Make a custom media view without any coding abilities

The greatest part about open software like Songbird is that you can customize it, but sometimes customizing software can be difficult when you lack coding or graphic design skills. People often wish that a certain add-on or feather existed, but they just can't actualize it. Personas for Songbird and Firefox is a great example of how the creation process of themes can be simplified so that users can make them without needing any of these skills.

I think that there should also be an easier way to make media views for Songbird, because it is currently too difficult for people to make a media view fit their needs. Simple changes like adding or removing filter panes from a media view is not possible. You need to use an add-on just to remove the genre pane from the filter media view that comes with Songbird, or to add another filter like "composer", as has been suggested.

The user could start by selecting an option to create a custom media view from the media view button.


Then, they could be given a blank canvas and some drag-and-dropable objects to create their media view with. Most views could be made just using a combination of positionable filters and a song list, but I also added the "Special" object for anything else. For example, the user could add a pane with the artist's wikipedia entry to the view like the Spotbird add-on has.


You would select the object you want, and drag it into the design area. When you drag an object to the edge of another one, a blue line could highlight which side it will place the object on, so you could position them wherever you wanted. Once placed, you could set the features of the object, such as what type of filter it is, and how its content is displayed. For example, you could display albums as a plain list, or as an album-art grid. Artists could be displayed in a plain text list as well, or could have a list with artist images.

After clicking save, you would give the view a name, and it would be added to your media view list.

Using this, the user could easily add or subtract a few filter panes, and even make more diverse media views like Vertical Filters, Album View, or a view like this. Most importantly, you could position all of the panes and display them however you wanted. Also, people trying to create their own media view add-ons could use this to form a foundation, and then they wouldn't have to code things like album art rendering themselves.
I think that giving users an easy way to make their own media views would greatly improve the Songbird experience.