A new Plugin for the Music-Part! Is it possible? (5 Viewers)

[tourettes]

ah yes, that's fine. so at the end of the day it is a skinning issue as you said.
of course there will be some things that aren't possible due to the architecture, but then there's always room for improvement.

I remember some skinner complaining that music section doesn't allow all required data to be passed for the skin to allow using different fan art for artist, genre etc. So it might not be completely a skinning issue, but a combination of missing data from music plugin (to get real flexible fan art support) and current skins not using the already available possibilities.

Can any skinner comment on that?

 

[kiwijunglist]

YEAH IT'S TRUE, there is no artist tag that can be used to call up an image for fanart while browsing shares view.

so you can't get fanart for artist image for shares view.
eg if you browse artist->album->tracks
when you are at the album/tracks level there is no tag that exposes the artist's name.

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/x-factor-316/x-factor-fanart-handler-73219/index6.html#post542127

 

[cul8er]

Hi,

In the music share view we do not have the artist available as skinners. But in all other we can do this (by using two plugins in the making), see attached image. What you see in this image is full fanart support and artist/track info from MPs music database combined with MediaInfo from the selected track What is lacking in this solution is that MP music database is not filled until end users press F3 in MP.

cheers
cul8er

 

[Kingmob]

I have been thinking about this in my car lately, but haven't found the time (or couldn't be arsed ) to make a mockup. I think I have a really good idea, so this is a reminder for myself to post it here soon
It resembles RTV's idea of the general GUI that is now used in desktop music database broswer/players, where one can see list, filters, playlist and now playing all at the same time. The only trick is to provide the info to the user in a quick, intuitive and nice way. I also believe a 'party mode' is a completely different type of use that also should be designed, even though people atm will not realise they need it I also think it is quite possible more of these 'use cases' can be thought of or maybe even custom use cases added by the user. This then qould catch many types of users while still maintaining usability.
Changing use types is possible with the 'i' button, after that the user should not have to use sidebars etc. to use the plugin, such as is the case atm. I think that is one of the main reasons that the plugin is seen as not user-friendly, besides the big seperation between database, playlist and now playing (needs to many keypresses or is 'hidden').

In short my idea for the common user type is to have resizable windows in a main gui. Dependent on your actions, either the playlist, list (with filters) or now playing has the main focus (and is bigger). The rest is always visible though! My only concern is the filter list while editing the other two, it has no real added use, but should be there for intuitivity imo.

 

[kiwijunglist]

resizeable windows sounds like a mouse controlled system, i think you need a setup that is entirely controlled by remote buttons.

 

[Kingmob]

Not resizeable in the sense that a user can resize them, but resizeable in the sense that they take on different sizes during different uses, but they will always be visible.