[mythtv] Ideas for MythMusic rewrite

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Paul Harrison at 30/12/09 12:53 did gyre and gimble:
> We'll probably regret this but we would like your opinions :-)  We are
> in the process of  switching MythMusic to MythUI and would like to take
> the opportunity to make some much needed improvements to the interface.
> 
> We don't necessarily  just want a list of feature requests, although
> every idea will be considered, but also how they should be implemented,
> what the interface should look like etc. If you can provide mock ups of
> how it should look or links to images of how other players do things
> then all the better.

While I certainly don't want the kind of UI in Amarok 2 (props to Stuart
:p), some of the features it offers are pretty neat (artist info,
last.fm, recommended next track in random mode etc). That said these are
features, not UI suggestions.

I've been playing about a bit with XBMC of late and find it's UI pretty
smart... It's nice how the video and music systems are pretty similar
(don't know the code, so not sure if they are based on the same system,
but conceptually they tie in) and I think it would be good is we could
follow that lead. They have "sources" (cf our storage groups) which can
actually be from local disk, network shares, rss, last.fm, daap etc.
(again a feature suggestion here).

I'm also not sure how XBMC does the display modes - if they have to
support this in the code or if this is all driven by the theme/skin
(different themes do offer different display modes), but again it's
quite nice so if we can allow the theme to be as innovative as possible
that's obviously a good thing.


As for the UI, I've very much like to ephasise artwork - album art, fan
art and artist pictures (e.g. from last.fm or other sites). When
searching for music I'm generally still in album mode - so some form of
coverflow style UI where by I'm flipping through Artists alphabetically,
but I see the album art from that artists albums - perhaps in a stack
(fist album obscures 90% of the artwork from the other albums) so that
if an artist has several albums it would be obvious and further
navigation would be easy.

Not sure if this is helpful or not, but there it is :)

Col


-- 

Colin Guthrie
myth(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

Day Job:
  Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/]
Open Source:
  Mandriva Linux Contributor [http://www.mandriva.com/]
  PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/]
  Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]