Announce: Material Skin

[Mark Miksis]

Does the Material Skin display the notifications for "plugin updated, restart required" and/or "new version of LMS available"? I'm guessing that they're there somewhere but I'm not sure where to look...

[cpd73]

I realize you may not be able to get all the setting in the numerous plugins (Like Erlands) to work. I am grateful for the work you have done.

No, this should work - its only navigating a list. Things that won't work are where there are multiple selections, or non-search input fields, etc.

Anyhow, I have just installed Custom Browse in a VM with LMS, and its placed the "New Albums" in the top-level menu and I get the same error - and I also see LMS log an error. I'll see if I can fix. Odd though, as th ecommand sent is still the same.

[cpd73]

Does the Material Skin display the notifications for "plugin updated, restart required" and/or "new version of LMS available"? I'm guessing that they're there somewhere but I'm not sure where to look...

New plugins are shown in the "Information" dialog (accessed via the top right menu). Material will check for new plugins each time this dialog is shown.

[cpd73]

I am on version 7.1 of Material now and it is working well except one glitch that was not in earlier version. When I click on New Albums I get a generic error message "Something went wrong:Error Network Error". I have encountered this before on a much earlier version of Material which I reported but was not able to provide the correct Debug info for you.

To be honest, I have no idea about this. I can recreate the issue in a VM. Clicking 'New Albums' using the following command and shows the same error message as you are getting:

["custombrowse","browsejive",0,25000,"hierarchy:newalbums65"]]

But cliking on 'New Artists', which uses the following, works!

["custombrowse","browsejive",0,25000,"hierarchy:newartists65"]]

So, not sure if this is a Material issue (which is most likely), or a Custom browse issue (not likely). But either way, I don't understand why one works and the other does not.

[Manul]

I'm using Material more and more (in its mobile variant) and have 2 wishlist items (I guess that comes with providing great software – people will start to wonder if it couldn't be even greater ):

1. Make sleep mode settings easier to access. I use sleep mode in the "sleep at end of current track" variant regularly. Currently, to access that, I have to:

• tap the player name to get the drop down menu
• tap "manage players"
• tap the 3 dots near the player to get the drop down menu
• tap "sleep mode"
• tap the current mode to get the drop down list
• scroll that list so the last entry (end of current track) becomes visible
• tap that entry
• tap "save"

That's seven taps and one scroll. I really wish this was easier. One improvement would IMHO be to replace the last four steps by presenting all available choices in a list with a cancel button immediately upon selecting "sleep mode" and setting the mode with a single tap from that without additional confirmation. Even better, IMHO, would be if this was accessible directly from the player menu (the drop down menu top left).

2. Upon tapping the info button on the now playing tab, it transforms into a play/pause button. This happens so quickly that I have not yet a single time managed to access the info without immediately pausing playback. Would it be possible to add a slight delay here?

[cpd73]

I'm using Material more and more (in its mobile variant) and have 2 wishlist items (I guess that comes with providing great software – people will start to wonder if it couldn't be even greater ):

1. Make sleep mode settings easier to access.

The sleep settings dialog can be accessed via a long-press on the play/pause button in the now-playing page. You can also select player settings from the top right menu, which will show the settings for the current player.

2. Upon tapping the info button on the now playing tab, it transforms into a play/pause button. This happens so quickly that I have not yet a single time managed to access the info without immediately pausing playback. Would it be possible to add a slight delay here?

There was a bug a while ago where the press of the 'i' button would fall through to the play/pause. Previously the sleep dialog was also accessible via this play/pause button, and this long press functionality seemed to affect this. But this has now been removed. Which version of Material are you running? I've seen no others report this issue.

[Manul]

The sleep settings dialog can be accessed via a long-press on the play/pause button in the now-playing page. You can also select player settings from the top right menu, which will show the settings for the current player.

Great, that should make it a lot faster. Any chance you would consider changing the drop down style selection of sleep duration to a more immediate selection method?

There was a bug a while ago where the press of the 'i' button would fall through to the play/pause. Previously the sleep dialog was also accessible via this play/pause button, and this long press functionality seemed to affect this. But this has now been removed. Which version of Material are you running? I've seen no others report this issue.

I believe I'm running the most recent version. It could be though that I experienced the issue on an earlier version. I'll double check whether it's still present when I'm back home and report back here.

[SlimChances]

To be honest, I have no idea about this. I can recreate the issue in a VM. Clicking 'New Albums' using the following command and shows the same error message as you are getting:

["custombrowse","browsejive",0,25000,"hierarchy:newalbums65"]]

But cliking on 'New Artists', which uses the following, works!

["custombrowse","browsejive",0,25000,"hierarchy:newartists65"]]

So, not sure if this is a Material issue (which is most likely), or a Custom browse issue (not likely). But either way, I don't understand why one works and the other does not.

