Thanks! Great Idea - Switching from Folder contents view to Playing View [#15758]

[Weatherman]

In MM 5.0.0.2181
I discovered that if you have the contents of whatever folder you are on showing in the central main screen, and on the right hand pane the "Playing" screen, clicking the header bar of the "Playing" screen toggles the central pane between viewing the contents of the folder and the contents of the playing screen.
Everyone else might know this already, and not think it is much, but I think it is a great idea. Thanks.

[Barry4679]

I don't use MM as a player, but if I did I may be as excited as you appear to be

A couple of implementation observations:

• The contents of the right click menu (when the Player screen showing on the centre panel) should added to the Tool bar menu (see diagram) ... they are needed in the right click menu because I may need help to get out of the maximised screen, but they should also be listed in the specialist toolbar menu that the green arrow is pointing to IMO ... reason: discoverability

• I don't really like that the panel maximise function is triggered by a click action on the header ... there is a lot of click actions going on in the rhs of the MM5 window ... it is disorientating if you accidentally stumble on this behaviour, especially as there is no obvious way to get back ... it would better if the action was more explicit and better advertised ... eg. put a maximise icon in the header, like this

• why do these two panels have the same, or similar name? ... I think that the bottom one should be named something like "Track Playing" ... they both have their own separate click action and also menu ... it is going to be confusing for User Support and forum participants if they both have the same name

• after playing with a "background image" options for a while. the background became static ... ie. could not switch it between album art and artist images ... I got stuck with just one of the available artist images, and cannot switch to album art background either .. animate still worked, but no cycling of images, etc

• The animate option disappears with Artwork (blurred) ... intentional?

• The vertical scroll animate action is fairly ugly ... IMO it would be better if full height was always visible, and you just animated with left tight scroll movements

Is there any way to configure so that the Selected|Playing panel is top right, and the Playing n/n panel is bottom right?

[Weatherman]

It doesn't take much anymore to get me excited, Barry!!
If you don't use MM as a player, what do you use it for? A sort of mega-organiser of music or something? Genuinely interested.
And I am pleased that you are making much more knowledeable and technical requests and points about the structure of MM than people like me. All of it helps to develop a great product.
Now I am off to be dazzled by album art which appears and morphs into other album art.....I feel a tingle coming on.....

[Peke]

• why do these two panels have the same, or similar name? ... I think that the bottom one should be named something like "Track Playing" ... they both have their own separate click action and also menu ... it is going to be confusing for User Support and forum participants if they both have the same name

Good point Added as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15758

[Barry4679]

It doesn't take much anymore to get me excited, Barry!!
[snip]
Now I am off to be dazzled by album art which appears and morphs into other album art.....I feel a tingle coming on.....

thanks for the laugh.

If you don't use MM as a player, what do you use it for? A sort of mega-organiser of music or something? Genuinely interested.

Firstly I use MM to catalogue my collection, and to make (auto)playlists.

I have Sonos units spread around the house ... so I use their s/w to queue music when listening at home ... they don't support DLNA sources, like MM. ... I can queue single tracks, but not whole albums .. frustrating, but Ludek did once try to fix, but is broken at the Sonos end, and they don't care. ... apparently in their world "nobody" has their own personal collections anymore ... they have stats showing that 92% of music playing on Sonos units is from a streaming source, and that was 2015, so it will be a greater percentage by now.

So when deciding what to play, I use MM, and my custom indices, to browse my collection because Sonos browsing is beyond pathetic. ... I won't tell you how pathetic, because that may stop you buying Sonos equipment, and that won't be good for you, because Sonos is very good.

This 2-step process is not as horrible as it sounds because Sonos have implemented any word, and tag search (well "any" of the just 3 tags that they index) ... so say my MM browse has lead me to a Jacqueline du Pré album ... all I need to type into Sonos is "du p", to arrive at the same place that I browsed to using MM.

Actually your question lead me to thinking that in some ways the Sonos implementation of this is better than the MM5 implementation ... which I put in another thread.

[Weatherman]

Many thanks for this really interesting reply.