I see that there are huge improvements in cover fetching and managing (thanks stuffedcorpse!), but i was thinking that it would be nice if amarok made a more thorough use of covers. Right now, covers show up like an icon in album listings in playlists, collection listings and the "albums" widget, and in the "current track" widget. In all these places, the image is rather small.

I can think of at least two more uses that would be cool to see implemented:

1.- some form of visual collection browser, where you can actually browse the collection by looking at album covers sorted by artist, year, whatnot. I have tried to do this modifying the collection layout, but i only managed to make the first level show album, but this didn't really made use of the cover and it was extremely slow (granted, my collection is probably larger than most).

2.- a widget that used a larger version of the cover than the one available in the current track widget.

All in all, the thing is that we have the possibility of retrieving and sorting this gorgeous hi-res images of covers, but amarok is not really putting them to use for much.

I reckon that my ideas seem terribly lame. number 1 might also include a usability aspect, but number 2 is plain eyecandy.... but anyway, i thought that suggesting the general idea wouldn't hurt.

comments?

We do have the cover manager, but it isn't sortable. Perhaps that would be a better place to start? I think a visual collection browser sounds fun, if not useful to everyone.

Valorie

I have plans to add sorting and zooming functions to the cover manager. Actually I had them for a while, but it's not high on my list of things to do, since I don't use the cover manager much. Not sure when I'll start to work on that, possibly never but who knows...

btw you might also want to try the CoverBling applet.

stuffcorpse wrote:I have plans to add sorting and zooming functions to the cover manager. Actually I had them for a while, but it's not high on my list of things to do, since I don't use the cover manager much. Not sure when I'll start to work on that, possibly never but who knows...

btw you might also want to try the CoverBling applet.

maybe cover manager could be made into a widget and used to search/filter for playlist building, sort of a grid view to the collection

the problem with biffing up the cover manager, is that it doesn't really work as a part of amarok. It lives on a separate window that you have to open, and it doesn't allow you to do much once you are there beyond managing covers (it IS a cover manager, i know). It doesn't "use" the covers for anything.

I guess that by visual scanner, i'm thinking of a collection visualization based on the collection scanner, that lived in the main window, that allows one to sort, and above all, to select and enqueue tracks.

The only problem i see with that, is that the current layout doesn't really leave space for something like that. I have only seen it implemented as a wide short panel, rather then in the current long thin columns that amarok has...

i was aware of CoverBling, but apart from the eye candy, is not really what i was thinking about.

thanks for your comments!

@gorgonzola the layout doesn't have to be long and thin if you unlock the layout and re-format it - though then all the widgets would be wide and short. Of course thin and long may work for me depending on the size of covers displayed

ps think you should star a new thread titled "cover grid widget" or such

like this, you mean?



it would be awesome if we could modify the arrangement of widgets in the context view... but i guess that is taking it to far.

I see your point, though, it doesn't *have* to be a band, a column could work too... the best possible solution would be to leave that to the user, though, but that could be asking too much of the widget panel...

just add a filter and a scroll bar

See also viewtopic.php?f=117&t=87232&start=10 for a very intersting disussion of ideas for a visual album browser.