MonkeyRok Alpha 02

holterpolter · Post by **holterpolter** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:20 am

It was just coincidence that the CPU strain goes up with the Artist with a space
But i haven´t tagged the AlbumArtist Field very consistent (many are left blank). And the Crash occurs when it found a "Various Artitst" in this field.
Did your script works with this field?

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:32 am

Very nice script!

Bug, no rating is shown as half a star (-1 is no rating value)

Wish, option to deactivate clicking on elements sends songs to Now Playing. Instead it might be nice to show the results in the tracklisting.

oldskool73 · Post by **oldskool73** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:51 am

holterpolter: yeah kind of what I thought, if you have lots of compilation albums or songs tagged 'various artist' the script thinks thats an artist called 'various artist' and groups them all together, which can make for a massive result set.

I wanted to filter these out, but even in my library some are tagged 'various', some are 'various artists', some are 'compilation' etc, so I guess it's going to need some type of 'ignore albums by these artists' option... in alpha 3

Lowlander: cheers, was wondering about the 'no rating', I tend to rate all my new songs 2 anyway and go up or down from there so didn't see this. I'll fix for next version.

As to the other click idea, I'm not sure I understand you fully, wanna elaborate a little?

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 1:15 pm

Various Artists is the official name used for multi-artist albums in MediaMonkey.

Right now if you click on a track it adds the track to Now Playing. Due to my autoDJ settings it will start playing the track as last in the list and I loose my whole Now Playing. So I would like an option to prevent the MediaMonkey Roc panel to add songs to Now Playing. (As an additional option I suggested opening the track/album in the tracklisting if Now Playing addition is disabled, but that is just an idea).

Other suggestions would be to only show favorite tracks that have an rating. And the same for most played tracks where it would actually only show tracks that have been played.
Other idea would be to allow to turn on/off panels in the options (save space as now headers remain) and to allow to reorder the panels.

oldskool73 · Post by **oldskool73** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 1:36 pm

Cheers Lowlander, guess the least it should do is filter out 'Various Artists'.

Have you tried 'alt'+clicking on a song or album (in the 'basic' skins only), it adds it to the end of the playlist without messing with what's already playing, is this kinda what you want?

I guess not showing unrate/unplayed tracks makes sense, although I kinda like to see what I've not played yet too...an option perhaps?

As to turning off or moving the panels, this can already be done easily with a little CSS knowledge, thats what I made the skins for

(Although this is purely visual, it will still run the database queries, so wont improve performance). All the elements in the HTML skin must stay in there or you'll get errors, but you're free to move stuff around or set 'display:none' in the CSS to hide whatever you want. If you make anything interesting please share it

What I want to do thought is keep it simple, the 'Browse By Art' options panel scare me

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 1:45 pm

It already sends the songs to be played last. But due to autoDJ it only maintains my previous 5 songs effectively deleting most of my Now Playing. On one PC this wouldn't be a problem, but on another PC this is a real big problem for me. That is why I'd like an option to disable sending tracks to Now Playing from the panel.

The unrated/not played tracks exclusion makes sense as an unrated track probably isn't a favorite and in not played track is not a most played track. That's how I see it in a technical sense. It's up to you how you wish to implement this in the script (include/exclude unrated/not played tracks).

Having panel options in the script options would be preferable as it allows easier turning on/off of panels. If it's implemented well it would also speed up the script (as it wouldn't run DB queries for turned off panels). You could leave sorting out to keep the options simple.

oldskool73 · Post by **oldskool73** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 2:03 pm

ok, I see your problem. but, on second thought this can probably be easily done with a skin (just remove the click actions from everything), I'll include one in the next version.

I was thinking of a tick box... 'Only show me songs I've really played/rated' ?

Still not sure I agree with you on the panels, I'd much rather pick the skin I like and stick with it (and have some cool skins made by others here to choose from...hint hint!) than have to fiddle with loads of options.
So that one ain't gonna happen! (...but trust me I have thought about it!)

(to give you an idea of my way of thinking....on a similar line I was going to have an 'image size' option for the thumbnails, but realised it would make it a pain making the little dropshadows look nice, so this is now controled in the skin.)

tooscaredtotry · Post by **tooscaredtotry** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 4:43 pm

just wanted to say this is a really nicely made script and I enjoy using it. I have replaced the album art window with this (and made some edits to the template

). I'm glad you added an option to queue the clicked songs rather than play them, since I was trying to figure out how to do this on my own. I can't wait to install rev 2 when I get home.

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:32 pm

A tick box (option) works fine for me.

I noticed one thing, on your screenshot the current playing album is also listed in the albums by this artist section. I'd like that, but with me the current playing album doesn't show up in the list.

And yes, I'm already working on a skin that looks nice with the blue monkey skin. My main problem is that the window has a frame border in white. This is not a skinning issue but a MediaMonkey/IE issue.

Another issue is that the scrollbar shows regardless of the content size (ie when less then a full window it would be nice if the scrollbar doesn't show.

PS I'm using IE 7b2

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:37 pm

Wow, this is very slick.

Nice work!

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:17 pm

Another thing is the favorite/most played and albums from an artist. For me idealy it would work with album artist unless album artist equals Various Artists.

You also should consider using the MediaMonkey language files or allow user translations to be added. Even in English there is a difference as you use Brittish English whereas MediaMonkey seems to use American English.

I'm really enjoying this script so far!

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:22 pm

Oh, and I think that it would be really cool if you can toggle between Now Playing and Selected song (only for one not if multiple are selected).

oldskool73 · Post by **oldskool73** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:35 pm

thanks for all the nice posts

probly not gonna get to work on this for a few days (got real work to do

) but keep the ideas coming and I'll compile a list for a3...

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:39 pm

No worries, it's working alright right now, so take your time. But I will keep thinking on new ideas.

tommae88 · Post by **tommae88** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:40 pm

this is an absolutely amazing script, thank you for all of your work to get this functional.