My ideal view for the collection browser would have a flat hierarchy, album cover images closer to the size in the cover browser than the current size in the sidebar, and would be sorted by Artist - Year - Album Name.

In Amarok 2.2 it seems impossible to set this up (sorting by artist and seeing everything without first having to expand any tree menus are two crucial ideas).

Having nice visual clues like this would help me a lot choosing music.

Does this appear to be possible to implement in a future release?

[Actually somebody requested this already in Amarok 1.4 times -- viewtopic.php?f=121&t=72561 -- I totally forgot I already posted in a thread about such a feature before]

Well, after 35 years of collecting music, I've about 5500 albums from around 1500 artists here. So this would become a long list to scroll, wouldn't it.
I've said it in 1.4 days and I say it again: Could be an option, but would only be useable in small collections, beside the "Various Artists" issues.

m0nk

Well, it would certainly remain an option. It could be combined with filtering. Or you could have the possibility to group albums e.g. by year. The thing most missing for me right now is that there's no way to sort the albums by artist name unless they are also put one step deeper than the artists in the hierarchy.

I don't see the various artist issues. The albums marked as various artists could simply be put first or last.

Another option would be not to put this browser in the sidebar, but have something filling more screen estate to browse albums by cover. The albums could be arranged in a grid like the current cover manager, but would be sorted by artist name and provide options to add them to the playlist etc.

I am very much for the idea of having a bigger collection browser with album covers only. With good filtering, the argum,ent of 4000 albums is not valid. I am a very visual person and love to skim my collection and choose by cover. I could imagine a mode where i tab the context view to the collection view and very quickly can drag things from the collection the playlist. I love using amarok, but very often i just add my whole collection to the playlist, because it feels weird to search things in the collection browser.

So, please allow for more flexibility in the collection browser. It is IMHO the only weak spot left in amarok design.

Cheers

Dieter Schroeder wrote:Well, after 35 years of collecting music, I've about 5500 albums from around 1500 artists here. So this would become a long list to scroll, wouldn't it.
I've said it in 1.4 days and I say it again: Could be an option, but would only be useable in small collections, beside the "Various Artists" issues.

m0nk

Hello Dieter.
I agree with the others saying it would be nice to show covers.
Amarok could just show a limited number of covers per "page" with buttons to reach previous/ next/first/last.
Add categories of albums , this also reduces the number of covers to put on screen.
I suppose i'm as old as you are (also 35 years collecting music on various media), and number of albums should not be a problem with above mentionned ideas.
It's nice to view only covers of 78rpm for example, hiding all other albums (well, I suppose not many of us have 78 rpm, but users having 33 or 45 rpm discs are more important)...
I'm using more than 40 categories = subfolders, each containing from 20 to 500 albums.

My wife is music teacher, and would also like to scroll through covers only.
She's also a visual person, don't ask her what the title of a song is, just show her the cover, she will tell you what kind of music is inside, what artist performs, and what she will find in this album .

To be more precise, a category should not be a filtering option but a real option for albums put in special subfolders.
I'm quite sure most of us do not mix albums of different technologies on the same bookshelf.

Regards.
Radeon.

Hi guys,

I do agree with Radeon & co :
a nice cover view (grid ? flow ? "bling" -what did that one become- ?) would definitely be a HUGE+, not only because it would LOOK so COOL and hype, but also because it is just so close to the real thing !
I am one of those 35 years + 200 records kind of guy, and this just brings back much more fun to your music library...you know like going through your CD covers and wondering what you're gonna play next ? Isn't it how you -used to- do it ?
Well, just my opinion...

Would be nice, indeed. But that means we need a developer who not only has time to implement it but also maintain it. Any volunteers?

well the banshee guys seem to be relying on clutter
and I think there is gloobus too so I guess it would be more a question of reusing stuff...
What about cover bling ? Was it ever implemented or was it just a mockup ?
Well about a cover grid view, I guess reusing most of the cover manage visual would do wouldn't it ?

Manuw2009 wrote:well the banshee guys seem to be relying on clutter
and I think there is gloobus too so I guess it would be more a question of reusing stuff...
What about cover bling ? Was it ever implemented or was it just a mockup ?
Well about a cover grid view, I guess reusing most of the cover manage visual would do wouldn't it ?

I made Cover Bling, the code is somewhere in our Git repo (check history or so).

It was using OpenGL, and the graphics part itself worked fairly nicely. What was missing is the actual animation logic, etc. I suggest you could use that code as a start, and build on that.

Hi Mark,
I appreciate your suggestion, but sadly I'm not sure I'll find some time to do anything

Hi again,

OK I located CoverBling.cpp & .h in the amarok/src/context/ folder,
But
1) Do I need a special compilation variable to enable it ?
2) How would I enable it in the amarok UI ?

Thanx

Hi again !
Good news from the bling/flow front : it turned out the qtpictureflow code from http://code.google.com/p/pictureflow/ was nicely reusable !
I have now successfully added a new applet (bling revival) which for now displays all albums covers and titles in coverflow ! (need to figure out how to attach screenshots here... )
so could anyone tell me how to join the git thingie and create my git bling clone to work on and eventually deliver stuff ?
Thanx
Manu

Manu, see here:

http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Development/Join

Please read those docs carefully.

Thanx, I'll look into this.
Here is a video of the work done so far :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtOTzFxUXA4

Manuw2009 wrote:Thanx, I'll look into this.
Here is a video of the work done so far :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtOTzFxUXA4

does this work with the results of a search or the albums by artist widget or is there a built in filter?

It looks nice but with over 1,000 albums I can't see using it without some sort of filtering mechanism