structure folders poorly implimented

Hey Dustin, I think there's a bit of a disconnect, and I can certainly understand why... Songbird is fantastic, most of the time, but it does have lots left to resolve, so unfortunately I don't trust it enough to try using the unstable betas, I put too much work into my collection to test things on it. Therefore I'm not able to give you an opinion on it until it's too late.... obviously not your fault, because you guys are still very open about things.

As a suggestion, maybe you could poll people ahead of time, instead of only dealing with a select few during your architectural phase, why not really use your community of people like me who really want to see this evolve into what it should and _will_ become.

I'd be more than happy to participate in round tables or something along those lines even though I don't have the knowledge to participate in the programming or testing aspect of it. I am a programmer by the way, just wrong language unfortunately.

Get us involved sooner and you wouldn't have this kind of backlash, you really do have a dedicated fan base and we want to help!

...so unfortunately I don't trust it enough to try using the unstable betas...

And that is the root of the problem. People don't know what Songbird might do to their libraries, and as such, don't test the betas.

Sorry to hijack the thread but Dustin I've downloaded nightly builds from time to time but I never notice anything new - is there a release log that goes along with it that says what's new?

together with the nightlies, in the same directory, there is a changes.txt file that list every bug corrected in the latest nightly. This is a very accurate piece of information to track what's new in each nightly. It does it. At least for me.

Isn't that just another problem all together. As a complete aside, if you guys were able to make this software portable, I guarantee you I'd test it out for you on a smaller library, and I think a lot of others would as well. Only being able to run a single copy is the only reason I don't test more.

Back to the issue at hand though...

The problem with this one feature was that how it was going to be implemented wasn't made widely known, or at least I never came across it in the blog, and I didn't see much opportunity to provide input. So not knowing anything other than it was coming left me out of the loop, and it looks like I wasn't alone.

OpenOffice seems to be really moving ahead with the idea that contributors need not only be programmers, early adopters and beta testers. They're developing all sorts of user groups with leadership from the core group tasked with chasing up important aspects of the earlier planning and design work as well, things like user interface, etc. Big step forward if you ask me.

Any chance you guys could spare enough leaders to try doing something similar? Organize the m(asses) like myself! ;)

Guess I should put up or shut up too... so if I can help in any way, you let me know.

you can install 2 versions of songbird on the same computer without any problem, just use different profiles. That is what I'm doing: the official release with my full library, and the other one, nightly regularly updated, and using a copy of a small part of my library.
Doing this, I'm testing feature far ahead from the release, and I'm able to make comments and proposals, and hunt for bugs of course.

I must not understand how the profile system works then, I always assumed that profiles were only the db's and preferences. Also when I go to install newer versions it asks me to uninstall previous copies..... that is unless you're talking about windows profiles?

Regardless though, betas are typically too late to get involved in the architectural planning of features (unless you're doing most of the work), so why not involve more people earlier in the planing rather than only after it's been built?

I'll certainly try testing using the profiles now, but I don't expect you'll fix the underlying problem that was the original point of my post, which was doing more work with the community before building out features, rather than asking them to test after the fact because no one complained.

Most people are still not programmers or interested in reading about nightlies, but I'm sure you'd get better direction if you involved the public in the.... let's call it the "opinion" phase... they're like assholes, everyones got one.

Once the core team's picked the specific features that are up to bat. Why not then ask the general public "How would you do this?" and see what you get....

...Why not then ask the general public "How would you do this? ...

...In the form of company announcements on GS, or maybe a blog post. Although the former would get more attention, as company announcements stand out pretty well on the front page of the Songbird GS.

Talking about that, I would also suggest to have a place somewhere, obviously visible, showing tips & tricks on about addressing recurring "weaknesses" of Songbird.

The 3 or 4 first topics I've been giving answers to lately are
:
- how to handle compilations with Songbird 1.2 (like I did in the "Songbird 1.2 is here" blog thread), via the AlbumArtist tag with the Metadata tools extension and Smart Playlists to clean data

- how to use and external ripping tool, together with the Songbird automated folder watch for instance (see below)

- how to use both “watch folder” AND “manage music” features at the same time in a very powerful manner: the separate watched folder being kind of a buffer where you can pour any music that needs to be managed by Songbird, without bothering about exact location as long as tags are ok.... then songbird will take these files, rename and move them in its own managed directory... For instance, the ripping tool can pour its ripped files to the watched folder

- how to use Smart Playlist to tell your mp3 file apart from other formats...using the File location entry...

I'm sure this would help.

Olivier

So it's been a few months now... but I'll remind you of what my original topic for the thread was as it ended up being a little sidetracked....

After suggesting that once you've decided on which features will be included in the next release, that you ask the community for ideas on how to implement it, in a non-technical atmosphere to help make it more attractive to those not familiar/interested in bugzilla (i.e. most of your user base). Dustin started to get the idea a couple posts ago, but that's about as far as this idea got.

I'm worried it'll be years before I get the chance to really switch over to SB, because in the end with only the opinions of your technically involved fans you're missing the broader communities ideas and quirks, so you'll spend lots of time fixing things and dealing with problems that could have been avoided in the first place.

Thanks for your reply Laura, I still think you guys are missing the point...

You're not going to get any better feedback than you already do until it's too late, until you've made a public release and the non-technical people start playing with it. I'm sure a good many of the complaints that came in regarding the 'folder structuring' were from enthusiasts like myself that never bothered with the Beta because our collections are too important to us.

Unless you start grasping for the opinions of your user base like us, you'll be stuck with the same old ones you've been getting and run into the same disconnect with your larger community.

By taking the time to ask the community as a whole... including the non-techies, who are still going to follow the blog, or still going to check up on the site once in a while, you'll gain the opportunity to see a broader opinion and more participation which as far as I can tell is your real end goal.

I'm not saying revamp the whole dev process, I'm just saying insert the "Ask the Community how they'd like to see it done" stage after you've identified which features will be targeted for the next release, and before the coding begins. Give us the chance to say, "I like option A" or "I like option B", or "Your options suck, what about this".