MonkeyFlow 1.4

[danhackley]

flashk - wow. I'm very impressed with this application. I've been using Mediamonkey for some time now, hosting a library of 77056 tracks / 15110 artists. I have always found the album art integration a little lacking. Your application is very smooth, simple, functional - nice ! Especially like the mirror effect.

HOWEVER I would like to help you make this application more EXCELLENT and flexible. I would be pleased if you could consider the following points:

1. as has been repeated many times above, integration with mediamonkey
2. double-clicking on the cover starts the album playing, with forward and back buttons to skip tracks - it would be nice to have a small list of available tracks, so that you can select a particular track on the album rather than skip through them
3. I like the search feature (essential) - nothing appears on the screen however when typing; it would help to have a small box where you can see what you are typing; also, it would be useful to be able to search for albums and even individual tracks rather than just "album artist"
4. browsing seems to be via "album artist" only - would be nice to be able to browse by genre or album title; again, via a small menu would be useful
5. under the album cover it currently lists album title and album artist - would be great if you could add genre, or even better allow the user to customise this
6. it would be great if when you clicked on the album cover, it would flip over to show the rear (I store them as rear.jpg)
7. small point - when i maximise to fullscreen, my taskbar remains present & thus obscures the controls - any ideas why this happens? also - the controls should be present not just in fullscreen mode, but also windowed mode

I appreciate your minimal design (very nice) though IMHO it would be much more useful & powerful if some of these features were available. Thanks !!

PS trying to find the cache - i cannot locate a directory "%TEMP%/monkeyflow_cache", for can I locate the file mediamonkey.ini (where are these - the file does not appear in my Vista search)

[flashk]

Is there any way to make it save window size and position?

This should be pretty easy to add, I'll look into it.

I've got this hooked up with a launchy shortcut, takes a while to load, but thats another matter (maybe being able to send the program to tray?), but id like this to be centred on my screen and a relatively small size.

Around how long does it take to load? How many tracks/albums do you have in your library?

[flashk]

I am having one problem. My 'various artist' albums are showing a blank cover with {song artist-album title} title for each song on the album. A number of the albums (?all?) are then listed with a blank cover and a "'various'" artist. The album is then shown correctly under the 'various artist' filling. Any ideas on fixing this one glitch?

I'm not sure I fully understand what your problem is. MonkeyFlow will display all albums in your library, sorted by Album Artist. It should basically look similar to your 'Album Artist' tree node. Is this not the case for you?

[flashk]

HOWEVER I would like to help you make this application more EXCELLENT and flexible. I would be pleased if you could consider the following points:

.
.
.

PS trying to find the cache - i cannot locate a directory "%TEMP%/monkeyflow_cache", for can I locate the file mediamonkey.ini (where are these - the file does not appear in my Vista search)

Thanks for the suggestions. I've gotten the embedded version working and have a small issue with Vista that I'm waiting to resolve until I release it.

I'm not sure why the taskbar is staying on top of the window in fullscreen mode. It works fine for me on XP and Vista. If you click anywhere in the MonkeyFlow window does the taskbar go away?

The TEMP environment variable should point to your temporary directory, usually "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp" on Vista. The mediamonkey.ini file is in your MediaMonkey application data folder, which should be "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\MediaMonkey" on Vista.

[danhackley]

Excellent - look forward to trying out the integrated version soon ! Good work working on the issue with Vista. The taskbar problem seems to be intermittent, I'll try and work out why it does that.

Your software is good because Mediamonkey needs more flexibility in its interface. Sure you can move windows around and stuff, but the general idea is always the same. Mediamonkey functions very well as software to organise the collection; your application will (hopefully) act as an improved interface (if it integrates well, and is able to display more information such as all the track names on an album, as well as a progress bar).

[Miki]

Is there any way to make it save window size and position?

This should be pretty easy to add, I'll look into it. - Cheers

I've got this hooked up with a launchy shortcut, takes a while to load, but thats another matter (maybe being able to send the program to tray?), but id like this to be centred on my screen and a relatively small size.

Around how long does it take to load? How many tracks/albums do you have in your library?

Anywhere between 12 and 22 seconds and there's about 8,000 tracks in my library.

