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Post by neminem on Jan 5, 2012 22:14:42 GMT -5
Hey, I just found this player, and it really saved the life of my Archos 5, as I'm sure you're aware. In addition to not crashing all the time, it has quite a number of extremely nifty features that the default player doesn't, and a lot fewer annoyances. Still, in playing with it a bit I noticed a couple things the native Archos player does better, and I figure I'd mention them, since unlike the people at Archos, you also still seem to be actively maintaining things... 1. If I go to the artist tab and pick an artist, it gives me a list of albums. Often I just want a list of all songs by an artist, not organized by album. I don't see any "show all", which the native player has. Similar, a genre shows me artists (including the "unknown" choice), but no "just show me everything". 2. It looks like if I look at an album that doesn't have track info, it'll put "0. " at the front of each item, then sort randomly? Would be nice if it could sort albums that had track # by track #, but sort everything else the usual way. 3. Any way to free the space used by the album art and give it back to the "now playing" space? I can disable showing it, but then it's just empty space, that I'd like to have information about the current playing song expand into. 4. So fine, the native player can't do this either, but it's bugged me for years now, so I mention it anyway: a way to click on the labels in Now Playing to "go to current song's artist", "current song's album", "current song's genre", and "current song in the browser". (If that already exists, sorry, it wasn't obvious  ). And finally, 5. A way to give you more money. 4 dollars is a steal! (This isn't a joke. I would happily give you more than 4 dollars. In an age where it feels like most software is trying to rip you off, you really kind of went the opposite extreme, and you provided a fully functional demo to try it out beforehand. I want to reward that!) |
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Post by GoneMAD on Jan 6, 2012 12:59:37 GMT -5
Hey, I just found this player, and it really saved the life of my Archos 5, as I'm sure you're aware. In addition to not crashing all the time, it has quite a number of extremely nifty features that the default player doesn't, and a lot fewer annoyances. Still, in playing with it a bit I noticed a couple things the native Archos player does better, and I figure I'd mention them, since unlike the people at Archos, you also still seem to be actively maintaining things... 1. If I go to the artist tab and pick an artist, it gives me a list of albums. Often I just want a list of all songs by an artist, not organized by album. I don't see any "show all", which the native player has. Similar, a genre shows me artists (including the "unknown" choice), but no "just show me everything". 2. It looks like if I look at an album that doesn't have track info, it'll put "0. " at the front of each item, then sort randomly? Would be nice if it could sort albums that had track # by track #, but sort everything else the usual way. 3. Any way to free the space used by the album art and give it back to the "now playing" space? I can disable showing it, but then it's just empty space, that I'd like to have information about the current playing song expand into. 4. So fine, the native player can't do this either, but it's bugged me for years now, so I mention it anyway: a way to click on the labels in Now Playing to "go to current song's artist", "current song's album", "current song's genre", and "current song in the browser". (If that already exists, sorry, it wasn't obvious ). And finally, 5. A way to give you more money. 4 dollars is a steal! (This isn't a joke. I would happily give you more than 4 dollars. In an age where it feels like most software is trying to rip you off, you really kind of went the opposite extreme, and you provided a fully functional demo to try it out beforehand. I want to reward that!) Yeah the archos player is basically unusable with an even somewhat large collection. 1) Someone requested something similar a few days ago. Mainly to have an option to play all albums from an artist.. or play all songs from an album. So what you requested could be grouped in with that. A list option on the top when long pressed will let you play everything from the artist, or normal pressed would bring up a list of all the songs 2) I intended the behavior that you described.. it might have slipped by since nearly all my music has the track number tag populated 3) Yea that should be relatively easy 4) I'm planning on at least having a go to current artist and album in sometime soon. Most of the code is there already (if you notice in the search section, clicking on an artist or album will jump straight to the artist or album view). I just have to add it to the now playing area 5) If you would like to send more money, I do have a paypal account: gonemadsoftware@gmail.com It's nice that you appreciate the amount of work I put into the app. People don't hesitate to spend 4 dollars on a coffee or beer which is good for 20 minutes, but freak out if they have to spend that same amount on an app that they can use for many years. Thanks for the feedback |
