Murphy's dashboard

If anyone wants to work on the realization of this great idea:

Probably the fastes & best way to implement it, is to write a user script for the Ubiquity-Addon (about:ubiquity). I can think only of Pros:

1.) You don't have to worry much about interface implementation & add-on management stuff. You only need Javascript.
2.) It would be available right now through Ubiquity.
3.) Some time after Taskfox hits Firefox final, it probably will be available in Songbird, too. Ubiquity & Taskfox are very similar, so the script probably don't need many adjustments => voilà, we have our tuned awesomebar.

It's gradually becoming possible. :) – Murphy, on June 26, 2009 14:59

I was trying to design it so that you could find whatever you wanted to play from your library quickly, whether it was an individual song, album, artist, or playlist. I'm not quite sure what you meant about the results opening in a tab, because it seems like that would perform the exact same function as the current filter bar in Songbird; if you type a term into the filter bar, it basically gives you a page of results like you suggested. I was trying to make it so that you could play what you wanted to quickly from the drop down menu without having to alter your actual library content like filtering does; basically a souped up jump-to-file dialog incorporated into the awesome bar.

I have a little over 12,000 songs in my library, so I know there can be a lot of items to sift through, but in testing, by the time I typed 3 or 4 letters of the query, it is basically narrowed down to what I was looking for. Just like you said, if you start typing in a few letters of a song named "xyz123", it would be displayed and you could play it very quickly. However, in your first mockup, you started typing in the band's name instead of the song name, which would make it tough to get individual results for songs. I think if I wanted to play a specific song, I would start searching for the song's name, and if I wanted to play an entire artist or album, I would start searching for the artist or album by name.

You said you wanted it to be like Firefox, which is what I was actually basing my design off of. The awesome bar always lists all of the results for the term you type in, and with Taskfox incorporated into the program in the future, the awesome bar will also be able to navigate further into results to get more information about them like I had in the mockup. I was afraid that making a page with results would be more like a Google search than Firefox's awesome bar, and it would be counterintuitive, since the purpose of the bar is to enable you to find something quickly and undisruptively. – Murphy, on June 25, 2009 15:08

Are you talking about typing inside of a filter to get to an item quickly? I have problems with this all the time as well, but I've never gotten a message pop up like you did.
I made a topic with problems I was having:
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...

There are a few other topics with this suggestion that you can support.

http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...

http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...

http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...

I have been thinking about how this could work, and I've come up with some ideas. I added images to the search results to help you visually find what you are looking for. Albums and songs use cover artwork, and the artist uses last.fm artwork.



The results could include artists, albums, songs, and playlists. I based some of the ideas in this mockup off of Google's Quick Search Box. However, Quick Search Box uses the "more items" method like in your mockup, but I just feel like it makes you do too much unnecessary navigating. In this mockup I use a scrollbar like Firefox's awesome bar does instead. I also added the option to navigate into the items. This is why there are arrows at the right side of the results. You could use the keyboard arrows to go back and forth. For example, hitting right on an artist would display all of the albums.



After hitting right on an album or playlist, it could present you with the list of songs. At any time you could hit enter to play the item. You could even hit right on a song to have some options instead of just playing it. This could help people quickly perform tasks on a song such as adding it to the now playing list, editing the metadata, rating it, and tagging it. Add-ons could even add new tasks such as finding lyrics or a tab of the song.



edit - Damn, I always find some mistake in my mockups after I post them. Pretend I actually have a playlist called "Acoustic Beatles Songs". :P

For Quicksilver fans, check out Google's Quick Search Box, because it is very similar and developed by the person who developed Quicksilver. I also made a GS topic suggesting a module for it: http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...

I love reading about projects in the Mozilla Labs like Jetpack and Ubiquity, and I am excited that they could be incorporated into Songbird one day because it shares code with Firefox. Maybe when some of the labs projects are further along and eventually integrated with Firefox, the Songbird team will be more likely to add them. Jetpack would be a great way for people to make add-ons for Songbird more easily, and would hopefully make the community more involved with extending it like it has with Firefox.

I noted in another thread as well that when I delete files from the library with media management enabled, it removes them permanently instead of sending them to the trash/recycle bin. I think they should release an update to 1.2 to fix this so people don't start accidentally deleting files without being able to recover them.

Oh, I completely agree! I think that it would be more natural to access the browser in Songbird if the awesome bar was always visible. Check out this old topic I made that has a similar idea. I think that the awesome bar would really feel right being visible all the time if it could interact with your library more. I never like using the filter bar method in Songbird or iTunes because I can always just narrow down results with filters, and it seems to disrupt your library by changing what appears in the filters. A search option like you described could basically incorporate the jump-to-file dialog into the awesome bar, and it would enable you to quickly find and play a song, album, or artist. It would double as the URL bar so you easily navigate to a website, just like with the awesome bar. And as I said in the Taskbird thread, it could help you perform common tasks in the library like tagging files.

G'day,

In response I have posted the following bug reports:
1) http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...
(This adds a dialog that warns the user that the layout of files will be changed when turning managed music on).

2) http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...
(This allows users to set whether music should be moved or copied into the directory)

3) http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...
(This allows easier access to help in songbird)

4) http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...
(Adds detailed help to Manage Music menu).

I do agree something should be done to make it clearer (at the very least #4 at a minimum should be added). All 4 of these solve the problem completely as well as fixing a few other minor problems, and the most useful fix also happens to be the easiest.

Andrew