Cheers, Mike.

[Queseuq]

Lots of people have asked for options to 'play next' etc, but my favorite thing from pretty pictures was that it let you play an album after the last album had finished. I found this really cool as I could queue up albums I wanted to hear without having them disrupt the album I was currently listening to. Unfortunately I now use AutoAlbum DJ and I don't know how well this functionality would work with it but it would be a cool feature non the less.

Also, NEARLY FINISHED!!!!

[barkoz]

I agree with Queseuq, being able to Insert Next, Last and Shuffle Insert is one of the best features of Pretty Pics, it would certainly be a great feature if it could at some time in the future be added to MonkeyFlow.
Cheers from downunder
Brett

[flashk]

I agree with Queseuq, being able to Insert Next, Last and Shuffle Insert is one of the best features of Pretty Pics, it would certainly be a great feature if it could at some time in the future be added to MonkeyFlow.
Cheers from downunder
Brett

I'm not sure how Shuffle Insert works, but I definitely want to add Play Next/Last. Do you have any suggestions on how you would like this feature to be implemented? Would you prefer a keystroke (i.e. CTRL+Enter) or an on-screen menu (i.e. Right-click album)? I'm open to suggestions.

[danhackley]

On this issue, on screen menu, definitely. This makes it more useable at parties, where other people wouldn't have a clue which keystrokes to press.

[jwright]

I am having one problem. My 'various artist' albums are showing a blank cover with {song artist-album title} title for each song on the album. A number of the albums (?all?) are then listed with a blank cover and a "'various'" artist. The album is then shown correctly under the 'various artist' filling. Any ideas on fixing this one glitch?

I'm not sure I fully understand what your problem is. MonkeyFlow will display all albums in your library, sorted by Album Artist. It should basically look similar to your 'Album Artist' tree node. Is this not the case for you?

You are right.
I had redundant listings under "various" album artist after I retaged as "various artist". I never noticed these as I tend not to use the nodes. Cleaned the library and everything works fine and looks AMAZING.
THANKS!
jason

[barkoz]

FlashK wrote

I'm not sure how Shuffle Insert works, but I definitely want to add Play Next/Last. Do you have any suggestions on how you would like this feature to be implemented? Would you prefer a keystroke (i.e. CTRL+Enter) or an on-screen menu (i.e. Right-click album)? I'm open to suggestions.

Definately 'on screen' For me anyway, I'm a mouse user and virtually never use my keygoard unless neccesary, mostly because of conflicts I have had in the past with different programs running and trying to use the same shortcuts.... way to many for me to remember anyway. LOL.
Cheers
PS: Not sure what you mean when you said "I'm not sure how Shuffle Insert works". I mean I'm not sure if you know HOW it works or what it does. If it's the latter, it will insert an album into the current playlist but basically a track here and a track there so you don't get the whole album at once. It's a great idea, If you have one album in the now playing and Shuffle Insert another 3 or 4 you can end up with 1, 2, 3 or so tracks from one album followed by 1or 2 from another etc and so on.
PPS: By the way FlashK, I have just over 8000 albums in my library (nearly 120,000 tracks) and this just works so smoothly, and looks so good, a great way of browsing through so many albums. Thanks for all your work. Much appreciated dude.

[zerosignal]

Hey Flashk,

I recently commented in this topic with a feature request, I was wondering if it is possible...

I would be nice to exclude files. I have ~2000 songs which are not part of an album, but they are included in the MonkeyFlow... so I have ~2000 coverless "albums" (which are the individual songs), this "bug" makes this program useless....
Would be nice to exclude files which have empty album field or exclude by path (\Songs\).
How about it?

[jespervdw]

Hey Flashk,

I recently commented in this topic with a feature request, I was wondering if it is possible...

I would be nice to exclude files. I have ~2000 songs which are not part of an album, but they are included in the MonkeyFlow... so I have ~2000 coverless "albums" (which are the individual songs), this "bug" makes this program useless....
Would be nice to exclude files which have empty album field or exclude by path (\Songs\).
How about it?

As said, mark them as 'various artists' or something in the 'album-artist'-field.

[danhackley]

What's the latest *impatience* ? Integrated version anywhere near completion ?