New Dynamic Playlist

[Ralf Engels]

Hi Lukas,

On Fr, 2011-06-24 at 16:29 +0300, Lukas wrote:
> Hi Ralf,
> 
> On 24 June 2011 15:27, Ralf Engels <ralf-engels at gmx.de> wrote:
>         Hi Lukas,
>         I wanted to write a point by point review here but let's first
>         start
>         like this:
>         
>         1. What is confusing for you in the new dynamic playlist
>         implementation.
>         Was there something that you did not understand?
> 
> At first I was looking at APG, but form what I later understood, the
> ol' good Dynamic playlist (DP) is going to be kept. Yes dynamic
> playlist UI is much more understandable :), yet (it could be due to no
> accurate translations) its not immediately obvious which one filter to
> choose. 

Agreed. It's hard to describe the complex functionality that is a bias
in one word. I was hoping that four default playlists give the user a
hint what can be done. They also display the usage of the most important
biases.
The rest is really just clicking through them and reading the
descriptions.
> 
> * Also filter drop down is somewhat random sorted (rating is twice
> below bpm), makes usage slow.

We have a lot of different meta types that you can use for filtering.
We have however no real locale aware sorting. 
Also, sorting the meta tags has two slight drawbacks:
1. they are not longer sorted by importance
2. they would appear at different positions in different languages which
could lead to some swearing with peoples using a English version at work
and a translated at home (like I am doing).
Still, sorting would maybe better.
> 
> * If you want to have playlist with 7 artists, currently it would be 7
> filters, and on my laptop only 3 fits in the view port without
> scrolling.
> 
Not really true, at least not for the new dynamic playlist. The "Search"
bias allows you to use a normal Search term. So you could just write
"artist:Sting OR artist:Madonna". I am demonstrating this capability in
one example playlist. It's even faster since only one SQL-query is done
instead of seven.

Actually I was thinking about removing the "Meta Bias" as it's not
really needed any longer, but it has such a nice UI where I invested so
much time to do it.
>         
>         2. What are the deficiencies that you want to fix with the new
>         design?
> 
> * editing DP could be placed into context area, so its easy to switch
> to another DP. 
> Drop down with saved playlits in DP feels something wrong, doesn't get
> users attentions. Saving requires dialog, and dialogs are a bit
> annoying,

The context area has some benefits, it also has the big disadvantage
that it's so far away from the "normal" playlists. And it's graphics
items which would probably mean a complete UI re-write.

On the other hand I was thinking about merging the Dynamic playlists
with the "normal" ones. They are both normal lists now.
If you throw away the Advanced Playlist Generator then we would get rid
of a whole sub-tree in the browser.
But that's nothing that I would like to decide and I also think it's not
that important.
> 
> * User can type filters FIRST, and later select (or have
> auto-selected) where they apply later.
> You can just type in artists name, and Amarok knows its an artist, so
> it means less scrolling in the dropdown.

Again the "Search" Bias helps. You can just write "Sting" and be fairly
happy (although it will also find "Sting of the Bumblebee" from Manowar)
> 
> * More than one one title/tag/artist per single filter. 
> If you want playlist with e.g. 7 artists, it would be a single filter.
> Currently it would be 7 filters, and on my laptop only 5 fits in the
> view port.

We had this
> 
> * Drop down auto-complete
> Pretty self explanatory. It can also be reused in local music
> collection. As auto complete educates/forces/helps users to use * for
> wild cards, it might be possible to avoid %term% in SQL. Wild card at
> the beginning on the search term usually makes indexes useless ->
> slower search.

I didn't see any speed problems currently and the Dynamic Playlist
solver could make a lot of searches in some cases.
Also users are used that search is case insensitive and has implicit
wildcards. This is how the Windows search works. This is how the Google
search works.
We shouldn't do that differently.

Also users don't really like it to be educated. :)

>   
> Rest is less important :)


Just one point. The other mail yesterday was about a new feature request
for the dynamic playlist.
It is fairly simple to implement and useful for some people.
However I cannot implement it because this mailing list will cry "It's
to geeky". 

I don't actually see this. Excel has a list with around 100 different
functions to choose from. They are complimented for their
functionality. 
I have barely a hand full of different Biases and get a "users don't
understand it". 

Actually I am just blowing of a little steam here.

So, sorting the meta tags would be an improvement. Maybe we can have a
shared search-query editor again.

Cheers,
Ralf

> 
>         >
>         > http://bit.ly/jIr0VZ
>         >
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Lukas 
>