Just found coverbling in git (and thought since it's usable/testable there should be a comments thread)

Fast Forward - seems a bit too fast, how may albums are skipped on each click? Seems to be a lot! Shouldn't this be user definable?

Suggestions
- add horizontal scroll bar to allow controlled scrolling thru covers
- add more tag/artist info, as there's plenty of free space
- filter/search (I know it's been suggested in a diff thread)
- grid view

I wouldn't want a grid view for CoverBling, but FastForward is indeed too fast, it should go by maybe 3 at the time at most, else you don't see the covers.

I think a grid view would work well if it was configurable to page by:
- artist
- nn covers per screen
- results of search/filter
sort of a cover manager that can be used to build playlists

Hi,

My opinion :

horizontal scroll bar to allow controlled scrolling thru covers
Yes, why not...Just like the Banshee flow you mean ?
add more tag/artist info, as there's plenty of free space
Well, not sure I agree on that one : the thing I like about the current view, is that it remains elegant & clean (not writing this because I am actually the one who submitted it ), so I'm quite reluctant regarding the addition of info (that's what other applets are for, aren't they ?)
filter/search (I know it's been suggested in a diff thread)
Yes, this is so true ! I actually submitted a merge request to git with a first raw implementation of a "light" search bar -either album or artist-. the thing is 1/ there is a nasty bug with white spaces 2/ we have not reached an agreement yet as for the behaviour (to sum up, my opinion is to have something minimal, eg not replacing the real collection search bar)
(==> see here http://gitorious.org/amarok/amarok/merge_requests/156)
grid view
I want a grid view too ! but I don't think it's the CoverBling anymore, my feel is that we should handle it through enhancements of the albums applet

About the fastforward thing, not sure I understand :
is it the speed or the amount of albums that do not suit you ?
I guess the amount of albums should be configurable (I chose something like an arbitrary propertion of the number of albums)

I think it is the amount of albums that are scrolled in the FastForward. If one has a large collection with approx. 9000 tracks or bigger, it scrolls too fast to actually being able to localize a specific album.

We might in fact have to remove this applet entirely before 2.3.1 release, as Apple seems to have patented the "Cover Flow" design recently:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/c ... over-flow/


So it's fairly moot to discuss any details of the implementation now

This is VERY bad news indeed...

Maybe we could counter this by enabling some kind of 3rd party applets plugin ?
This would mean that the Coverbling is no more an "official" applet, but some kind of plugin you download from kde-look or something

I fear this would only result in them suing somebody else I guess

I have a different idea: how about a cover grid, with flipping covers when going forward? This way we still have a nice animation. Add to this a horizontal or vertical scroll bar to make everybody happy
It would look a bit like tiles flipping on going forward, maybe with a cover flipping one after the other.
Just my 2 cents...

Keep in mind that the whole concept of the CoverBling is looking good, but as soon as you have many albums it get's extremely slow and is not really usefull in everyday use of Amarok. I already see the limits here with the amount of albums I have. A nice gadget, but its practical use is debatable.

I wonder if Apple would also use this against the 3D window switcher in KWin and Compiz, as it is basically doing the same

I'm wondering also (this will be very naive be warned ), but :
why would they sue Amarok as long as we are not selling anything ?
I do agree with Mamarok too, what about compiz ?
There must be a bunch of media players too that include cover flow effects.
Even on TV programs & stuff, they have very similar layouts (I remember watching the news the other day and thinking of Amarok all of a sudden )

Manuw2009 wrote:I'm wondering also (this will be very naive be warned ), but :
why would they sue Amarok as long as we are not selling anything ?

Well, if people can have this for free with us, they might sell less, so we are "hindering" their business with their "invention". That's the whole point of a patent: to have the exclusive rights of use (regardless if it's for free or not) and push competitors out of their way.

My own opinion on this:

1) Cover Flow itself looks nice, and it's useful with a small number of albums (maybe 50). However, with a large collection (5000 albums) it becomes mostly a useless toy.

2) Even if Apple had not patented this, I would have felt bad about putting a direct copy of it in Amarok. I think we can do better than this. Where is our creativity?

3) We should innovate, not copy. If I were Apple (as much as I dislike them) I would be a bit grumpy about this too. The same goes for copying Amarok features in other applications. Let's try do it better. Mamarok made a start with some brainstorming. Do we have other ideas?

hmm, if I could chime in here, what about a CD store look? So the albums would like they're in a rack, and fold forward as you scroll through them? The advantage of that method would be that the tops of the next 10 or so albums could be displayed with the artist-album info. Clicking on that album would then flip through to it.
This idea also opens the possibility of having several columns, which could be ordered by genre, or in alphabetical groups, or age etc. Other columns could be hidden optionally to keep the clean coverflow look.

Sorry, I don't have any programming skills, but maybe it's an idea?

Cheers,
Rich

Just a reminder - any visual access to the collection using covers needs a search/filter function else for users with large libraries else it would be pretty useless.

A scroll bar would be helpful too

Here is an idea, but I fear it looks to similar to Apples Preview application, or does it?

Maybe there should be an option to sort the albums not just by name but also by release date and the date it was added to the collection.

And maybe only display the small albums when the mouse moves/scrolls and display it on top of the big albums?