MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Discussion about anything that might be of interest to MediaMonkey users.

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Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by Lowlander »

das Monkey wrote:And now there's a "Type" field. Cool! I just need to add my own custom types and ... oh -- can't do that.
Developers already indicated that this will be reviewed/fine tuned post 4.0.
das Monkey
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue Feb 12, 2008 7:11 pm

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by das Monkey »

Lowlander wrote:
das Monkey wrote:And now there's a "Type" field. Cool! I just need to add my own custom types and ... oh -- can't do that.
Developers already indicated that this will be reviewed/fine tuned post 4.0.
Great! I'll look forward to it. Thanks.
Pman
Posts: 169
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:57 am

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by Pman »

This thread reminds me of when Firefox 4 came out, people complaining that it's hardly any different to FF3, people complaining that the layout is all different and you can't find anything, people saying nothing works anymore even though it does, people complaining just to complain.

Well Firefox has long been my favourite browser for many years, mainly for its functionality and ability to customise as much as you want. It's the only browser with many diverse extensions (even ones that change the way Firefox runs), you have all the options you want, you can change the layout endlessly, manoeuvrability of all toolbars and icons, many skins, themes etc.

FF4 was a mighty improvement over FF3 in functionality but no one cared about the hard work that went into it. But there’s still people using FF3 more not opening their eyes to what FF4+ offers. Little do they know that FF4+, especially the latest FF8 is the best Firefox to date and it quite easily gives its competitors a run for their money.

With Firefox, we have Norton which has improved but people are stuck in there old ways, we have iPhone4 with people moaning on appearance changes and its comparison to other phones.

(Haha, I just noticed a trend in version 4 here, quick let’s get MM5 out tomorrow and nobody will complain :lol: )

So now getting to my point about the Monkey…I’ve been using MM4 for a bit of now, used it over the beta days and still now. It was only by chance that I installed version 4 with my computer blue screening and the effort of re-installing windows. Yes at first I was a bit confused on the tabs, a bit confused on the collections and a bit confused on minor layout changes and some other things. Once I started using it over time it grew on me and I love the new version. I would honestly say it's a big improvement over MM3 with many bugs ironed out and lots of features to keep everyone happy. I also think it's speedier in comparison to MM3 (which I was using with fewer scripts) in the recent builds.

Only one thing, still don't like MM3-4 monkey logo, and it took you ages to update the website in the UK. Also, with the website, the only changes are Version 3 to Version 4 and “New version 3” with the 3 crossed out with a 4. I laughed when I saw these tiny changes, which took you a good couple of weeks to do. I hope that's not the big website change you promised!

Anyway, back to topic, my monkey will always be my only music software I use with its proper tagging system (with the additional scripts available) and at the same time being a lovely software to play my music on. It's got everything I want and it's not restrictive in anyway and always open to as many changes as it can take. Yes Dreadlau you are right about, we know the theme editor is a bit annoying at the best of times and really cumbersome to change the basic of things. Yes we should changes like a tree with gaps in them to make it look to W7 standard, menus having the W7 basic look and other things like that but it's the icing on the cake in appearance terms (as someone said earlier).

You can't take away the hard work the skinners have done to make MM4 look great. All the new skins from everybody who's contributed look great and they have been producing things that you thought weren’t possible with the basic skinning editor they have.

There's no taking away from the devs too, these guys have working lives, possibly families and kids to look after and they still manage to get things done. They've put up with a lot of moaning, a lot of requests and a lot of problems to overcome and a plethora of other things to cope with. These guys deserve gold medals!

Just to end this massive long (Roving Cowboy) style post :P, we should applaud you devs, skinners and beta testers who have made MM4 make it out the window and give us a delight of a software that's better than the previous and has a lot more to offer.

Thanks very much and my hat's off to all of you! :D
  • W7Ultimate x32 - MM4 - SHABBA!
Image
otempora

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by otempora »

Wow, what a thread. Still, where is this "Scripting Manual" that was mentioned? I'm trying to modify the Excel output function -- not being a coder, but not being stupid -- and got a bit frustrated trying to find the available fields I could specify... not to mention the hassle of simply finding how the export.vbs file fit into it all. "Path", yeah; "Filename", no; "itm.*": what's that and why do I need it as a prefix? If MM is a hackable app, it would be great if F1 (wiki) supported it properly. Otherwise, it's only a player.
KEP
Posts: 179
Joined: Sun Feb 18, 2007 10:27 pm
Location: Vancouver USA

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by KEP »

otempora wrote:where is this "Scripting Manual" that was mentioned?
Took me awhile to find it, too. Click that "Develop" tab at the top of this page. :)
Guest

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by Guest »

>Took me awhile to find it, too. Click that "Develop" tab at the top of this page.

Cool! Thanks much for the lightning reply! It's a start -- although, alas, an "itm" search is null. Time to roll the stone up the hill again.

