Hi amaroKers!

As development of amaroK 1.1 has now started, we would like to invite our users to participate in further improving the program. Do you have a suggestion how usability could be polished? Is there some quirk in the GUI that really annoys you? This is the place to discuss!

Looking forward to seeing your ideas here

--Mark

I watched the amaroK development the last few months - it was very considerable.
The current amaroK is very cool and I like it much - For mp3/ogg playing I have switched from xmms and kaffeine to amaroK, but some small points are still uncomfortable for me:

1.) Better Audio CD support
I have no problems using the audiocd-kioslave, but i'm missing a way to add all the audio tracks in one call (e.g.: amarok "audiocd:/By Track/" or amarok "audiocd:/By Track/*"). Add the moment I have to specify every single audiocd wav, mp3 or ogg file.

amraoK doesn't show the length, title and artist name of these audiocd-files. It will be great if amarok could show these values in the playlist.

2.) Keyboard Shortcuts for the Collection context menu
I'm a keyboard fan and I'm missing a way to add songs or albums from the collection to the playlist by a keyboard shortcut.

3.) Multiple selection of files in the "Add Media" file browser
It's possible to add multiple files on command line, why not in the "Add Media" file browser.

4.) A new command line parameter "Enqueue after current song"
The GUI already has this feature, so why use it from command line also.

5.) A new command line parameter "If not playing start playing"
Normally all music player have two context menu entries - one for playing and one for enqueing. I doesn't understand why not only use one entry like this "Enqueue files and if not playing start it" or this "If playing enqueue files otherwise play files".

Hope some of these ideas are interesting and will be take over.

BTW: I'm using amaroK 1.0.1 with KDE 3.2.3 on Gentoo.

Michael

Hi,

Amarok's great. Thanx for it.

There is just only one thing that i think is missing: I would like a way to view playlist like in noatun whith hayes-playlist (just viewing the playlist like in a file browser with directories that you ca open, close, enable/disable). But, I dont know if it is possible with playlists composed with files coming from very differents place on the disk??

Hmmmm, ......., That's all for now; but i will think about some new cool features.

I just hope my english is not to bad so you can understand everything I wrote (I'm french!! ).

Bye

Hi again,

I've got another suggestion...It should be usefull (when you're in random mode) to know the next song to be play.

Bye

I have some more suggestions, too:

- Better Keyboard/Shortcut integration
I'm missing Shortcuts to show/hide the side bar, to switch between the different sidebar tabs or a way to focus the playlist.
To edit tags which are not in the first column a mouse is required.
With the tab key it is not possible to circle through all positions (playlist, volume control, side bar, ...). It mostly ends up in the side bar.

- Execution of external programs
Some special feature or enhancements (like renaming and deleting files and directories or audio editing and conversion or what ever somebody needs) could be "integrated" through calls to external programs (like Konqueror, Krename, Audacity).

Michael

Michael R. wrote:

I have some more suggestions, too:

- Better Keyboard/Shortcut integration
I'm missing Shortcuts to show/hide the side bar, to switch between the different sidebar tabs or a way to focus the playlist.
To edit tags which are not in the first column a mouse is required.
With the tab key it is not possible to circle through all positions (playlist, volume control, side bar, ...). It mostly ends up in the side bar.

- Execution of external programs
Some special feature or enhancements (like renaming and deleting files and directories or audio editing and conversion or what ever somebody needs) could be "integrated" through calls to external programs (like Konqueror, Krename, Audacity).

Michael

You can tab between inline tag-editing columns, no mouse is required. The rest is mostly KDELibs fault, but I can fix some of it and have had it on my TODO for some time.

The external program thing is not on my TODO but would require a lot more discussion before it can be implemented. Please proceed! It is an interesting idea.

I often use Krename and Easytag while running Amarok. It would be really helpful if there's the ability to launch these programs from within Amarok. Even launching a browser or Konqueror would make sense.

I also would like to have the ability to open the playlist with a dcop call e.g. for use with superkaramba

thx a lot for this great program B)

I'd like to vote for playlist tabs on the right-hand side, an easier way to re-tag my files, guessing tag information from filenames, and possibly some integration with k3b, as opposed to making amarok into a cd-burner as well. Thats something no one likes about Mac OS 9 and iTunes.