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Post by neminem on Jan 6, 2012 20:37:38 GMT -5
Awesome, thanks for the quick responses, and I'm glad to hear none of my requests are terribly inconvenient. I look forward to updating and seeing things getting fixed over time, like doesn't happen ever in the native player.  4) I'm planning on at least having a go to current artist and album in sometime soon. Most of the code is there already (if you notice in the search section, clicking on an artist or album will jump straight to the artist or album view). I just have to add it to the now playing area Particularly good to hear - just thought I'd repeat, I'm hoping they'll be linked to the existing text that's already there in the pane, rather than having to long-push anything or deal with new windows (I'm usually using the mp3 player in the car), and that the song title eventually links to the song in the file browser, even if that doesn't happen as immediately as the goto artist/album. Yes, I can confirm, folders of songs without track numbers definitely say 0. on them even if none of the songs in the folder have track numbers, though I think I was wrong about random sorting, they are still sorted alphabetically at least. Playing around with it more today, related to #1, I'd argue that if the only "album" for a given artist is "there isn't one", it should just show all by that artist. And I also notice, incidentally, that clicking on Unknown "albums" from the Artist tab often gives a list of random songs that don't have albums, only some of which were from the artist I clicked on. Any idea what that would be about? Anyway, despite a few little bugs or improvements that could be made, this is still the best player I've seen, or at least, the best that will run on Android 1.6. So... yeah. I only get upset paying 4 bucks for an app when I have no way of telling whether it'll actually work or do what it claims to, or whether bugs will get fixed if I report them. In your case, 4 dollars is kind of a steal. |
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Post by GoneMAD on Jan 7, 2012 0:53:09 GMT -5
I very much appreciate your donation. Thanks!
It should be fairly straight forward to make it so you can just press the text to jump to the artist. I will probably have an option to turn that on/off since technically that area responds to gestures as well and might confuse some users
"Yes, I can confirm, folders of songs without track numbers definitely say 0. on them even if none of the songs in the folder have track numbers, though I think I was wrong about random sorting, they are still sorted alphabetically at least."
I took a look at it.. and if you are using the artist/album view to view an album with no track numbers.. it will show the 0 next to the song name and then sort by filename alphabetically. The file browser will not show the 0 next to the track name if the tag is not present, and it sorts it alphabetically
as for the unknown thing.. that is something i'll have to play around with. I take it you have songs with no album tag so they appear under unknown? Also is all your music in the same folder (for the unknown album songs at least) ? Having them all in the same folder would group them under the same album (unknown). I think the behavior you were looking for in this case is to only show the songs from that artist, instead of showing the whole album. I believe at one point gmmp actually did that, but im not sure if i changed it for a particular reason or it was just a side effect of another change i made.
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hdk
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Post by hdk on Jan 7, 2012 3:20:47 GMT -5
1) Someone requested something similar a few days ago. Mainly to have an option to play all albums from an artist.. or play all songs from an album. So what you requested could be grouped in with that. A list option on the top when long pressed will let you play everything from the artist, or normal pressed would bring up a list of all the songs You might mean my request ( gonemadmusicplayer.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=features&thread=17) As far as I understand neminem we're missing the exact same thing: A "show all" in the library. (Not a "play all" - you can get that in the current version already by keeping the artist, genre etc pressed.) |
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Post by GoneMAD on Jan 7, 2012 10:32:55 GMT -5
long pressing the show all button would allow you to play all |
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Post by GoneMAD on Jan 8, 2012 17:22:23 GMT -5
"2. It looks like if I look at an album that doesn't have track info, it'll put "0. " at the front of each item, then sort randomly? Would be nice if it could sort albums that had track # by track #, but sort everything else the usual way."
i just took a look at this one.. if track number is not present, it sorts by filename (if you have the sort options set to Number), so the sorting is not random. Most likely your filenames do not have the tracknumber in it, so it sorts it alphabetically
i switched it up to change the 0. to the position number in the song list.
