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Songbird Search Bar Enhancement
I do a lot of random searches within my music. Right now I can only do a general search and any possible hits are included in the results. Which, ya know, is cool and all. But I'd like the ability to make more refine searches without resorting to a smartlist. Smartlists are great for what they do, but they're not really "spontaneous" with the clicking and the naming and the selecting of features, etc... All that for a playlist that I don't even want to keep.
Plus I'm really, really, lazy.
So, in what ways can we enhance the search bar without it getting in the way of how it currently works?
This is what I've been able to come up with so far:
Rating: The "*" symbol isn't used in most track/album/artist names so why not have it represent the Star Rating Songbird currently uses? The default would be all ratings, then with each * typed it restricts the results to that rating or higher. Type "happy *****" and get the results for "happy" filtered down to 5 star ratings only.
Time: Again, the ":" is little used, but it is for denoting time. HH:MM:SS So following the pattern set above, if I type 2:00 it would restrict to songs longer then 2 min's. Which is great, but sometimes you want it the other way. So how about putting a "-" at the beginning to invert the search? Type "Iron Butterfly -5:00" would definitely filter out In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. There are also situations where you'd like a range of times. So let's reuse the "-" so we could type in 2:00-5:00 as a range. Type "jazz 2:00-5:00" to get jazz songs on the short side of things without being too short.
Year: This is a slightly more difficult thing to do, in a way. Years are 4 digit numbers, 1976, which is rare for a name but not unheard of. (I'm looking at you Smashing Pumpkins.) But once again, a range could be useful. "1959-1975" could give you all the songs published during the Vietnam War. But there's also a shortcut we could use for year. Music styles can alter dramatically based on era, The 60's, The 70's, etc. So let "60's" and "70's" and all the others act as shortcuts for the decades. Type "jazz 50's" to get all the results for jazz within 1950 to 1959. (Or should that be 1951 to 1960?)
So, a quick example of everything together. "Elton John *** 70's -6:00" That would give me everything by Elton John released in the 70's that I've rated 3 stars or higher and less then 6 min's. And on the fly I could replace Elton John with Rolling Stones without having to mess with the settings of a smartlist.
Yay!
As for search terms that are currently used, I'd also like to be able to "invert" them with a "-" in front. Such as "home -country" would at the very least filter out the genre "Country" like a Google search.
Keep up the good work (and faster release cycles!),
Wayne
Plus I'm really, really, lazy.
So, in what ways can we enhance the search bar without it getting in the way of how it currently works?
This is what I've been able to come up with so far:
Rating: The "*" symbol isn't used in most track/album/artist names so why not have it represent the Star Rating Songbird currently uses? The default would be all ratings, then with each * typed it restricts the results to that rating or higher. Type "happy *****" and get the results for "happy" filtered down to 5 star ratings only.
Time: Again, the ":" is little used, but it is for denoting time. HH:MM:SS So following the pattern set above, if I type 2:00 it would restrict to songs longer then 2 min's. Which is great, but sometimes you want it the other way. So how about putting a "-" at the beginning to invert the search? Type "Iron Butterfly -5:00" would definitely filter out In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. There are also situations where you'd like a range of times. So let's reuse the "-" so we could type in 2:00-5:00 as a range. Type "jazz 2:00-5:00" to get jazz songs on the short side of things without being too short.
Year: This is a slightly more difficult thing to do, in a way. Years are 4 digit numbers, 1976, which is rare for a name but not unheard of. (I'm looking at you Smashing Pumpkins.) But once again, a range could be useful. "1959-1975" could give you all the songs published during the Vietnam War. But there's also a shortcut we could use for year. Music styles can alter dramatically based on era, The 60's, The 70's, etc. So let "60's" and "70's" and all the others act as shortcuts for the decades. Type "jazz 50's" to get all the results for jazz within 1950 to 1959. (Or should that be 1951 to 1960?)
So, a quick example of everything together. "Elton John *** 70's -6:00" That would give me everything by Elton John released in the 70's that I've rated 3 stars or higher and less then 6 min's. And on the fly I could replace Elton John with Rolling Stones without having to mess with the settings of a smartlist.
Yay!
As for search terms that are currently used, I'd also like to be able to "invert" them with a "-" in front. Such as "home -country" would at the very least filter out the genre "Country" like a Google search.
Keep up the good work (and faster release cycles!),
Wayne
I’m oh so lazy.
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Inappropriate?I think this is a really interesting idea. I've never noticed it before, but making a smart playlist can be a long process when you just want to check something out quick. Ubiquity is an addon being developed for firefox that tries to let people use bits of language to perform tasks, and I think this could be something similar. Whenever you type a smart playlist restriction followed by an =, <, or > sign in the search bar it could perform that restriction. For example, if you search something like "playcount = 0", it would show you all of the songs with 0 playcounts.
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This is one of the best points
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Ubiquity has been ported as an extension actually now that you mention it (at least on 1.1). Never tried it though on Songbird or firefox... -
Inappropriate?http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/...
So it has. This can already do some of the things you asked for Wayne, and maybe they will add these other search ideas into future versions.
I’m shocked it already exists
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this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?Those are some good ideas. I'd post a link to this thread in the add-on comments if I were you.1 Comment Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Thanks for the idea, just found a way to add it to the Add-On section without having to repost it completely.
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Inappropriate?I've been trying out Ubiquity when I can and so far it's... "nice"... but not really what I was trying to get across.
Maybe I'm not using it right but the idea of having to type things out like "artistName" (even the capital N) to get it to search and then "rating 5" is a lot more complicated then what I was intending.
It does cover the difficulty of searching trackname, artistname, etc, specifically. But it's a little inelegant with not a lot of flow to it. At least not that I've been able to discern. Perhaps I just don't get it yet.
One nice this is that Ubiquity reminded me that I can change one of the filter panes to rating! I can't believe I forgot that!
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I was thinking about the challenge of working the ability to search trackname and others without radically changing the search bar and the only think I can figure is to be able to right click on a search word, "love", and choose from a list what it should be limited to.
It's not as clean as just being able to rapidly type in what you want, but I think it'll work. -
Inappropriate?This is exactly what we need, and would help with a post I just made:
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I’m happy
CHAMP
CHAMP