I bought one of those crazy CD-players that can play mp3s off of a CD-R(W). Whats awesome about amarok is that order matters in playlists. I want to burn my mp3s in such a way that they play in the order that they appear on the list. I can achieve this by prepending a number or letter that appears early in the alphabet to a filename that i want to play first. So I change the file
tomahawk - 03 - Point And Click.mp3
to
z_tomahawk - 03 - Point And Click.mp3
in K3b if i want it to play last. K3b supports changing target file names on a CD without changing the source file names. But this functionality would probably be unique to people draging and dropping playlists onto k3b so maybe it should be implemented cooperatively or on the amarok side? Maybe tough to decide what the best way to go about this is and not too important.

Import and export more types of playlists such as
-noatun XML files. They can be read but the tag info is just the file name for the track name and the rest of the fields are empty.

When I change a mp3 tag, i cannot search by the new tag in the collection search bar until i rescan my collection.

A "favourite albums" section in the context-tab would be great. More advanced statistics would also be great (like winamp 5 media library)

mxcl wrote:

Michael R. wrote:

- Better Keyboard/Shortcut integration
I'm missing Shortcuts to show/hide the side bar, to switch between the different sidebar tabs or a way to focus the playlist.
To edit tags which are not in the first column a mouse is required.
With the tab key it is not possible to circle through all positions (playlist, volume control, side bar, ...). It mostly ends up in the side bar.

You can tab between inline tag-editing columns, no mouse is required. The rest is mostly KDELibs fault, but I can fix some of it and have had it on my TODO for some time.

I never thought about using the tab in the edit mode - thanks for this information.

Now I found some strange behaviours with this feature:
- The tag entry will be written to the file allthough the entry hadn't changed. It's better to write tags only if something has changed.
- After switching to the next tag the previous or perhaps all tags will be written to the file. Why not write all the tag changes only one time at the end (e.g. when changing to another file or stopping the edit mode).
- The tab key circles through all possible tag entries including the non visible one. So in some situations I have to press the tab key three or more times to change to the next playlist-column.

Summarized the current tag editor has two disadvantages:
1. The tag entries will be unnecessary written dozens of times.
2. If the column for a tag entry is not visible in the playlist it's not possible to change it.

Michael

Michael R. wrote:

Summarized the current tag editor has two disadvantages:
1. The tag entries will be unnecessary written dozens of times.
2. If the column for a tag entry is not visible in the playlist it's not possible to change it.

In amaroK CVS there's now a second tag editor. Basically, the "View Meta Info" dialog has been extended with editable tag fields, and automatic tagging with MusicBrainz has been added.

Please test

--Mark

markey wrote:

Michael R. wrote:

Summarized the current tag editor has two disadvantages:
1. The tag entries will be unnecessary written dozens of times.
2. If the column for a tag entry is not visible in the playlist it's not possible to change it.

In amaroK CVS there's now a second tag editor. Basically, the "View Meta Info" dialog has been extended with editable tag fields, and automatic tagging with MusicBrainz has been added.

Please test

--Mark

Sounds great - I will try it in the next day's.

I hope that either the unnecessary writes will be fixed also or amroK will use only the new editor.

If amaroK development goes on like this it will be the best player on earth

Michael

Amarok is great !!!

Actually, his playlist is great, but the player is it really interesting? I think that people using amarok use it because of his playlist.
Isn't it possible to dock the player on the bottom of the playlist (in the left of the menu button) or allow to hide it and transfer some control (play,pause,stop,next,...) on the bottom of the playlist?

The osd is great !! Fancy color, I like it, it can't be better !

I don't know if it is already there but the mp3 guessing is cool too

An easy way to load a playlist to an usb mass storage, "Transfer this album to Usb" or "Transfer this playlist To Usb"

A tab with custom playlist

(I'm listening now music with amarok, and I like really the osd )

A menu entry to save a playlist into m3u

A tab with favorite and last listen album will be very cool

I forgot one and a really useful one, Random by album !

Very important feature for me!

Ozdil Hasan wrote:

Isn't it possible to dock the player on the bottom of the playlist (in the left of the menu button) or allow to hide it and transfer some control (play,pause,stop,next,...) on the bottom of the playlist?

Menu -> Configure Toolbars -> Playlist Toolbar

You can add play/pause/stop/next buttons. This was on by default in the 1.0 betas but seems to be off in 1.0.x

Wishes:

I vote for some sort of playlist tab on left. Something that can store the playlists inside amarok instead of saving them to a file.

Also maybe a "remove all" when you right click on the right panel so it is easy to clear out your current playlist.

Dunno how hard it would be to add something like xmms-itouch. Lost of new keyboards have play/pause/next/prev buttons and its nice for quick access.

Last thing, the sorting Primary/Secondary is great, but could it have some logic that if there is no album specified in the ID3 tag it would toss it under primary.

BTW good job, amarok is a very well done app.