Easy way to rate songs

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Mon Nov 24, 2003 1:06 am

I know it's on the wishlist, and there have been a few good suggestions.

I think it would be really nice to be able to rate the playing song by pressing the F-keys. F1-5 for the star-ratings; the half ratings could be toggled by pressing the key twice. So to rate the song 4.5, one would just have to press F4 twice.

This would be nice to implement as an option or a mode (say a toolbar button to toggle it on and off). This does not cover the 0 (bomb) rating or unrated, but other keys may be set.

-Jim

Post by **Lowlander** » Mon Nov 24, 2003 1:12 pm

But these keys are already used as shortcut keys. I guess this would end up being confusing for most. Other shortcuts could be used maybe, something like ctrl-shift-number or something like that. Still halfs would be difficult to shortcut.
As such I would vote for mouse classification.

JoeCoe · Post by **JoeCoe** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 5:49 am

What if the marked song will be rated simply by pressing ctrl+#. There are 10 different states and ten numbers. Shouldn't be a problem.

dirk · Post by **dirk** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 5:59 am

don't blame me (i know, i am a smart aleck), but there are at least eleven states (maybe 12, if you count untagged state, too) even though it may be enough to make only ten available for easy rating ...

anyhow, i would prefer the solution with at most 5 keys which have to be pressed twice for half-star ratings ... i think keyboarding is faster fan mouse-acrobatics, but 10 keys look wasteful to me ...

dirk

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 6:22 am

Ratings are usually numbered therefore I would prefer the # key instead of the function keys.

If you need to have a shortcut for the ratings, then for the reason to make fast alterations.

Pressing a key twice is not a ideal way to do this. You will know all necessary keys quite fast, if you make lots of changes. If you like to rate the songs by shortcut and you don't want to have too much keys, than you should suggest to have only one key for this, which you have to press 1 to 13 times

The other two or three non-rating states can be done with any other ctrl+key, doesn't matter which - guess there should be some not-used keys left -, because you will remember them after rating 100 songs, I promise

JoeCoe · Post by **JoeCoe** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 6:23 am

uaaa, not logged in :/

Post by **jiri** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 6:28 am

I would say that Ctrl-1 to Ctrl-5 could be used for 1-5 stars, Ctrl-0 for a bomb and Ctrl-. for switching between x and x+0.5 stars. Thus 3.5 stars would be set as Ctrl-3 followed by Ctrl-. However, even some kind of double-click Ctrl-3-3 for setting 3.5 stars doesn't sound bad for me. Maybe both could be implemented.

Jiri

JoeCoe · Post by **JoeCoe** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 7:16 am

If you understand a "half-star" as a special rating and not as a sequenced rating, then your proposal sounds good to me.

But I see just 10 consequtive rates made visible by showing upto 10 "half-stars". So it makes more sense to me to have those rates directly accessible. Your version sound quite complicate to me

Post by **jiri** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 7:28 am

The reason I proposed it was that this way you press the same digit as the number of stars you are assigning to a track and optionally adding a half star. In case Ctrl-[0-9] are used for this, you would need to know that Ctrl-8 means 4.5 stars, which isn't obvious at all, but it can be convenient for a user who learns to use it.

Jiri

JoeCoe · Post by **JoeCoe** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 7:49 am

Yeah! That's it.

Using shortcuts usually mean you are using it quite often. And if so, you will learn it fast. In addition you might learn little maths

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 12:22 pm

Why not have a ratings menu that has the ability to stay on top and as long as you had it turned on any shortcut keys you use would only effect the ratings menu. That way you could use the mouse to click for selecting a song or groups of songs and then use shortcut keys for selecting a rating. The shortcut keys could also be re-assigned in an options menu related to the ratings pop up window. Also you could use one shortcut key to pop the ratings menu up and using it again would turn it off such as Alt-R or Alt-M. I personally would use the Alt key in combination with the number keys to give a rating. Alt-1 is 1 star, alt-11 is 1.5 stars and alt-111 is one and a quarter stars.

Brutain · Post by **Brutain** » Sun Feb 01, 2004 2:11 am

Another way is to just make it one key. Let's say F12. Press it once, to get 1 star, twice to get 1.5, or hold it down for 2 secs or so to get to 5. Just make it a loop. One key for up, one for down. that's sounds good to me.