So, after my comments last week, here's the list of things I'd like to see improved in Emplode.

There are some more, but I figured I'd post these for now.

Nick.

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D&D = Drag and Drop
WE = Windows Explorer
LHP = Left hand pane
RHP = Right hand pane
Ed = Emplode
Eg = Empeg
PITA = Pain in the arse
PL = Playlist

1 - D&D of a directory from WE to Ed works fine if dragging to RHP of Ed window. Dragging to LHP adds the little box to the mouse pointer and highlights the appropriate parts, but dropping has no effect. There is no warning that nothing has happened. (note, this works fine for single files - it's just directories which exhibit this problem).

2 - D&D within Ed - Panes don't autoscroll when mouse hits top/bottom boundaries. This makes moving a song within a playlist a very time consuming process if the playlist has lots of entries. Also makes copying a song from one playlist to another a PITA.

3 - I can understand why D&D in the RHP works the way it does (i.e. just moves a track's position within a PL, not actually moving the track to within another PL), but it would be nice to have the option to make it work like WE - perhaps by D&D with the Shift or CTRL key pressed.

4 - Can't D&D from LHP into either LHP or RHP.

5 - No undo facility. Important when you've just moved a track from one PL into another rather than copying it.

6 - By default, when D&Ding within Ed, the default option is to move, with SHIFT/CTRL being required in order to do a copy instead. It would be nice to be able to change the (user selectable?) default action to be copy - certainly stop me screwing things up when I try to create new playlists!

7 - Can't minimise or move the main Ed window during syncs. This is a real PITA for long syncs.

8 - PL tags - as previously discussed. i.e. why can you set them and not be able to use them in a search?

9 - In 'synchronising' window, the 'Cancel' button is always greyed out (for Ethernet and Serial - I haven't used USB).

10 - Why is the LHP a tabbed box? The only available option is 'Playlists'. At the moment, it just reduces the screen real estate available for useful information by drawing a border round the whole lot.

11 - An option to turn off the display on the Eg while syncing would be nice.

12 - Playlist names and titles should be editable with the F2 key (as well as the Alt+Enter combination giving you access to properties).

13 - My Eg is called 'Catbert', and this is the name which shows up on starting Ed and the player on the Eg. Why does Ed then show it in the LHP as 'empeg-car'. For multiple windows with multiple Eg's, this would be an annoyance. Shouldn't the unit be described as 'Catbert'?

14 - After a sync, the sync window stays open and says (paraphrase) "Everything's OK, click to continue". When clicked on, the empeg-car collapses. I'd like to see a) an option to auto-close the sync window on successful completion, and b) be returned to exactly where I was in the playlist structure before I synced.

15 - Even though neither Ed or Eg use the original filename, it would be useful if Ed stored it and displayed it. This really is a personal preference one, but it would, for example, make sorting a playlist by hand much - if the original files had the track numbers in them, I wouldn't need to refer to anything else.

16 - The sync window should show the estimated time remaining (and possible the number of files done/remaining, the total bytes transferred and the data transfer rate).

17 - Changing playlist names. Imagine a list of playlists in LHP you want to rename. Move to the first one, hit Alt+Enter. Make changes. Hit return. Focus is not returned to that playlist, so you have to click on the next one, rather than just key down arrow. Note that this works as I would expect it to if the changes are made in the RHP.


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18Gb blue - s/n 080000299 (original queue position 8724)

1 - D&D of a directory from WE to Ed works fine if dragging to RHP of Ed window. Dragging to LHP adds the little box to the mouse pointer and highlights the appropriate parts, but dropping has no effect. There is no warning that nothing has happened. (note, this works fine for single files - it's just directories which exhibit this problem).

This is a bug. It'll be fixed.

2 - D&D within Ed - Panes don't autoscroll when mouse hits top/bottom boundaries. This makes moving a song within a playlist a very time consuming process if the playlist has lots of entries. Also makes copying a song from one playlist to another a PITA.

This will be fixed in v1.1. Also, hovering over a playlist will pop it open.

3 - I can understand why D&D in the RHP works the way it does (i.e. just moves a track's position within a PL, not actually moving the track to within another PL), but it would be nice to have the option to make it work like WE - perhaps by D&D with the Shift or CTRL key pressed.