Clicking on these monkeys reminds me of second grade. That's when it all started.
KEP
Posts: 179
Joined: Sun Feb 18, 2007 10:27 pm
Location: Vancouver USA

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by KEP »

Guest wrote:>Took me awhile to find it, too. Click that "Develop" tab at the top of this page.

Cool! Thanks much for the lightning reply! It's a start -- although, alas, an "itm" search is null. Time to roll the stone up the hill again.

Clicking on these monkeys reminds me of second grade. That's when it all started.
I'd suspect "itm" is a variable name, but not having the script you're looking at in front of me it's hard to say. (Not to mention I'm not at all familiar with the MM object model.)
otempora

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by otempora »

Thanks again, KEP.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.php/SDBSongData

seems to be the answer. But why so difficult to find? Being a typical American, I want everything to be easy. And cheap.

BTW, I think yo are right about itm. A selection of the script is:
===============
Progress.MaxValue = list.count
Dim i, itm
for i=0 to list.count-1
Set itm = list.Item(i)
.
.
.
WS.Cells(i+2,3).Value = itm.title
WS.Cells(i+2,4).NumberFormat = "mm:ss"
If itm.SongLength>=0 Then
WS.Cells(i+2,4).Value = itm.SongLength / ms2Day
End If
WS.Cells(i+2,5).Value = itm.trackorder
WS.Cells(i+2,6).Value = itm.year
=================
A little learning is a dangerous thing....
Eyal
Posts: 3116
Joined: Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:27 am
Location: Québec

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by Eyal »

@otempora,

Why are trying to re-invent the wheel?

Custom Report 2.8 should do the trick. It can save to XLS, XLSX, CSV, HTML, XML, TXT, ...
Link: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =2&t=18395

:~)
Skins for MediaMonkey: Cafe, Carbon, Helium, Spotify, Zekton. [ Wiki Zone ].
otempora

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by otempora »

Holy Moses! I thought I was ahead of the game with getting the right monkeys (that one cat had me fooled). This is amazing.

But, dagnabit, it still begs the question: why isn't it easier to find/use these things? I see on this thread the back-and-forth between usability and simplicity (a pox on Apple). This wonderfulness should be encorporated somewhere on MM.

Well, thanks much to y'all. It looks like MM is my future.
KEP
Posts: 179
Joined: Sun Feb 18, 2007 10:27 pm
Location: Vancouver USA

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by KEP »

otempora wrote:Dim i, itm
for i=0 to list.count-1
Set itm = list.Item(i)
Yep, in VBish languages, Dim creates variables. It's a remnant of the very original Dartmouth BASIC, where one DIMensioned arrays. (Other variables of the era didn't require declaration.) Here, "i" is used as a loop counter, and "itm" is used to store a reference to each individual object in the list collection.

If you're gonna dump in the deep end, you'll need both the MM object model and a good VBScript reference!
glassandahalf

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by glassandahalf »

I just want to say right here that I love MM4, it improves massively on 3.

Its a fantastic product, and still the best on the market for my needs.
Guest

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by Guest »

I'll say this in plain English...Mediamonkey is ugly...

...and it's always been ugly.

It's very easy to see the similarity or family history of all the MM releases. It's a distinctive design philosophy and it's done with intent. Now it didn't look half bad a couple of years ago compared to other software being released. But compared to software being released today, it's plain ugly. Look at many apps coming out for web, iPad/iPhone and Android. Wünderlist, Evernote, Flipboard, Mint, Zinio, ADW Launcher, Unstuck, Spotify.

Looks has become a factor in usability. It's actually always been as a smart design and layout helps usability. Every car manufacturer knows this, Apple knows this, heck even planes are made to "look good". Now looks, is in the eye of the beholder I know and we get accustomed to things being a certain way and we like it like that. Look at all the Applefanatics complaining over small design changes.

Now Mediamonkey is powerful, it's better at managing your library, it has the most functions and it work very very well. But it's always worked pretty well.

Mediamonkey is not polished........it's cluttered, it has the same design philosophy as Win XP. It's time MM started getting more Win 7.
declan
Posts: 85
Joined: Wed Sep 20, 2006 3:55 pm

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by declan »

I am absolutely gutted about this upgrade.

As far as I can see there are new features, other than files are randomly assigned to classical music or podcast. Why anyone would want this over a simple list I don't know, but I guess I can work around it.

But does it need to freeze, every single time I click a tree node, for minutes? Does getting it to sync my iPod really need to take two hours before it even starts? Was the disamblement of Last.FM really neccessary?

I've used MM for 5 years and promoted it to friends. But the wonderful Magic Nodes functionality is not on it's own worth staying with it if the basics don't work.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: MM4 review: "From great to terrible?"

Post by Lowlander »

Send a debug log (step 4b) for navigation hangs and iPod sync to support. Of course make sure you're using 4.0.1.1461 as navigation speed was improved.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69
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