Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Help improve MediaMonkey 5 by testing the latest pre-release builds, and reporting bugs and feature requests.

Moderator: Gurus

Media Tree nodes with sub-nodes are useful to you and should be (re)incorporated in MM5?

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Friedrich
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:14 am

Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Friedrich »

Ludek wrote:They are intentionally eliminated. They were hard to navigate anyway. Instead you can search them in the grid view just by typing the first letters.
http://forum.mediamonkey.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=86861

To me these subnodes* have always been one of the features of MM I found most useful
and that distinguished MM4 positively from all mediaplayers (MS Windows & Linux) I know about.
In my opinion it makes a lot of sense for usability concerns to have split panels with
detailed structure on the left and content on the right side.
(No coincidence that most popular file-managers use this design.. .)

These nodes on the left were particularly useful for organizing and tagging the library
because they allowed to drag & drop content (songs, videos ..)from the right panel
to the subnodes on the left and thereby tagging them.
For example with genres:
Select a number of songs on the right side and drag & drop them to the appropriate genre.
Done.
Extremely useful..

This matter seems to me somewhat analog to the controversies about Linux or Windows start menus:
As far as Linux is concerned surely the classical structured! startmenus are by far the most popular designs, like in KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE etc. .
Gnome, Windows 8, Unity (Ubuntu) etc. lost a lot of users by their decision to remove them.
I respect but never really understood why someone could prefer the "type-in-what-you-search-for..."-designs.
Maybe both approaches should be available as an option?

Best regards
Friedrich
MM5 (2606)and MM4 (1919) installed and running well on:
Debian 11 KDE, EndeavourOS KDE (wine 7.4 via playonlinux), Win10 64bit
MaximusPrime
Posts: 403
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2012 1:31 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by MaximusPrime »

I must admit that I haven't been testing mm5 much yet but I would really miss the sub nodes. I'm not quite sure but I think the early mm3 did had them too or not all and there was a script to implement them by a user, that would be a nice option
Friedrich
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:14 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Friedrich »

MaximusPrime wrote:I must admit that I haven't been testing mm5 much yet
Me too. Was my first shot today.
I'm not quite sure but I think the early mm3 did had them too
Yes, they have been there from the beginning, as far as I remember.
Thats why I got so damned used to them ... ;-).
and there was a script to implement them by a user,
You mean "MagicNodes", I guess. Great extension by Zvezdan.
that would be a nice option
In the thread I referred to above,
JIRI mentioned that it is easy to do.
So there is hope anyway, that at least someone of the many capable script-writing users will implement it.
Maybe this poll will shed some light on how much demand there is for this feature.
Last edited by Friedrich on Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
MM5 (2606)and MM4 (1919) installed and running well on:
Debian 11 KDE, EndeavourOS KDE (wine 7.4 via playonlinux), Win10 64bit
MaximusPrime
Posts: 403
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2012 1:31 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by MaximusPrime »

No, not Magic Nodes, but that's great too.
I think in the early state of mm3 wasn't the my computer node with sub nodes, just in form of a script.
Ludek
Posts: 4958
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:00 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Ludek »

This is going to be added as sample addon: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=13962
Ludek
Posts: 4958
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:00 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Ludek »

The addon can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvsc6nos8p2ld ... .mmip?dl=0
It shows subnodes for all person nodes, album, series, genre, rating (like in MM4)

D&D of tracks to assign a category works for Rating, Album, Series in 2058.
The rest will be fixed in 2060.
MaximusPrime
Posts: 403
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2012 1:31 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by MaximusPrime »

Ludek wrote:The addon can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvsc6nos8p2ld ... .mmip?dl=0
It shows subnodes for all person nodes, album, series, genre, rating (like in MM4)

D&D of tracks to assign a category works for Rating, Album, Series in 2058.
The rest will be fixed in 2060.
Great! That's why I love MM so much, you developers listen to what the user ask for
djdd
Posts: 40
Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2016 3:36 pm
Location: Switzerland, Breitenbach

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by djdd »

For me sub-nodes are useful.

I’m working as a developer, tester and quality manager. So, I suggest, that the main program should be kept as small as possible, to keep it as stable as ever possible.
Around that stable “kernel”, extension (this is the name used in MM5) can be added to extend the functionality, like this sub-node extension.

I also would like to see, that I can start MM with two different configurations, with different extensions loaded.
  • As DJ, I use MM side by side with “Traktor”, so search songs and drag & drop them to “Traktor”
  • At home maintaining the library and preparing DJ sets I need extension, I don’t need during a DJ performance
When an extension repository is created for MM5, there should be a clear distinction between extensions build by the MM5 developer team and extensions build by the community.