Something like this is on the list for v1.1.

4 - Can't D&D from LHP into either LHP or RHP.

It's a bug. It'll be fixed.

5 - No undo facility. Important when you've just moved a track from one PL into another rather than copying it.

Tricky. It's not on the list for anytime soon.

6 - By default, when D&Ding within Ed, the default option is to move, with SHIFT/CTRL being required in order to do a copy instead. It would be nice to be able to change the (user selectable?) default action to be copy - certainly stop me screwing things up when I try to create new playlists!

It's an idea. I'm investigating adding a right-drag option to specify exactly what you wanted to do.

10 - Why is the LHP a tabbed box? The only available option is 'Playlists'. At the moment, it just reduces the screen real estate available for useful information by drawing a border round the whole lot.

The plan is to add the Search page as another tab.

12 - Playlist names and titles should be editable with the F2 key (as well as the Alt+Enter combination giving you access to properties).

I'll add this - you're not the first person to ask for it.

13 - My Eg is called 'Catbert', and this is the name which shows up on starting Ed and the player on the Eg. Why does Ed then show it in the LHP as 'empeg-car'. For multiple windows with multiple Eg's, this would be an annoyance. Shouldn't the unit be described as 'Catbert'?

Hmm, there are no plans afoot to allow you to open more than one empeg at a time, so this is not really a problem. The name of the player appears in the window caption already. You can open multiple windows on the same empeg, which makes drag and drop playlist editing better.

14 - After a sync, the sync window stays open and says (paraphrase) "Everything's OK, click to continue". When clicked on, the empeg-car collapses. I'd like to see a) an option to auto-close the sync window on successful completion, and b) be returned to exactly where I was in the playlist structure before I synced.

It's a bit tricky, since the entire database is fetched from the empeg again at the end of the sync, but I'll take a look. The window is left open so that you know that it worked.

16 - The sync window should show the estimated time remaining (and possible the number of files done/remaining, the total bytes transferred and the data transfer rate).

It's on the list. Won't be done any time soon, though.

17 - Changing playlist names. Imagine a list of playlists in LHP you want to rename. Move to the first one, hit Alt+Enter. Make changes. Hit return. Focus is not returned to that playlist, so you have to click on the next one, rather than just key down arrow. Note that this works as I would expect it to if the changes are made in the RHP.

This is a bug. I'll fix it.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Panes don't autoscroll when mouse hits top/bottom boundaries.
This will be fixed in v1.1.

Yay! This was one of the very first things I discovered about Emplode which bugged me.

By default, when D&Ding within Ed, the default option is to move, with SHIFT/CTRL being required in order to do a copy instead.
It's an idea. I'm investigating adding a right-drag option to specify exactly what you wanted to do.

Just wanted to bring up that the "move when dragging" option is the default for Windows Explorer (if you're on the same disk drive), and I'm glad that Emplode emulates this behavior. The right-drag option would be great because it would further emulate Explorer while still giving the flexibility being requested.

Playlist names and titles should be editable with the F2 key
I'll add this - you're not the first person to ask for it.

Yay!

I'd like to see a) an option to auto-close the sync window on successful completion, and b) be returned to exactly where I was in the playlist structure before I synced.
It's a bit tricky, since the entire database is fetched from the empeg again at the end of the sync, but I'll take a look.

I don't think he's asking for Emplode to totally remember its complete state. I think we understand that, after a synch, it's a whole new ball game from a fresh download, so we can't expect everything to be identically the same. However, just saving off the currently highlighted playlist tree and opening it after a re-synch might be enough. The old Windows File Manager had this feature. If you closed it and re-opened it, you didn't get a complete re-creation of all the directory trees that were open, but whichever tree had been highlighted at closing time was opened when the program was re-started.

The window is left open so that you know that it worked.

And as far as that goes: If it didn't work, we'd get an error box. So, in from one point of view, just dropping back to Emplode could be considered a valid "success" message.

Or, it could look like this: When the synch is running, it could have a check box which says "Display statistics when done." If that box it checked, at the end of a synch, it could say something like:

The synchronization process completed successfully.
Elapsed time: 13.4 minutes.
Files deleted from player: 2.
Files added to player: 4.

But if the check box isn't checked, then it would just drop back to Emplode.



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Tony Fabris