussion. Viewing All topics makes it better though. But now, when a topic is "active", it doesn't even say if someone made a new post or if it just got bumped up by someone pressing the "I like this idea!" button, so I keep checking topics that don't have any new comments in them. I just wish it would go back to showing you if someone posted in a topic, and maybe color the backdrops of the topics again so the site doesn't look so bland. :P

It did finally motivate me to seek out the GetSatisfaction GetSatisfaction page and comment about the service.

Murphy replied on July 15, 2009 16:17 to the question "Are there plans to make a Songbird discussion forum?" in Songbird:

I think that there could be better community discussion and collaboration on projects in a more forum-like Songbird discussion board. The way GetSatisfaction has been updated today, it seems to be focused more on helping new people find an answer quickly instead of keeping regular people participating in discussion. I did find that you can get it more like the old way by viewing all topics.

I would like to have more topics though like the open comment thread or the release naming convention thread, more for discussion than getting help to problems. Or see topics where people could help each other on add-ons, and discuss broader topics like the general interface of Songbird. I think an open-source project might need a more robust discussion forum to help it evolve through the progress of the community.

Murphy replied on July 15, 2009 16:12 to the update "Introducing Get Satisfaction 2.0: A New Take on Customer Community" in Get Satisfaction:

I do not like it much either. I have always posted regularly on the Songbird GetSatisfaction discussion group, but the new design feels more focused on helping new people find answers quickly than it does on helping existing users collaborate, participate, and discuss the product in depth. Going to the All topics view helps restore the main page to the more content-filled style, but it is still a little drab looking since the topics are no longer colored based on their type. I'm also having a problem going to pages of search results past the first page.

Murphy started following the idea "Open Comment Thread..." in Songbird.

Murphy replied on July 15, 2009 03:12 to the idea "Album art media view ideas" in Songbird:

A new music program for OSX called ecoute was recently released, and I thought its media view was neat and worth sharing. My favorite part about it is how the the artist column is tall like in this mockup; it just feels right seeing your artists in a longer list instead of a stubby one. It also has the album art next to the album names, which I think is the best way to utilize album art in a media view.



There is no song list showing because it fills the window after you select an album. I might prefer that the program have a pane always showing with the song list instead of navigating to it, but I still think it is a great interface to use and I wish that some Songbird media views were so simple.

Murphy replied on July 15, 2009 03:01 to the idea "non-modal interface for importing music and fetching album artwork mock-up included" in Songbird:

I completely agree! One of my favorite parts of Firefox is how the dialogs and find function are so non-invasive.



The dialogs in Songbird, such as for importing songs, getting album art, or changing metadata, feel like roadblocks. The only thing you can do in the program is watch the progress bars move along and wait until the program gives you back control. I think the non-modal type of progress bar in your mockup would be perfect. I am hoping that the team improves some parts of Songbird's interface in one of the upcoming releases, because things like this would make the program feel simpler and more responsive.

And I like reading Aza's blog sometimes too. :)

Murphy started following the idea "non-modal interface for importing music and fetching album artwork mock-up included" in Songbird.

A comment on the idea "Awesome Library Bar!" in Songbird:

I can't wait to see how it is turning out Simon. To improve performance while searching, could you index all of the information needed from a person's library as a database, so it doesn't need to be gathered while the search is taking place? I don't know much about it, but I believe this is how a search engine or search on your computer is performed. For example, every once in a while, the add-on could index, or calculate the number of albums per each artist and songs per each album, and store the numbers in a database. Then when you perform a search, it could just retrieve the information it needs instead of having to calculate it on the spot.

This database could also hold sorting information. Every time you type a certain query and then choose a result from the drop down list, you could add to a tally for that result in the database, and results could be ranked based on how often you choose them in a search. For example, with Quicksilver on OSX, the first time I searched for the term "fi", Finder was the first result and Firefox was the second result. But since I select Firefox from the results more often than Finder, Firefox is now the number one result when I type in "fi" and Finder has been moved down to the second result. This makes it so that you can find and select the result you are most likely searching for more quickly. – Murphy, on July 13, 2009 18:34

Murphy replied on July 13, 2009 15:59 to the idea "HTML5 \'audio\' and \'video\' tags via GStreamer" in Songbird:

I think this is a great idea. The HTML 5 audio and video tags will make the web a lot more media friendly, and Songbird easily has the ability to handle any codec someone wants to use with them, even though the main browsers are rejecting certain codecs for different reasons.

I read this article about the topic just the other day and it is very interesting.

Murphy started following the question "Why can't I customize my display panes???" in Songbird.

Murphy started following the idea "Songbird update their browser?" in Songbird.

Murphy started following the idea "Songbird update their browser?" in Songbird.

Murphy started following the question "Firefox 3.5/Gecko 1.9.1 engine for Songbird 1.3 for better speed/features" in Songbird.

Murphy replied on July 09, 2009 16:28 to the idea "Double-click the playlist to begin playback" in Songbird:

I think this would be more useful than renaming as well. I posted an idea a while ago to make playlists easier to play, because I think there should be some way to play one that you want quickly from the beginning.

Murphy started following the idea "HTML5 \'audio\' and \'video\' tags via GStreamer" in Songbird.