What should be in the next version of SqueezePad ?

[bluegaspode]

Update
This poll is deprecated and replaced by this one: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=83106
Update


Now as SqueezePad has been officially released there are sooo many directions on could go for improving the user experience.
Of course not everything can be done at the same time in an one-developer-shop, so things must be prioritized.
As I'm already very happy with the current set of features, I decided to start a poll to find out what feature would make most of the user-base happy.

So take your time and vote for the thing you want me to start at next.

More images of your music collection
Right now there a different ways to find more images matching your music collection/the current playing song.
But we don't have a place yet to show all those nice pictures from the Flickr-App, the Queen App, erlands Song-Info plugin (I always enjoy watching the Last.FM artist images them on the Radio, but the display there unfortunately is sooooooooooo small).

Now with the iPad why not browse all these images like in the 'Photos' App ? Fullscreen, with scaling, as a slideshow ...
So lets just tap the image of the current song and start such an image viewer !

Better playlist management
While the current version of SqueezePad has some basic playlist features via the context-menus (all those that logitech provides on their SqueezePlay devices) I guess people heavily using playlist might find the possibilities a bit limited.
The lets have a custom playlist editor which optionally appears on the right side (overlaying the 'Now Playing' part of the app until dismissed) where you can reorder tracks with drag and drop or delete single items.
If you are in the albums/titles/artists menu on the left one could even think of drag'n'dropping them from left to right (I'm not sure yet how complicated this could get for me).
Remember: touching a song already changes the menu or presents the context-menu so I still have to think how to best avoid confusions.

Syncing players (variation A)
Syncing players is available in the current version of SqueezePad via the default logitech menu. But again: if you do it often, the Logitech way ("select a player, sync it to another player, switch to the next player ...") might not be the most comfortable one.
So lets improve the popup for choosing players with options to group players with drag'n'drop as you might already know it from another iPhone App for Squeezeboxen.

Syncing players (variation B)
But is this the right way to do syncing ? Some time ago someone posted the following idea:
Why not define named Sync-Groups like 'Party Backyard', 'Party Frontyard' where players are assigned (again with drag and drop).
You then can easily activate certain preconfigured Sync-Groups which might be very handy if you often need different Sync-Groups.

Players would be allowed to be assigned to multiple Sync-Groups in the configuration by the way.

(I'll add the votes of 'Variation A+B' together, to get an overall count for a syncing feature)

Mysqueezebox.com - Integration
Currently you need a local server for running SqueezePad.
Do you want me to add mysqueezebox.com support so that it works also without a local server ?

TrackStat Ratings
Never used this feature myself - other Apps have this feature so it might be important. Tell me with your votes !

Caching of Album + Artist Lists
Like on your real Logitech Devices Album and Artist lists are fetched from the server each time you enter the menu.
This might be annoying for large libraries - so why not cache the list (until the server does the next rescan possibly finding new albums/artist).
The list could be presented much faster then !

Album Art Only Screen
A screen filled with the cover art of your library. Sorta like the example posted here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpo...&postcount=202

Better Search
Enter a search term and get a combined search for artists/albums/titles.

Something else
If you think your most important feature is not in the list, vote here and comment in this thread.
If this point gets enough votes I'll start the poll again with different options

[goobi]

Feel a bit stupid suggesting this but it is to be able to direct music to play on the ipad itself. I dont want to load the music up on ipad (only 16 gb), and want to be able to use familiarity with squeezbox menu system to play my music content on ipad and listen with headphones.

[bluegaspode]

might be possible - but doesn't seem to be very easy to implement.
Anyway - if others want that too, vote for 'Something else' for now.

[nathan_h]

Even though I posted all those ablum art screen shots, I didn't vote for that in the pole. Rather, I think you're handling of album art is fine. Sure, a pure browse through album art feature would be cool. But for me more searching options are what I miss.

So I voted for more search power.

In fact, the "killer app" would be to use metadata NOT in the squeeze server, to assist with searching. I don't know the rules about making use of a source like all music or something, so that I could search for all R&B from the 1960s and then get a list of the albums I have that fit that criteria according to AllMusic or something like that. Maybe freedb has that info, and could be the source. Dunno.

I admit that's a huge bit of integration since it's not part of the squeeze world already to draw on.... but one can dream!

[achjimmy]

Caching for me, the other options voted on all seem relevant, but caching would make it better IMO.

[nathan_h]

After living with the app some more i am finding the menu structure to be a little strange. I also find the logitech menuing to be odd. And maybe the menu here mimics what i have set up for each device in the web interface set up options?

Setting -> advanced -> information has stuff like Folders and Logs but neither does anything for me. Love to hide it.

Doesnt really make sense to me to have the App Gallery on the top level player menu. Mayne buried deeper or even better on a separate server settings section if there was one. Maybe that is something i can adjust in the logitech web interface?

I have a menu item called Extras and it is empty. Is that setup error on my part?

The My Apps option is cool but doesnt actually show all my apps. Album review for example is not there, but is instead under Search. Maybe thats how it is supposed to work. But it feels weird. Love to see album review as an option at the top when i am listening to an album.

Anyway i think there are other similar thinga but this is a selection of examples. As i say this stuff may be mostly user setup errors on the server and not the Squeezepad app's doing.

[starcat]

Feel a bit stupid suggesting this but it is to be able to direct music to play on the ipad itself. I dont want to load the music up on ipad (only 16 gb), and want to be able to use familiarity with squeezbox menu system to play my music content on ipad and listen with headphones.

C'mon, sync the music and play it with the iPod on the iPad. You can even take it with you! There is so much more important than this, really. Like Caching Images, TrackStat integration, thumbnail preview selection for all albums in a given playlist or library, etc.

[renevk]

I would like to see more of The current playlist. NOW you can only see what comes NeXT. But why don't see THE complete list of songs.

[Chunkywizard]

I'd like TrackStat ratings please. Shouldn't be too difficult :wink:

Cheers

CW

[starcat]

When dragging the volume slider I would like to have a digital readout from 0..100 in realtime (in a popup window middle of the screen) depending on the selected volume level. Just like on digital amplifiers nowadays. By seeing and remembering this number one may level down and then restore the exact level previously set by remembering that numeric value.