Features requests: Confirm on exit, Show Artist, Gridview

[orock]

Hi

First let me say that I am a big fan of this application, and subsonic in general. I use this app to remote control a subsonic jukebox on a headless ubuntu server hooked up to my stereo via a DAC. I am using MusicCabinet, and combined with DSub's ablity to pick up Top Tracks and Artist Radio, Related Artists etc, it offers functions and ease of use I haven't found in any other setup. I am very happy to have spent my money supporting Subsonic and DSub!

However things could always be improved, and here is my list of features/fixes that I would be extremely happy to see integrated (in order of importance to me):

* Confirm on Exit - I can't tell how many times I've pressed the back button expecting to end up in Home or Library and instead exiting the application. This is probably the most annoying thing about using this excellent app.

* Better library navigation/Context menu - Adding "Show artist" and "Show Album" to the long press menu in the library/playlist would be a HUGE improvement in navigation.

* Grid view - I am sure that this has been requested before, but the ability to view artist/album lists in a grid view would be great.

* Artist Thumbnail - It would be nice to have a thumbnail of the artists in the Library, either from an album or from Last.fm as MusicCabinet does.

* Persistent Remote Control - As I said, I use DSub primarily as a remote control. The ability to have a persistent setting in the settings menu would be nice.

Adding these features would be really nice. If only Sindre would add gapless playback and get rid of the annoying "pop" at the start of every song this could be the ultimate way to remote control a music server/jukebox.

Thanks for reading!

[daneren2005]

Confirm On Exit: I'm not sure what you are doing differently, but the only time that pressing back should (and ever has that I have seen) exit the app is when you are already on the Home tab. And from there back to exit makes sense to me. Maybe a better way would be to have the whole double tap back to exit with a little toast notification that pressing it again will exit that I see a lot of apps have.

Better library navigation/Context menu: While I agree on this point, I am limited by what the server responds with. I would need the ID to be able to do this, but all that is supplied by the server is the actual name.

Artist Thumbnail: This will have to be supported on the server side first. There isn't any way to set a artist thumbnail on the server that I am aware of, so there is nothing for the client to retrieve and show.

Persistent Remote Control: This is definitely doable and I will add this to the todo list.

[orock]

Thanks for the fast reply, and thanks for adding persitent RC to your todo-list!

About Confirm on exit: I did some messing around on my Nexus 7. It seems as if you can exit the application by pressing back while in the Playing tab if you launch the app from the widget (which I guess I do most of the time). Double tap/toast notification would be great. The way it works now, I'm almost afraid to press back.

It's a shame if the context menu can't be upgraded. I see that it is possible to access an album from the Playing tab though.

EDIT: Perhaps there is a way navigating from an album to the artist? That way one could go from Playing tab -> Album -> Artist

I guess the artist thumbnail was a longshot, but how about getting grid view in the Library/Random/Recently added etc.? Especially on a tablet a grid makes much better use of the screen real estate.

Again thanks for you reply and your effort!

[daneren2005]

Hmm yes I guess you can press back on the now playing screen if you go through the widget. That should definitely be fixed.

As for the context menu maybe I spoke too soon. I just did a quick check and that's the way it appeared to be. I will have to look at it in more detail and get back to you later.

As for the grid...meh. I tend to hate grids, so its hard to want to do this one. I will have to play around with it and see how it looks on a phone vs tablet.

[shadow.8]

To clarify, by grid do you mean something like in Google Play Music? That would be a cool feature.

[shrift]

So I see that this "press back to confirm exit" "feature" has made it into the live app. Quite frankly, I am quite frustrated by this behavior. Overriding the default behavior of the back button is something that is very strongly advised against in the development community, and by many of the Android developers at Google. The problem with doing this is that it overrides the trained expectation of users when hitting the back key. It causes users frustration and confusion when the button doesn't do what they have been taught to expect; granted, they have probably seen this behavior in some other app at some point, but the times that it is advisable to have this behavior are only when the user might lose some kind of data or app state that is non recoverable.

I see from the thread below that this exit behavior was added due to the app sometimes being on the homescreen when opened from the widget or notification, I suggest simply opening the app to the Now Playing activity/screen instead of the home screen. That seems like the expected behavior of tapping the app from a widget/notification, and it solves the issue of the back button exiting immediately after opening the app, which honestly is not confusing given that you are on the home screen.

All that said, thanks for the effort you are putting into this app, I really appreciate the changes you have been making!

[daneren2005]

Honestly, that was only reason people wanted confirm on exit. There have been about a dozen requests via email for the same thing where people just wanted to it for different reasons. I might just put an option for it, but I really don't feel it goes against the Android guidelines much since it's such a common behavior. I think at this point I'm more surprised when apps don't have the double back behavior then when they do, but that might just be because of the selection of apps that I use on a regular basis.

[shrift]

It *does* go against Android guidelines, although perhaps not in a truly official sense. I'll see if I can dig up some references. That said, I do respect whatever decision you make.