iPeng support thread

[Mnyb]

IPeng for iPad there is a context meny :

Hold a finger on a playable objekt = song, album, artist and similar .

Then it pops up a meny with "add to end" "play now" and play , this allows for manupilating the current playlist

Add to end is given , play now actually inserts the chosen thing into the next place in the list but the rest of the list continues after that.

In the actual list you can mark songs for deletion, you can hold on them and move them up and down in the list to reorder them .

And save them .

You can use the playlist manager plugin to add songs to already existing list, but then it gets harder.
This is a limitation of the server it has no mechanism for editing playlist outside of the current playlist.

Here I have an enhancement req:

When you are viewing an already saved list it would be cool if iPeng could delete and reorder songs here too, without me cueing up the list to a player ?

[pippin]

Wel, for the current playlist you can always use the add or add-next modes which I believe is pretty much the quickest way to build a playlist around, but that's the same as on the iPhone, you don't need the context menus then.
To reorder the current playlist or delete track from it it's the edit mode on the current playlist, where you can use drag&drop. Again, same as on iPhone.

For stored playlists there is no direct way to edit them, as Mnyb mentioned, there is the playlist manager plugin but there would probably be room for improvement.

What exactly is it you are missing compared to iTunes? Creation of new playlists? Editing of existing ones?

[Mnyb]

Wel, for the current playlist you can always use the add or add-next modes which I believe is pretty much the quickest way to build a playlist around, but that's the same as on the iPhone, you don't need the context menus then.
To reorder the current playlist or delete track from it it's the edit mode on the current playlist, where you can use drag&drop. Again, same as on iPhone.

For stored playlists there is no direct way to edit them, as Mnyb mentioned, there is the playlist manager plugin but there would probably be room for improvement.

What exactly is it you are missing compared to iTunes? Creation of new playlists? Editing of existing ones?

He he thats even simpler chose the add or play next mode and just single tap on a song and it's added or played rigth off *cough* was just wondering what these blue buttons did ? i tried them in the past and did not notice anything.
so simple but the Ui gives no clue to you that this is possible you have to know or stumple upon it, some kind of play icon on the song would make it more obvius.
I better start pushing more random buttons to see what else I'm missing

[pippin]

so simple but the Ui gives no clue to you that this is possible you have to know or stumple upon it, some kind of play icon on the song would make it more obvius.
I better start pushing more random buttons to see what else I'm missing

You better start watching the Quick Tutorial animations that are forced upon you when you open a menu that supports this the first time
Replays under "Help".

[nicoff]

.
What exactly is it you are missing compared to iTunes? Creation of new playlists? Editing of existing ones?

Thank you pippin! I have created new playlists using iPeng for the iPhone adding one song at a time. It is now obvious to me that i need to learn how to use ipeng more effectively.
Mnyb just gave me several hints about how to edit playlists by moving songs around. I just tried it and it works pretty well. Thanks!
I needed to find away to recreate playlist that I have on iTunes. I tried exporting the m3u files but I could never get SB to recognize them. That is where iPeng came in. I had used iPeng as a simple remote and was not aware of its full capabilities. Now I realize that it is more capable than I first thought.
What features makes iPeng for iPad "must have" as compared to the iPhone version?

[pippin]

Bigger artwork, more stuff is available right away (controls and content), you can see more stuff per page...
The browser feature works better on the bigger screen if you use that to look for stuff to play on the internet.
And iPhone doesn't have the Lyrics screen saver.

There are also a number of details that make using it more convenient on the iPad but I think really the main advantage is that you can get more than 4 or 5 items per page and that you always have direct access to the main menu.

Have a look at the screen shots on http://penguinlovesmusic.com

[Mnyb]

You better start watching the Quick Tutorial animations that are forced upon you when you open a menu that supports this the first time
Replays under "Help".

I saw these cartoons when I first used iPeng but they did not really help, I resorted to the "learning by burning" method ,very popular in electrical engineering I must lack imagination they only makes sense after you used the interface for a while (they do now when revisited ).

And still, probably due to lack of imagination .
I learned that i can change modes to to play songs or albums but the actual action to start the song is not shown. The little white hand could press a song in the list to make it more obvious that these action go together and interacts.

(In fact the animation could be the actual UI with songs and real covers )

They all makes sense now when i see them , now I have been using iPeng for a couple of months, so they are worth revisiting , but upon firt use I did not learn much from them.

I simply did not get your idea of modes when I first used iPeng ,but it is a good idea now that I understands it So I was not able to get the instructions of what "modes" did . So now I know what modes is is iPeng !!

The normal squeezesomething interfaces like the web-UI has all 3 actions avaible at each song, so you are conditioned to think that "I decide to add or play at song/album level" especially after 4 years of using squeezeboxes, your approach is to set the whole app in a mode and every action is done according to that mode, except when using context menus ,then you make a active choices again ok.

I'm no fan off "hidden" buttons/actions in any UI .
UI should be selfobvius in it's own context I think for example having smal faint semitransparent add play and "add to" symbols to the right of each song signifying that it does something else when clicked on when you change mode.
But once you know that it does something you know so eh ok .
Otherwise there is no confirmation that you significantly altered the apps behavior ? by these fain tblue buttons

Then I just noticed another of your UI ideas , you never really confirms an action it just happens . On album level it is an improvement as the whole context menu collapse away and music starts to play, or the menu choices of "add to" or "add" was very obvious as you press a whole line of text explaining what's about to happen, the typical squeezebox popup is redundant here .

On song level a bar flash blue once under a song title in the song list .
But what did I just do ? add to end or to play next (play is self evident as the music changes) You see what you did when you look at the playlist later .Here the squeezebox style "adding to end..." or "adding to play next..." confirmation are not such a redundant idea .
(being an option to turn "confirmations" on or off maybe )

I do like the global search function .
It must make a real difference when you actually have many apps I don't as living where I do give you a limited set of apps so this is not immediately obvius , but now that the number of useful apps for me is growing the more I appreciate a central search function and not having to dive into each app to search

[pippin]

Then I just noticed another of your UI ideas , you never really confirms an action it just happens . On album level it is an improvement as the whole context menu collapse away and music starts to play, or the menu choices of "add to" or "add" was very obvious as you press a whole line of text explaining what's about to happen, the typical squeezebox popup is redundant here .

On song level a bar flash blue once under a song title in the song list .
But what did I just do ? add to end or to play next (play is self evident as the music changes) You see what you did when you look at the playlist later .Here the squeezebox style "adding to end..." or "adding to play next..." confirmation are not such a redundant idea .

Hm... You use iPeng for iPad, don't you? There should be a HUD popup now for "Add", "Add next" and "Add to favorites" now in the latest two releases.

It's coming for the iPhone version, too, but it's in the code base which is no longer compatible to iOS 3 and I want to allow people to download that one since it still contains fixes.

[Mnyb]

Hm... You use iPeng for iPad, don't you? There should be a HUD popup now for "Add", "Add next" and "Add to favorites" now in the latest two releases.

It's coming for the iPhone version, too, but it's in the code base which is no longer compatible to iOS 3 and I want to allow people to download that one since it still contains fixes.

HUD what ? ipeng for iPad 1.2.3 r3953 Version 4.3.1 I assume this is my IOS version ?

[pippin]

That's an old beta, isn't it?

The 1.2.3 release, the 1.2.4 release and the 1.3 betas (which are actually the betas leading to 1.2.4, it's a bit confusing) have it.

Did you probably not connect to the TestFlight account for iPeng beta?