Playlists

[eddyizm]

Just wanted to start a discussion about some more possible changes regarding playlists as I know this is used heavily by many.

I gathered some open issues regarding playlists in this milestone ->
https://github.com/eddyizm/tempus/milestone/5
there's only a handful and I already added the playlist view to the homepage.

In the library view, the browse playlist page has a sort button with name and random yet, at least my setup, does neither?

This sorting I was planning to set up as a preference to sort on the home view as well as adding the pinned (pseudo star/fave) feature to sort as well.

As noted in #263, the edit playlist is clunky, the swipe is not obvious as it really does not seem to be a pattern anywhere else in the app. The playlist page itself seems like a better place to "edit in place" version a dialog box but does not refresh or load the updated playlist/song count. the playlist seems to behave more like an album at that point.

I also noticed that the app does not seem to have a trash can/delete icon anywhere and I am not seeing it in the drawables unless it is named something not so obvious.

I'm going to spend more time investigating for the right approach as keeping these offline is also on the list and the current playlist info stored is minimal and lacking all the api response info ->
CREATE TABLE playlist (idTEXT NOT NULL,nameTEXT,durationINTEGER NOT NULL,coverArt TEXT, PRIMARY KEY(id));

[ztx-lyghters]

To keep everything in one place, here's a related proposal regarding interactions with playlists through menus:
#692

[eddyizm]

playlist is download view is in PR #707

@ztx-lyghters I really dislike the current playlist menu or edit feature screen. I plan to overhaul that big time so I will look at your comments and we can discuss here. Getting this in is part of the bigger picture and it resolves #95

[eojjn]

The add to playlist dialogue could do with some love.

The toggle for make playlist public is annoying in my opinion, especially because it defaults to private and I personally want all my playlists to stay public.

The option to search through my many, many playlists - rather than scrolling - would also be pretty sweet!

[eddyizm]

@EOJIN
give me a more info. When you refer the "add to playlist dialogue" which one is that? the edit one?
maybe that toggle for public/private can have a default set in preferences? I don't use it but since it defaults to private, that that would be easy to default to the other.

How do you envision the searching by playlists? By playlist title? or songs in the playlist?
those screens will need a major overhaul but I would like to get an idea of how you all use/want to use it. I've been using playlists more lately since i"ve been working on it.

[tvillega]

It's PR #439, a visual improvement over PR #394. Before that public was hardcoded and sent to the server every time a playlist was created or updated. They are linked to the respective issues they solve, since more than a feat this was a fix.

[eojjn]

give me a more info. When you refer the "add to playlist dialogue" which one is that? the edit one?

I meant the dialogue which pops up when I press "add to playlist" on an item in the library.

maybe that toggle for public/private can have a default set in preferences? I don't use it but since it defaults to private, that that would be easy to default to the other.

Being able to choose a default in the settings would suffice for me. Maybe also an option whether to even show this switch in the dialogue for choosing a playlist.

The other option (perhaps more elegant) would be to just respect the playlists existing public/private status and allow this setting to be adjusted in the edit playlist dialogue.

How do you envision the searching by playlists? By playlist title? or songs in the playlist?

Yes, I just meant a fuzzy search for the playlist title. Feishin (desktop) is a nice example. (Also note the possibility to select multiple playlists, sometimes I wanna add a song to a few lists simultaneously)

[tvillega]

The other option (perhaps more elegant) would be to just respect the playlists existing public/private status and allow this setting to be adjusted in the edit playlist dialogue.

I like this. Would have to check if the server has a default (and with server I mean the plethora of compatible servers) and if it is possible to update playlists through the API without enforcing a visibility status on the query. I agree this would provide a cleaner UI and a smoother UX. The current implementation is a patch/fix, this one on the other hand would be a feat.

[eddyizm]

In reworking this editing playlist dialog, i propose ditching this altogether ->

and instead allowing the edits and management on the regular, full size screen.

I don't know why this wasn't the default and although I am new to playlists in tempus general, I have found countless bugs with these playlist and how they are setup/interact or lack of interaction.

@ztx-lyghters Your issue is exactly what I want to do - and remove that lousy edit dialog form in general. Its a rather big lift so I want to make sure I am not missing anything.
That editor dialog adds very little and I found it frustratingly small to work with.

[eddyizm]

I think @tvillega is right where we need to slowly phase this out vs ripping it out as is my initial inclination. That would make it easier and still have it behave more like we intuitively expect. I think after this next release I will start to make the transition.

[eddyizm]

ok, I added 2 new features to the playlist page directly in the 3 dot menu for now.

1. Add to queue
2. Edit playlist

So it will open the same edit dialog for now. I plan to change the behavior of that other 3 dot menu that just opens the dialog from the other pages.

The more i look at this, I'm wondering if we can leverage more icons in the ui for some of these actions. like a heart to fave

This will be in the new pre-releease v4.19*dev

[tvillega]

@herrerad85, @eojjn, @Kurami32, @ztx-lyghters

In PR #1061 I ported almost the entire playlist editor logic into the regular, full size screen view (it is only missing the name edit). This is a first try on removing entirely the editor dialog, however I stumbled on UX problems as there are conflicting gestures.

I don't use this feature so I don't know what to expect from it UX wise.

[Kurami32]

Recently I've seen another app, I liked their UX. I see they have a 2 buttons, one for edit and another one for reorder.

Details

clicking reorder opens a screen like this with buttons on the left (delete) and right side (drag to reorder)

I think this is how should be btw, is very intuitive.

The other button is just to edit the playlist details like the playlist name and description + the visibility

[tvillega]

Implemented in #1076.

[eddyizm]

working on the hometab and library tab at the moment and added a menu in place of the default edit behavior.
However, it still does not have a play now.
Should I change the GO TO PLAYLIST to either PLAY (maybe also play next) or do we want to change the default behavior of tapping the row to play right away, this currently just opens the playlist page.

[ztx-lyghters]

I think it's better to keep the behavior of opening the playlist when tapping on the row itself, as this is the most expected thing to happen in this case. So yeah, I'm voting for changing "Go to playlist" to "Play", but also, having "Play shuffled" option would be very useful as well, as I personally always shuffle my playlists.

[Kurami32]

I think the behavior should be the same as right now :)

So, yup, I also vote for the Go to playlist button on the 3 dots to start playing the playlist directly, but should be named differently I think, is a bit confusing (at least to me) when translating to my language. A shuffle option like @ztx-lyghters says would be nice too, but if is too much, I'm happy with just the play one.