Regards,
Dieter
Friedrich
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:14 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Friedrich »

djdd wrote:Around that stable “kernel”, extension (this is the name used in MM5) can be added to extend the functionality, like this sub-node extension.
Making features optional by the way of extensions is surely the best solution one can wish for, because everyones needs and preferences can be met.
I am completely happy and content with that.
MaximusPrime wrote:Great! That's why I love MM so much, you developers listen to what the user ask for
Yes. Great devs, great community. Thanks to all!
MM5 (2606)and MM4 (1919) installed and running well on:
Debian 11 KDE, EndeavourOS KDE (wine 7.4 via playonlinux), Win10 64bit
Peke
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Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Peke »

djdd wrote:When an extension repository is created for MM5, there should be a clear distinction between extensions build by the MM5 developer team and extensions build by the community.
This is something we are working on, but as MM5 is in Alpha stage and changes we are thinking about are big changes both MM5 App and MM Server side in order to make things right and future proof. I'm thinking that you users and current/future developer would like it.
Best regards,
Peke
MediaMonkey Team lead QA/Tech Support guru
Admin of Free MediaMonkey addon Site HappyMonkeying
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Barry4679
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Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Barry4679 »

Ludek wrote:They are intentionally eliminated. They were hard to navigate anyway. Instead you can search them in the grid view just by typing the first letters.
Typing the first letters into the grid is affected by the setting in Tools|Options|Library|Search, so you you may get more returned results than are useful. ... eg I have the above option set to AlbumArtist & Album ... if I am in the Albums node, and type an "g" into the grid, I get 452 albums returned, but I only have 72 albums starting with "G" ... this is because it returns albums like "My Song" by Jan Garbarek and Keith Jarrett ... presumably because of the "G" starting the word "Garbarek"

I prefer the sub-nodes.

The good thing about the sub-nodes, is that I can quickly browse through the list, rather than having to peck and hunt, by trying this character and then that character

If you persist with removing them, could the matrix filtering be based just upon the field that the node is grouped by?
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
gamb2009
Posts: 96
Joined: Wed May 02, 2012 8:33 pm

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by gamb2009 »

One of the most powerful performances and features of MediaMonkey 4 is how good it manages a big database. The nodes in the tree are very effective to edit bits of the database. For instance, if for some reason you have misspelled the name of an interpreter (Classic Music or Jazz, happens all the time) you can easily discover and fix in the tree, changing at once many tracks from different records. That feature is actually missing in MM5.
gamb2009
Friedrich
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:14 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Friedrich »

gamb2009 wrote:The nodes in the tree are very effective to edit bits of the database. For instance, if for some reason you have misspelled the name of an interpreter (Classic Music or Jazz, happens all the time) you can easily discover and fix in the tree, changing at once many tracks from different records. That feature is actually missing in MM5.
Fully agreed. I am using it very often, too. Having all subnode-entries in the tree editable is an extremely fast and powerful feature.
Hopefully this function can be added to the "showAllNodes"-extension ..
MM5 (2606)and MM4 (1919) installed and running well on:
Debian 11 KDE, EndeavourOS KDE (wine 7.4 via playonlinux), Win10 64bit
dmcritchie
Posts: 98
Joined: Sun Dec 29, 2013 11:02 am

Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by dmcritchie »

This matter seems to me somewhat analog to the controversies about Linux or Windows start menus:
As far as Linux is concerned surely the classical structured! start menus are by far the most popular designs, like in KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE etc. .
Gnome, Windows 8, Unity (Ubuntu) etc. lost a lot of users by their decision to remove them.
I respect but never really understood why someone could prefer the "type-in-what-you-search-for..."-designs.
Maybe both approaches should be available as an option?
I agree with Friedrich. I do not want to have to remove my hand from the mouse to type any more than necessary. With the MM4 media tree, I don't have to type at all, and thus it takes me less time to select my track(s). It is no doubt a matter of personal preference, but to reduce media tree functionality is not a good idea IMHO if you want to keep many of your MM4 users happy.

Dennis
Barry4679
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Re: Poll: Media Tree Nodes with sub-nodes useful or not?

Post by Barry4679 »

I used the MM4 sub nodes for navigating, because that is all that we had. I want to allocate most screen width to the data columns, and the Media Tree is just in the way once I have navigated. Speed scroll in the Media Tree's sub-nodes was OK, but generally there was too much scrolling through long long lists, and expanding, and then contracting, the Media Tree column width. Also the hassle of opening|closing nodes, so that I could access the rest of the Media Tree.

I had some initial adjustment problem with MM5, but have worked with MM5 quite a bit during this beta test, and I now prefer the new and improved navigation tools in MM5. .... I like it that the sub-nodes are an option. I don't intend to turn the option on, because I find the new sleek design to be more functional, and less expensive in screen real estate.

The new paradigm still has scrolling. ... Better scrolling IMO ... eg. option of scrolling just of the 1st characters in the tag, or scrolling on any word in the tag
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iqe3ywg89kb0u ... d.png?dl=0

The new generic facility is also integrated with filtering .... and MM5 navigation is much more multi-dimensional that the MM4 ... ie. I went from situations like these ... https://www.dropbox.com/s/va7945agi6f5f ... t.png?dl=0

I typed "cap", and was given all these target options, which is a large improvement navigation IMO.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qo4pla0gnz9sc ... n.png?dl=0


In vanilla mode, the MM5 Media Tree is deprecated to being little more than a tool to jump start your MM session ... ie. select your collection node, and to optionally select a 2nd-level node (eg. Artists, or Albums, or Composers, etc), where each have a index-tailored grid|art view, which is kind of like a "home" screen for the index.

Once started you can reclaim screen real estate by toggling the Media Tree off, and do further navigation without it .... and in MM5, there is a tool bar button for that toggle :)

I do have issues with some implementation issues with the new MM5 facilities, but all that is being worked through during these alpha and beta phases of MM5.

I do agree that there is a learning curve and some initial disorientation ... but this the usual cost of progress isn't it?

MM could do themselves a favour, and produce some slick training|orientation aids, like a series of videos, or some walkthoughs, because they would help, and are needed in a few areas ... but I am not optimistic because they have never excelled in this area have they?
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
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