atreiu

Nice, Album View gets company :-)

Sadly, Griddy doesn't really work for me. I don't see the scrollbars and i don't see the playlist on the bottom (see screenshot). This would be the feature I miss most in Album View.

And if i try to view my whole Library, Songbird freeze completely (so I have to shut it down via Task-Manager). On a second test, i tried to let it load, et voilà: songbird freeze about 6min, then unfreeze and show my artworks, but on a strange way: it's something like one album cover for every song, not for every album. I got about 2500 Songs.

A good start, but I hope you get it to work correctly, too. :-D

(Using XP SP3, Songbird 1.0)

atreiu

Oh, i forgot the screenshot from the broken view, after the 6min freeze. Might help to understand my point:

atreiu

@senshu, thanks! I just tried it with sort after album, and now Songbird freeze "only" for about 20sec (it still would be nice, if it wouldn't do that) and then shows the correct albums. :-) However, still no Scrollbars and no Playlist at the bottom.

atreiu

Thanks for your fast updates :-)
My result: maybe it is a little bit faster now. But what is more annoying, it's still unresponsive during the loading-time. I don't mind, if the albums need some time to load, like on Album-View or the even slower MediaFlow, but beeing unresponsive just does not feel right. :-/ I guess your MAC is just a more powerful machine and maybe it can better handle different threads. So maybe it is just me, and you should wait for more feedback.

About the missing playlist: I tried a new profile, and it's working fine, there! Playlist and Scrollbar are visible. Perhaps it's a compatibility problem with an other add-on. I look into it!

tdmurphy

I'm running songbird on osx, and mine doesn't show the playlist or scroll bars either. I even tried disabling all of my other plugins and restarting, but it didn't fix it.
I think the album art grid display in iTunes is great, and I think in future versions of this you should add the options of resizing artwork like iTunes can and the option to only display the playlist after double clicking an album. But the addon looks great so far : ).

Yex

"If your grid view lacks a scrollbar and/or a playlist view, please provide information about your platform, so that I may try to reproduce the problem."

I don't see a Scrollbar and a playlist view

So i'm using Windows XP SP3,
Songbird 1.0.0, Build 860 (20081124135419)

giantjoey24

Yeah I don't see the playlist or the scroll bar either. Would be 5 stars if it did!

Windows XP x64 SP2
Version: Songbird 1.0.0, Build 860 (20081124135419)

Angryman

Me neither:

OS X 10.5.4

atreiu

The Loading is A LOT better! It's fine now :-) Thanks!

Sadly, playlist and scrollbar are still hidden. During the loading, in a blink of an eye, when only 2 rows of albums are loaded, i see the playlist, but as more covers are loaded, the playlist shrinks, and finally hides at the bottom.

atreiu

Hey senshu:
I think i fixed it!
Simply add this to your media-page.css:

#griddy {
height: 200px !important;
}

atreiu

Sorry for triple post :-/
Better use height: 230px or 340px (to fit 2 or 3 complete rows nicely).
And it's not a complete fix, because the user is still able to resize the playlist, until is not shown and can not be resized back...

LIB53

Works great for me. One thing that bothered me though was that when i start griddy, it loads all the album art and takes a while before being useable. Perhaps you could make griddy fill itself with default album art first so the table gets set up quickly, and then load the album art. I don't how practical this idea may be, and it might not make things any better. I just thought I'd tell you anyway. Thanks for a great media view. It's my favorite.

