I like this idea, and would pair it with another suggestion.

Side-swiping the album cover to reveal the lyrics has always been awkward to me. Isn't it more standard to have skip fwd/back on the album cover side-swipe? I think that is more friendly for look-less operation (as in a car), too. It would seem more natural to me to swipe the album cover either up or down to reveal the lyrics. Then side-swiping the track info could be used for preview as BigInJapan has suggested. Everybody wins!

I hope I'm not being too pushy with this. I'm a bit of an aruguer by nature. I thought this feature was pretty slick when I first came across it in a WebOS app. I haven't seen it any Android apps, and I personally would love to see MediaMonkey be the first to offer it. In the end, I'm going to use your app whether you implement this or not because the integration with MediaMonkey desktop is really what I'm interested in. If this particular UI element isn't the direction you want to go, that's completely understandable.

Thanks for considering it.

Sounds to me that you want the now playing list shown in the track information area when viewing the current song. As the swiping in the now playing will show you the next songs and their data if you select them by pressing it,

I dont think the swiping in the current song viewing area is for checking the next songs data but i think it is used for going to another song to play it.

I'm not denying that what you propose isn't useful.

Lowlander wrote:Swipe to skip gives the track details prior as you're choosing which song you're skipping to. This is useful on Shuffle play.

I don't think that's an accurate description of how the feature works right now. When I swipe, I get the track details of the next song simultaneously as the playback advances to that song. If I try to swipe through a few tracks, I hear the first second or two of each of those tracks. At no point do I see the details of the next track and then choose whether or not to play that track. Shuffle play is exactly the scenario that swipe to preview addresses. You can flip through the next few track and then pick the one to play.

A similar feature in a WebOS app is demonstrated here from the 5:27 mark to the 6:27 mark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSizEy3b_OU

He used swipe on the album art instead of the song info, but you'll get the idea. If you still hate it after seeing it, I'll shut up about it.

Swipe to skip gives the track details prior as you're choosing which song you're skipping to. This is useful on Shuffle play.

I'm not understanding how swipe to skip gives more information than the skip button. Both methods update the track info as the playback advances. They seem identical to me in terms of the information presented. Whereas manipulating the queue from within the player screen is clearly different than doing that by first moving to a different screen. Vertical swipe is a viable alternative, but I think that gesture would be better used to bring up additional track information (genre, year, comment, etc).

I agree that an advantage of swiping over tapping a button is that you don't have to look at the screen to do it. Swipe + tap to skip can also be executed without looking at the screen though. No functionality is lost by changing the gesture from swipe to swipe + tap. There is only gain.

I agree that swipe to skip is a more standard implementation. To date, I have only ever used one other app that employed the swipe to preview idea while I have used several that use swipe to skip. Swipe to preview seemed quite innovative in the app that I saw it in, and I found myself using it rather frequently. If skip has become the generally expected behavior of swiping, then perhaps the functionality of the swipe gesture should be a user definable option with skip as the default and "do nothing" or "preview now playing" as the other choices.

I think the swipe to skip function offers a more "on-the-fly" friendly means of skipping than the skip button itself. You don't even necessarily have to look at the screen to skip with the swipe function. Get your finger in the general vicinity and swipe. Whereas with the skip button, you've got a specific spot to hit. Can be hard to miss if you're in a hurry, or have attention elsewhere. I've accidentally paused instead of skipped many times due to my phone's built-in player's lock screen not offering swipe to skip.

Also, swiping to skip seems like a pretty standard function from the apps I've given a whirl.

For me it is as redundant as your proposal. Where swipe to skip gives more information than skip button, swipe to preview has less information than Now Playing list. Also as vertical swipe has no action I don't see a reason why it couldn't be used.

Swipe to skip seems redundant to me since, as you say, there are already skip buttons on that screen. Also, accidental skips from accidental swipes are very annoying.

Your point that the Now Palying list allows for better control of the queue is well taken. Nonetheless, I think having some limited ability to quickly affect that list without having to leave and then return to the player screen has value.

I like the swipe to skip.

Note however that Now Playing management can already be done in the Now Playing list which is more informative and that skip also can be done already with the skip buttons. As swipe up/down has no action yet it maybe could be used for the above proposal, leaving left/right as is.

In the player interface, swiping left to right or right to left on the track info currently skips backward or forward in the playlist. I think it would be better if swiping previewed items in the playlist and then tapping the currently viewed item actually moved the playback to that point in the playlist.

For example, suppose a playlist of 10 tracks. I'm currently listening to track 2 and don't want to listen to the rest of the song. I swipe right to left on the track info, and the info for track 3 in the playlist is displayed. Playback itself is unaffected at this point. I decide I also don't want to hear track 3, so I swipe again, and now I see the info for track 4. I do want to hear that song, so I tap it, and playback advances to that track.

While I'm listening to track 4, I decide to look ahead at the next track. I swipe and see the info for track 5. I'm not going to want to hear that song next, so I swipe again and see the info for track 6. I will want to hear that one next, but I don't want to interrupt the playback of track 4. I long tap on the info for track 6, and that gets queued as the next song. So track 4 will complete, track 5 will be skipped, and playback will advance to track 6.

While I'm listening to track 6, I forget what the name of that song I skipped was. I swipe left to right, and I see the info for track 5. Playback is unaffected. At this point, either I swipe right to left and am back to viewing the track 6 info, or I just leave it alone, and when track 6 ends and track 7 starts, the info for track 7 is displayed.

When previewing track info, a small indicator should appear on the left or right edge of the track info section to give the user a visual queue of which direction to swipe to get back to the info for the currently playing track.

This approach would alleviate the situation of an accidental swipe affecting the playback. Accidental swipe followed by accidental tap is far less likely. It also gives the user a way to interact with the now playing queue without leaving the player screen.