[mythtv] Proposed MythMusic Interface Improvements

[Daniel C. Casimiro]

I am looking for some feedback on a number of improvements (IMHO) to the 
MythMusic interface.  Please take a look at the screen shots found here: 
http://members.cox.net/dcasimiro/index.html.  I have also pasted the 
body of the web page into this mail.

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I do not particularly like the current MythMusic interface. So, I 
started to experiment with possible improvements. The screen shot above 
was created from some quick mock up code that I wrote. The code doesn't 
work and is sure isn't pretty. It is just something to communicate my 
idea. That's why there is no link to the source here. I have no qualms 
about releasing it, once I spend some time cleaning it up.

You can click on the image for a higher-resolution image.


    An Explanation of what you see


      Music Browser

The icons in the upper left box represent the user's music collection. 
The icons are probably too big, but I was too lazy to shrink them down. 
I can leverage ImageMagick later on to handle this. I like to think of 
it as a music browser. The idea is that the user would add songs to 
current play list through this widget. Although not shown, the widget 
would also display individual songs. I would give the user the ability 
to add single songs, or entire directories (albums/artists). The 
directories could be generated from actual directories on the hard 
drive, or from the database. Perhaps, the directories could be created 
via autoplaylists <http://xtcp.net/?q=node/view/56%22>.


        Cover Art

I found a cool website, named Slothdog's Amazing CD / Album Cover Finder 
<http://www.slothradio.com/covers> where you can download cover art. I 
was hoping to design an interface that automatically pulls down art from 
Slothdog.

My biggest problem with the current interface is that it takes too long 
for me to find music. To alleviate this problem, I would also like to 
add the capability to filter albums/songs by letter. Again, the 
autoplaylists would help in this area. I was thinking of adding a 
spinner-type widget to implement the letter filtering, but an 
autoplaylist interface may work better.


      Play list

The column to the right represents the play list. The user uses this 
list to skip to specific songs and to remove songs. Fairly 
self-explanatory.


      Song Info

The widget towards the bottom represents the current song's 
meta-information. For example, it will display total artist, track name, 
track-time, elapsed track-time, and genre. I'm sure that other info can 
be displayed as well. Perhaps this could be user configurable...

Perhaps this could be fit into a single line. The space may be better 
used to build an interface to the autoplaylist engine. The remaining 
problem is to design an interface that does not require a full keyboard.


    Feedback/Comments

Just looking for feedback and/or comments on this interface. It seems 
fairly easy to navigate with the keyboard, which should translate well 
to a remote.


Thanks.
Dan