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Post by neminem on Jan 9, 2012 22:05:25 GMT -5
i just took a look at this one.. if track number is not present, it sorts by filename (if you have the sort options set to Number), so the sorting is not random. Most likely your filenames do not have the tracknumber in it, so it sorts it alphabetically Yeah, sorry about the confusion - I said my first impressions were wrong in the second post: Yes, I can confirm, folders of songs without track numbers definitely say 0. on them even if none of the songs in the folder have track numbers, though I think I was wrong about random sorting, they are still sorted alphabetically at least. I look forward to hearing there's been an update, now  . And yeah, my music isn't all in the same folder, but it's entirely possible all the tracks I noticed the strange behavior were. Specifically, I have gigs of mashups - I put full albums in their own folders and tag them with the album, but the vast majority of mashups produced don't belong to a particular album, so I leave the album blank. Barring that, I give particularly prolific artists their own folders, too, but I'm not making folders for the probably hundreds of artists that've only made one or two mashups of note, so those all go in the main mashup folder. I would definitely expect that if I looked at such an artist in the Artist tab, I would only find tracks by that artist, yes. That said... I just looked up myself (I've made some mashups myself  in my mp3 player's Artist tab, I know those are all in their own folder (none of them with an album), and when I click then Unknown tab, I get two songs by two other people, all of mine, and then two more by two other people at the end. And the label of the expanded tab is "Unknown / Audio Shrapnel" (the artist of the first song in the list.) The label of the unexpanded tab was "Unknown / neminem". (Also, sometimes for a laugh, mashup artists put some sort of joke as the album of a song, which I leave alone, leading to gobs of albums with one track each in an artist's folder. That being the main, though not only, reason for the first request on my original list.) |
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Post by neminem on Jan 13, 2012 20:39:06 GMT -5
3. Any way to free the space used by the album art and give it back to the "now playing" space? I can disable showing it, but then it's just empty space, that I'd like to have information about the current playing song expand into. So, uh... I just grabbed the new version, and yay new version! That particular request, though, isn't quite fixed, sadly, which is something I was looking forward to. Previously, it was a bunch of wasted space with an empty box. Well, the box disappeared, but it's still just a bunch of empty space. The goal was that the song/artist/album titles would expand to fit that space, which they still don't. Now there's just nothing there. Should let me beta for you. |
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Post by GoneMAD on Jan 14, 2012 1:24:50 GMT -5
maybe i didnt fully understand the request then.. how exactly did you want it to spread out among the extra space? here is a screenshot with some longer titles and the font size increased (configurable in the now playing part of the preferences)  oh and i typically do betas for the major releases.. these smaller patches are put out fairly quickly |
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Post by neminem on Jan 14, 2012 14:32:37 GMT -5
Ah. Huh. I do agree, when in "portrait" mode, it looks like that. I apologize for not specifying, as I hadn't even ever toggled on the global setting in the archos to make apps autorotate. I prefer always keeping things in landscape mode, and thus, the request (or at least, the most recent bug report) should have specified that: it should expand the labels to fit the available space in landscape mode the same way that it does now seem to in portrait mode . Thanks for the continued quick responses! |
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Post by GoneMAD on Jan 14, 2012 16:52:26 GMT -5
okay i tested landscape and see what you are talking about. I shall fix it
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Post by GoneMAD on Jan 14, 2012 17:04:26 GMT -5
k yea that was simple enough... in landscape i had it specified in the layout to take up 50% of the space but in portrait it wasnt
it'll make the next patch.. i dont like to flood the market with updates since it annoys a lot of users. sorry about that
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Post by GoneMAD on Jan 17, 2012 3:11:04 GMT -5
alright it should be fixed in 1.1.8
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Post by neminem on Jan 27, 2012 20:39:04 GMT -5
Thanks! It's totally working and everything now. Though I do have one other slight comment: given that you've set it so labels wrap as needed (which is fine), if you take advantage of the font size option to enlarge the font a bit, and more than one of the labels wraps, it'll start pushing things off the screen, which is also fine. My nitpicky comment: the only place that shows the current repeat/shuffle state is the bottom, which gets most easily pushed off. Might I suggest either drawing it off to the side (over text, if you have to; it's small anyway), or even better, if possible, just having the buttons themselves look visibly toggled? You'll be glad to hear, too: you seem to have fixed the issue I mentioned wherein some folders in the Artists browser displayed songs by artists other than the one I clicked on, yay! (Or it just magically fixed itself. Either way, it's fixed.) So, just that nitpick, the couple other enhancements, and the crash I'm about to file, and this will be a completely perfect android audio-player. I already can't imagine life without it, but until you can filter by only one category (just by artist, not by artist and then album, or just by genre, not by genre then artist then album), and until you can shuffle until you find a song you like, then with one click, get to that song in the artist or album list, or the file browser (or even just the file browser!), I'll complain about those periodically . (Note, those weren't new requests; just describing the use cases for my existing requests that haven't been implemented yet.) Anyway, thanks! |
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in my mp3 player's Artist tab, I know those are all in their own folder (none of them with an album), and when I click then Unknown tab, I get two songs by two other people, all of mine, and then two more by two other people at the end. And the label of the expanded tab is "Unknown / Audio Shrapnel" (the artist of the first song in the list.) The label of the unexpanded tab was "Unknown / neminem".