klint

Hi
Thanks for this very useful extension that allows a nice management by album.
I have a request, which by the way is global to all extensions that handle "albums": would it be possible to filter the list of albums for complete album only, true "albums", not just a single song in my library taken from an album.
What could be the criteria to identify a "full" and complete album? taken from the net, we could have the list of songs and compare with the list in the library. Another criteria that may suit my needs would rely on the library only: only show the albums where the total amount of durations for all songs from this album AND in my library is MORE THAN a limit that is set in the extension's config.
For instance, I'd like to display only the covers/albums where the total duration of songs I have in my library is more than 30 minutes. Isolated single songs, or dual songs from an album would be waved that way.
What do you think?
THanks
Olivier

klint

Hello again senshu

I actually have posted a request for a new extension, to fulfill my need more globally instead on relying one your extension only! Here it is, in case you are interested in developing it (also posted on Stevo's "Album view" page) :)

http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/idea_for_a_new_extension_filter_the_library_by_show_full_albums_only

Thanks
Olivier

klint

@senshu,
I agree with your remarks and I have created a ticket in bugzilla for that, actually: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14835
But it seems that we will have to wait for the concept of album + related properties to be implemented in the core.
 Thanks

stevo

@senshu, @klint

The problem is defining what an album actually is. We can get most of them with a couple of simple ifs:
 if [ albumname of all tracks are equal ]
   if [ albumartistname of all tracks are equal ||
        artistname of all tracks are equal ]
     then this should be an album
   fi
 fi

how ever there are some cases where this causes confusion, number one you assume that all albums have the same artist :P compilations are multiple artists, but usually have the same album name. A rare case is multiple compilations of the same name (Like Best of the 80's) and each album has multiple artists.

Generally you have:
 Album Name
  Album Artist or Artist Name
   Track numbers are sequential
     Disk numbers are the same for all tracks for each album

Hopefully we can build a system that would allow developers to call a function to determine what tracks are in an album:
 nsIArray getAlbums(in sbIMediaList aMediaList);
 Returns an array (or enumerator) of albums
  sbIAlbum:
   sbIMediaList aTrackList; // List of tracks for this album
   AString AlbumName; // This should be the same for all tracks
   AString PrimaryImage; // First image found in list of tracks
   AString AlbumArtist; // Various if different artist
   PRint32 AlbumRating; // Average of all the track ratings

 This way you can pass it a playlist/library etc and it would return a list of the albums.

stevo

@senshu Hey, so I was wondering if you would like to take my Album View code and use it to help what you have here. In the album view code I have a component that rips through the albums as fast as it can, by sorting them and then searching. I have 2 versions of it, one in C++ and one in JS.

If you are interested just shoot me an email at steven@sbn.com (that's songbirdnest.com)

kazemizuhi

Can we get an update for Songbird 1.1.2.?

beerbajay

@senshu
You can escape the sorted playlist by using something like what I posted over on the album view page:
http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addons/1309#comment_8552

Tangram

@ Senshu

firstly, great add-on , much appreciated.

Re. Missing Scrollbars, I've had the same problem with a clean install of Songbird 1.2.0 BUILD 1146 and Griddy 0.2.4. on Win XP SP3. No amount of changing Songbird settings views, add-ons etc. made any difference until I went to the Add-on options and set a new image size...

Tools > Add-Ons > Extensions Tab > Griddy > Options

Set new album art size to 36 and hit OK, all images reset correctly and scroll bars magically reappeared. Reset the the image size back to 100 pixels and once again everything worked as it should. If I was to take a guess, there is a problem in the code regarding the image size setting being automatically calculated on first install. Repeated this on another machine to same effect.

-----------

Re. The comments about Album lists or defining an album are perhaps best served by the identifying folder and not the embedded data of title artist. Any commercial mp3 album is delivered in that way and it remains the only thing that is consistent. Relying on embedded Album titles is a recipe for disaster. Problems with compilation titles are one thing, but here's another scenario, two album titles, same name, same artist but different releases (either date, foreign import, special release etc.). In that case songbird would list all as one album, probably repeating the play of most tracks rather than in the correct play order. There is also the problem that not all mp3 files contain the correct data, especially any artist released demo material.

Perhaps much of this will be sorted in the forthcoming Songbird 1.3.0, incidentally Griddy does not currently work with Songbird 1.3.0 alpha, Build 1167.