No worries if it can't be fixed. Just a comment but for several versions of Material prior to ver .70 it did work

[cpd73]

No worries if it can't be fixed. Just a comment but for several versions of Material prior to ver .70 it did work

That, actually, was a good hint! Tracked it down. Custom Browse does not like the range I'm asking for. By default Material now asks for up to 25k items, before it was only 100 at a time. Sending CustomBrowse "0, 25000" causes it to fail, "0, 300" is OK. Just need to check if I can obtain that magic numbee form somewhere. Otherwise I'll just default to 300 here.

[SlimChances]

That, actually, was a good hint! Tracked it down. Custom Browse does not like the range I'm asking for. By default Material now asks for up to 25k items, before it was only 100 at a time. Sending CustomBrowse "0, 25000" causes it to fail, "0, 300" is OK. Just need to check if I can obtain that magic numbee form somewhere. Otherwise I'll just default to 300 here.

That's hopeful. Thanks for looking into this. Do you have a donations link?

[Yatsushiro]

That's hopeful. Thanks for looking into this. Do you have a donations link?

Yes, come on Craig, there's a lot of us grateful here...

[d6jg]

Yes, come on Craig, there's a lot of us grateful here...

+1

[cpd73]

Yes, come on Craig, there's a lot of us grateful here...

I'm developing this purely for fun, however, seeing as I have been asked about this before, I have added donate button to Material's github page: https://github.com/CDrummond/lms-material

[haschmich]

I'm developing this purely for fun, however, seeing as I have been asked about this before, I have added donate button to Material's github page: https://github.com/CDrummond/lms-material

Thanks - I too felt compelled to donate after trying your skin for the first time about two hours ago. I cannot overstate how impressed I am. It is simple, beautiful, intuitive, elegant, very well thought trough into the details, and it has features I had given up hoping for even in a full blown app - and you managed to pull them off in "just" a skin. Amazing. Of course, this is also a showcase about how far web technology has come, and about what a great architectural design the Slimserver/Squeezebox people came up with so many years ago, which makes it even possible to still extend it in such a modern and elegant manner.

Oh, and please stop advertising your skin as "suitable for mobile use" - I'm using it on a 65 inch TV and it feels like a whole new experience. I'm afraid a lot of users might be missing out because they read "for mobile use" in the plugin description and decide that's not what they are looking for.

The two features I am especially excited about are:

• The easily accessible rating widget.
  I am still using the Squeeze Commander app on Android to the day, although it didn't see any updates for almost a decade, because every other app ever since only allowed rating via sub menus and most don't even show the rating on their now playing screens. The ratings are an essential feature to me, and I never quite understood why this feature receives so little love in music players, while everybody seems to be obsessed with ratings when it comes to movies.
• The elegant "now playing" display for the big screen.
  Especially for the PC, this was sorely missing. Only erland had made an effort in this direction many years ago, but it was a little cumbersome to use as it wasn't integrated in a control app, and visually it didn't quite appeal to me.

A few small suggestions for nice to have improvements:

• is there a reason why you don't use the "Title Format" defined in the "Interface" settings for the track list? I would love to see my ratings as a number in parentheses after each title name in the list.
• I think it would be nice to switch to "now playing" mode when clicking on the album cover in the controls bar at the bottom of the tracklist mode.
• I would love to have an option to display a clock on the now playing screen; maybe only for desktop mode, as it would fit nicely in the middle of the title bar there. On a mobile, the OS's clock is always only a swipe away anyway.

And one more idea: did you think about packaging this in a way so that you can publish it in the apple and google app stores? It would be much more likely to be found by users looking for a mobile lms controller.

[cpd73]

I cannot overstate how impressed I am. It is simple, beautiful, intuitive, elegant, very well thought trough into the details, and it has features I had given up hoping for even in a full blown app

Thank you for your kind words.

is there a reason why you don't use the "Title Format" defined in the "Interface" settings for the track list? I would love to see my ratings as a number in parentheses after each title name in the list.

Mainly lazyness, plus I didn't want to have to deal with all the possible combinations. Earlier versions did check to see if TRACKNUM was included, and used that to determine whether to display the is in the queue. But, I removed this in favour of an option in the UI - as the now playing screen has a similar option.

I think it would be nice to switch to "now playing" mode when clicking on the album cover in the controls bar at the bottom of the tracklist mode.

You mean the cover in the bottom toolbar of the desktop layout? I did think about this, but I think the button in the top toolbar makes more sense - plus that toolbar is pretty empty anyway! Also, its where the revert-to-normal button is, so this is more consistent.

I would love to have an option to display a clock on the now playing screen; maybe only for desktop mode, as it would fit nicely in the middle of the title bar there. On a mobile, the OS's clock is always only a swipe away anyway.

Hmm, not too sure about that.

And one more idea: did you think about packaging this in a way so that you can publish it in the apple and google app stores? It would be much more likely to be found by users looking for a mobile lms controller.

One of the advantages of Material is that there is no app to install, which makes things so much easier going from device to device. Another user has written a simple Android wrapper - https://github.com/andreasbehnke/lms-material-app - works very well, and even allows you to use the hardware volume buttons. Plus, I have no Mac and a Mac is required to create iOS apps.