by mcow » Sat Feb 20, 2016 5:33 pm
OK, so. I don't know if any of these are theme-specific; I thought I saw some differences in available features as I checked out different themes, but I didn't make any notes.
Overall, MM5 has clearly gotten some work and is close to usable; but until it scrobbles, it'll remain on the shelf.
To start on a positive note: One difference from MM4 that I like is the device options placed in the Tree view. However, I only want to see the actual devices I use. The thumbdrives and the internal storage of my Samsung tablet should not be listed there (they are deselected in the MM4 options). I assume iPod support will come later.
Also, the Browser view is pretty nice, with the Wikipedia information. For Artist, the Related Artists suggestions can be kind of schizoid; not sure where those are coming from. Being able to configure more sources (AllMusic? last.fm?) would be cool, but probably limited by those sites' terms-of-use. Browser view for an Album was sometimes incomplete (missing even the "continue reading at Wikipeda" link, and just a partial track list).
Bugs: right now, the UI has a tree with "Albums" highlighted, and a big empty content pane, and it's completely unresponsive to clicks. I can drag the window, however. Earlier, a few alarming complete UI lockups: even the mouse was not moving, which I haven't seen since the Windows 3.1 days.
OK, I just killed MM5 in Process Explorer. There were two sub-processes, both called "MediaMonkeyEngine" -- is that expected? After killing it, I got a popup with "This application has leaked memory," and one of the Engine processes is still in existence. This second process might be because I had tried opening a SongsDB5 object in Python, which was still open, but when I exited Python, the Engine process persisted.
In the tree: Album Artists and Year nodes under Music are essential, but missing. Composer and Publisher and Genres and Classification and Location: Not useful to me. I assume some customization of the tree's contents will be available out of the box, eventually.
The view of the top level collection node ("Music") shows me the last several artists I listened to and beneath that the last several albums I listened to. Since these will usually align one-to-one, it doesn't seem like a good way to do that. Anyway, I don't find the historical view useful; if I could specify a source (e.g. an autoplaylist) to draw those items from, it could be very useful. Which suggests an AutoArtistList (like an AutoPlayList) as a feature.
The "Art" and "Art+Details" views do not appear to be available. If viewing "Albums", we see Art -- and the horizontal scrolling of that is pretty nice.
But I have playlists that I view as "Art" and "Art+Details" in MM4; they're less useful with the text display options now provided. And what is "Mixed Content" supposed to be useful for? All that space spent to display subnodes is a waste. I guess maybe for a touch interface this might be useful, but the Layout option is not set to Touch.
I do not like the menus relegated to a "continuation" icon in the upper-right corner. I like traditional Windows menus. I realize this is a losing battle.
OK, so. I don't know if any of these are theme-specific; I thought I saw some differences in available features as I checked out different themes, but I didn't make any notes.
Overall, MM5 has clearly gotten some work and is close to usable; but until it scrobbles, it'll remain on the shelf.
To start on a positive note: One difference from MM4 that I like is the device options placed in the Tree view. However, I only want to see the actual devices I use. The thumbdrives and the internal storage of my Samsung tablet should not be listed there (they are deselected in the MM4 options). I assume iPod support will come later.
Also, the Browser view is pretty nice, with the Wikipedia information. For Artist, the Related Artists suggestions can be kind of schizoid; not sure where those are coming from. Being able to configure more sources (AllMusic? last.fm?) would be cool, but probably limited by those sites' terms-of-use. Browser view for an Album was sometimes incomplete (missing even the "continue reading at Wikipeda" link, and just a partial track list).
Bugs: right now, the UI has a tree with "Albums" highlighted, and a big empty content pane, and it's completely unresponsive to clicks. I can drag the window, however. Earlier, a few alarming complete UI lockups: even the mouse was not moving, which I haven't seen since the Windows 3.1 days.
OK, I just killed MM5 in Process Explorer. There were two sub-processes, both called "MediaMonkeyEngine" -- is that expected? After killing it, I got a popup with "This application has leaked memory," and one of the Engine processes is still in existence. This second process might be because I had tried opening a SongsDB5 object in Python, which was still open, but when I exited Python, the Engine process persisted.
In the tree: Album Artists and Year nodes under Music are essential, but missing. Composer and Publisher and Genres and Classification and Location: Not useful to me. I assume some customization of the tree's contents will be available out of the box, eventually.
The view of the top level collection node ("Music") shows me the last several artists I listened to and beneath that the last several albums I listened to. Since these will usually align one-to-one, it doesn't seem like a good way to do that. Anyway, I don't find the historical view useful; if I could specify a source (e.g. an autoplaylist) to draw those items from, it could be very useful. Which suggests an AutoArtistList (like an AutoPlayList) as a feature.
The "Art" and "Art+Details" views do not appear to be available. If viewing "Albums", we see Art -- and the horizontal scrolling of that is pretty nice.
But I have playlists that I view as "Art" and "Art+Details" in MM4; they're less useful with the text display options now provided. And what is "Mixed Content" supposed to be useful for? All that space spent to display subnodes is a waste. I guess maybe for a touch interface this might be useful, but the Layout option is not set to Touch.
I do not like the menus relegated to a "continuation" icon in the upper-right corner. I like traditional Windows menus. I realize this is a losing battle.