LIB53

I'm really glad to see this add-on back. I always thought you had the right idea on this Media View.

SchimonPerez

First: Thanks for this great addon. I really like it. The Playlists look really nice with this.

But i have a little problem. Sometimes the griddy images of the album covers just diappear and there is only a black space left. This problem can only be fixed by restarting songbird. I dont know exactly when it happens. Sometimes it does after clicking just two playlists with griddy view. Sometimes it doesnt happen a whole day.

Im using songbird 1.2 with windows vista sp2

AMDphreak

This Addon, like Grid View is glitched.

"
There is a serious glitch with this plugin. It's hard to notice unless you have only one album in your library, so I suspect it's nt been reported yet.

I have 1 album in my library. When I install this, I cannot resize my Songbird window (Vista 64-bit). It is set to fit the height of 1 album, and it will not allow me to resize it vertically. I can resize horizontally, however. I uninstalled Songbird using Revo Uninstaller and then cleared out any remaining registration entries or files related to Songbird manually, and reinstalled Songbird 4 times trying to figure out how this problem happened--and your addon is the lucky winner. Uninstalling the Addon does not fix the locked vertical position. I'm going to have to reinstall Songbird again, but at least I won't make this mistake again. I like the addon and I see that it has potential, but if any one else installs this and doesn't know how to manually uninstall all components of Songbird (since the uninstaller doesn't take care of this), then they will be stuck with a non-working copy of Songbird. You need to get this fixed!

Thanks,
AMDphreak

P.S. by resize, I mean using the corners or edges of the window form of Songbird. The "maximize" button and minimize button still work properly.
"

crisp

@senshu regarding the missing scrollbar & playlist:

I had the same problem (on Songbird 1.3.1, Build 1218 (20090804030152)). I fixed it by setting the view from simple list to griddy. While griddy starts loading the covers i saw the grippy (wich is separating grippy & playlist) getting pushed down quickly. If you're quick enough :) you can catch the grippy and hold it. If done, the playlist stays visible but griddy isn't loading any more. Then exiting and restarting Songbird seems to store the grippy position so griddy and playlist are working fine now.
I think it has something to to with the stored position of the grippy separating playlist & griddy.

fetzig

hi,

great add-on. but very slowly. to your defense - i have (according to griddy's albumCount 1143 albums). i debugged into the code and found out that griddy needs at least 1 sec per album cover (this would be something between 20 and 30 minutes to load for my griddy view). thus i made some modifications and loading griddy needs only 1 minute.

my modifications are a little bit harsh, but maybe you will implement some of it:
// This function is built as a generator, to be called from a pseudo-thread
collectAlbums: function() {
  // Notify event handlers that the page is being refreshed
  this._refreshing = true;

  do {
    dump("do it!\n");
    // Reset the flag from event handlers
    this._restartRefresh = false;

    // Empty the grid view
    this._griddy.clean();
    
    // Collect all albums from the media list
    var filterSet = this._mediaListView.cascadeFilterSet;
    var albumCount = filterSet.getValueCount(this._albumFilter);
    
    for (var i = 0; i < albumCount; i++) {
      var albumName = filterSet.getValueAt(this._albumFilter, i);
      // FIXME: album artist is assumed to be the artist of the first track
      var mediaItem = this._mediaListView.mediaList.getItemsByProperty(SBProperties.albumName, albumName).queryElementAt(0, Ci.sbIMediaItem);
      
      this._griddy.addAlbum(
        mediaItem.getProperty(SBProperties.albumName), // albumName does not contain the complete name
        mediaItem.getProperty(SBProperties.artistName),
        mediaItem.getProperty(SBProperties.primaryImageURL)
      );
      
      //HACK
      //drop yield
      
      // If an event handler asked for a refresh, stop collecting albums
      if(this._restartRefresh)
        break;
    }

    // This loop will run as long as event handlers ask for a refresh
  } while(this._restartRefresh);

  // Notify event handlers that page refreshing is finished
  this._refreshing = false;
},

i hoped to improve some stuff in this._griddy.addAlbum(), but i don't know how to replace these dom calls (document.createElement, element.setAttribute) with something better performing. and it seems that they are already pretty fast at all.

the only really slow thing was the computing of the attributes for the this._griddy.addAlbum() call. the yield call makes the loop slow too, but it's a stupid idea to drop it.

