Quite a long post this time.

I really hope this issue is looked deeper into because it makes the entire program hang for a while. And it's a reason for avoiding the artistlist which could be an effective way to browse through the music collection.

Is it possible to implement fast albumlist jumping? With the cache system suggested by yourself and Junk earlier in the forum?

If it's not it would be great if the artistlist could behave in this way. At least temporarly:

When one click on an artist in the artistlist. For instance: The white stripes. Ignore the albumlist, just let it behave as if it was not loaded at all.

Why?

Beacuse it takes about 10 seconds (about 30 seconds on slow computers) to jump to "t" in the albumlist. During this time the whole program ej in unresponsive. People tend to ask: "Why is it not responding? Do I have to restart the program?" "Why are not the albums showing up?"

When one click the artistlist one get's the albums of that artist listed in the songslist view anyhow. So the jump ito the desired place in the albumlist feels quite absolete. This is a statement I have heard from both myself (while waiting) and first time users of ejukebox.

But still it's jumping and slowing down the process. Which makes first time users wonder if there is something wrong, or if the program just have crashed.

The albumlist jump slows the process of listing albums from a artistlist click at the end of the alphabet at about 10-15 seconds (on a 3200 XP).

Even if there is a good sollution thought out for the slow albumlist jumping, through the cache discussed in an earlier thread: It might be a good idea to disable the albumlist jump in the click on artist in artistlist?

If you want an illustration of what I am talking about. Try to click on an artist from the artistlist beginning on "s" with and without the albumlist loaded! Is there any discrepance?

After seen what have been done to the general resource usage in the latest version I hope that an evaluation of this issue could be the next one for ej. And modifcations as mentioned above could make the artistlist so much more effective. At least before the albumlist jump is made faster, which may be a few versions ahead.

What I suggested is isolating a known issue. And don't let it bother more components in the software than neccacary. That is jumping by keyboard a-z in the albumlist.

Replies are indeed welcome

Well...we would have worked to implement the cached jumping already if it was slow, as you described, on our test system. On our P4 2.26 Mhz with 450 albums in the list - it only takes 2 seconds to jump to the artist 'Yes' at the bottom of the album list when clicking on the artist name 'Yes' in the artist list.

We are gonna work adding the cached jump positions for the next version...if we can't do it we will disable the albumlist jumping when clicking an artist list name.

Is is as slow on the albumlist jump when you click 'S' on the bar...or is it just slow when you click on an artist name in the list?
Is it slow when you jump by keyboard 'S' in the albumlist?

Thanks for a quick reply! It's good to hear that this still is a factor of priority

There is an identical delay (15 seconds at my system) when clicking V in the bar or trying to click the artistname "vangelis" (which is the first one at v in my artistlist)

Jumping in the albumlist alone (by for instance pressing v) and clicking vangelis in the artistlist and clicking V in the bar all takes 15 seconds.

I actually got an album with "yes" as well. And it takes 16 seconds to jump from the top to yes at a Xp 3200 1024 mb ram, which is really weird comparing with your test system. But matches logic when it comes to the 15 seconds on my system jumping to "V" as mentioned above.



Disabling the albumlistjump at artistlist click sounds like a good idea to me. At least temporarly, before the albumlist jumping is properly figured out.

Have you tried jumping properly at other systems than your P4 test system?

I have learned that both me, Junk and Pirk got problems with this. The only issue I can think of is that our systems might be running on localised versions of windows. Even though it seems kindof illogical that this should influence on albumlist jumping, when using letters between A-Z?

Are there others on the forum that do have this problem? Or just as important: Are there others that do *not* have this problem?

As requested we have implemented the Album List Jump Position Caching to improve the speed and lessen the CPU usage for the Album List letter and artist jumps.

Allot of optimization went into this and the album list jumps do seem faster but it is hard for us to tell how much faster because it was never really that slow in the first place on our test systems. Hopefully this will improve the speed allot for everyone. The only way we will know for sure is if you give it a try and let us know.

Download and replace your eJukebox.exe with the one attached to the post to beta test it.

Ah, great! Looking forward to trying this out (i am at work now). For the record, i guess the reason Fishy (and me as well) are experiencing delays over ten seconds where you have two, is due to the amount of albums you have. Both Fishy and i have approx 1500 albums at the moment, so i guess it should take about four times as long as on your testing setup..

Hot dang! Just tried it out, went from A to Y (Yes here as well) in 1 second or less.

I can tell you how much faster: About 15-20 seconds faster from A-Z on my system This is like christmas in the middle of april

The albumlist jump is now blittering fast (1 second from a to y) and the artistlist is now so much responsive! Thanks a lot for this great update as well! Extreamly fast delivered

Great! Glad to hear it works as intended!

Fishy,
Thanks for pressing us on this issue...really glad you did as now the albumlist jumps will be pretty much instantaneous for everyone and use allot less CPU!

Just a pleasure to contribute to ejukebox

Will this fix be directly included in 3.75 or will you wait for the next version and rely on users downloading this fix from this post in the forum in the meanwhile?

Anyways, great work on this. Ejukebox has become so much better during this week

I've also tried the new beta:

Jumping from "A Perfect Circle" to "Yes"
- before: 30 sec.
- now, with the beta version: 8 sec.

Jumping from A to Z is now almost immediate! (1 sec.)

Just a little bug: jumping to any # artist don't work at all. In this case nothing happen in the albumlist, only the songlist is updated.

Otherwise the new position caching is very effective, even on my "paleolithic" computer (PII 350 Mhz, 320 Mb Ram) with my 894 albums!

Thank you very much Audiosoft, Fishy and junk for this great improvement!