...whatever it seems i just have to avoid every mediaview except the filter pane (which looses or doubles its filter panes for some reason when switching between it and griddy).

LIB53

Could you bump the max version to 1.4.0 for the next update? Thanks. This was always my favorite media view despite it's bugs :)

Hiromacu

@senshu: Yeah, a version bump to 1.4.* would be great! :P

BR-Charles

Bump it, man! Really a great one!

Mr.Brownstone

A version for songbird 1.7 would be great. I used this addon on songbird 1.4 it's great indeed.

kieft

thnx

NickelZinc13

A year ago, AMDphreak had a problem with this add-on being that the window size cannot be changed.

I installed Songbird for the first time this morning since I became furiously fed-up with iTunes and the crappy service it provides. Songbird is an excellent program, but installing Griddy basically opened Pandora's Box for me. The window height of the entire interface was locked to about 250 pixels, and could not be extended. Width was fine and completely adjustable. Reinstalling Songbird did not work, disabling Griddy did not work, and uninstalling is a COMPLETE mistake, since now Songbird is unfunctional, even after a reinstall. I'm one of those people who do not know how to manually install this add-on, so I am stuck in lieu of a music program.

I'll provide system specifications upon request.

momashi

Great Job, it's too bad you stopped developing Griddy because Songbird stopped supporting Linux. There are few DEB releases of versions as high 1.8 floating around the net (I'm using one of them in KUBUNTU 10.04, there's nothing like Songbird on Linux) and the Nightingale Project is coming to life which is taking the Songbird Source Code, Engines and Library and making purely for spin-off.

momashi

Hey,

I just notice that you're still pretty involved with the comments and there are updates to Griddy. Yey!!

I have two suggestions. If you endup deciding to implement them, I would be in Songbird Zen!! It's already pretty sweet as it is but this would make it sweeter:

======
LABELS
======
I was wondering if you add labels to Griddy. You can keep them optional in case some users don't want them. It's just that when the occasional Album doesn't have a cover, we have no way of knowing what it is without a tag. Also, I don't necessarily know all the Album covers by heart, so sometimes, it's good to have an alternative. Check out how the develloper of player pro on Android did his griddy setup with labels:

http://cdn2.staztic.com/screenshots/97425-1.jpg

it looks really nice and doesn't waste any space by putting the labels directly on the Album Art (between the white text and the semi-transparent black strip the label is placed on, the text is very visible whereas it does not distract from the image.)

=========================================
ALBUMS ARTISTS GENRES PLAYLIST CATEGORIES
=========================================
It's great to be able to browse albums in Griddy form but it would be awesome if we can choose to browse the Artist, Genres and Playlist Categories in Griddy form. Im this manner we do have resort to the filter pain when we don't want browser by Albums. iTunes does this by randomly choosing Album Artwork of one of the Artist's albums to represent the Artist. They do the same for the Genre. I like MusicPlayer pro's approach much more: they allow you to pick pictures of the Artists and saves the information to it's own database independent from ID3 (it makes cache files on the hard drive). This way we can select our on picture for Artists and Genres.

Jenova20

Griddy doesn't appear to work anymore for Songbird 1.9.3
No album art is shown for me anymore and it did the last time i used it, which was about a week ago.

Jenova20

Griddy only works if i remove all my music and re-add it to the folder again.
Too much effort to do this almost every day, got MediaFlow instead.
Far less bugs and works great.

MrSkittles

@senshu Same problem with no album art showing. Mac OS 10.6.7 SongBird 1.9.3