Audiosoft
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posted on 10-27-2003 at 08:42 PM
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eJukebox Skin / Interface Design
If you are familar with graphic design and would like to help design eJukebox v4.0's interface - please email us at contact@audiosoft.net or post
images of your design ideas in this topic. 
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stsirois
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posted on 10-29-2003 at 03:35 AM
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I'm not a graphic designer, but here are some cool UI's I've seen lately that might help to provide some ideas for the new eJ
interface.
Taken from myHTPC.net:
This one shows movie covers, but it could be applied to album covers as well:
Taken from 4am Music Console:
Personally, I would take eJ's overall current design over any of the one's I listed, but taking the best pieces or ideas from each design
might make eJ a better product.
Thanks for a great product, Audiosoft!
Steve
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Audiosoft
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posted on 10-29-2003 at 09:06 PM
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| Quote: |
Personally, I would take eJ's overall current design over any of the one's I listed.
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Glad you feel that way. Although those programs look nice eJukebox offers much more functionality than those program's layouts could ever offer.
Thus, I think we will probally have keep the current layout for v4.0 but we would like to incorporate better graphics/buttons and give it an overall
more streamlined feel. So rather than a "new" interface we will probally be going with overlaying new graphics/buttons/fonts over the
current layout for v4.0.
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Pirk
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posted on 10-29-2003 at 10:14 PM
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Dr Audiosoft,
OK... so you advocate a face-lift, avoiding any heavy plastic surgery!...  
Nevertheless, i hope the new graphics will at least approach the feeling produced by these cool screenshots... 
Also i hope you still want to create a new layout for the home page as planned?
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Audiosoft
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posted on 10-30-2003 at 12:41 AM
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Yes, we plan to make the home view a major part of v4.0.
Audiosoft |
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junk
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posted on 10-31-2003 at 09:38 AM
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To be honest, the first three programs looked very candy-ass and almost edible. Very suitable for children, but i found it hard taking these programs
seriously. Are all these various skins for "myHTPC"?
I did, however, like the huge cover in the last screenshot, allthough the rest of the program looked very dull and "iTunes"-like.
Hm, the one displaying the films didn't look too bad. Huge covers can be appealing. But the layout reminded me of they way programmers seem to think that customers that have only used a TV before, would expect an
interface to be. (Similar to programs you will find on Digital TV, CDi, CDTV etc...) in the end they always feel clumsy.. it's a bit like the
old proverb "Try to please everyone, and everyone will think you're an ass, and you'll end up lonely in the gutter."
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Pirk
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posted on 10-31-2003 at 08:46 PM
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Yes, obviously eJukebox SURPASS all these programs thanks to its advanced features! It just needs some better graphics and fonts...
I think that should be a great challenge for a graphic designer, at least for the official realize...
A good basic design can be attractive for EVERYONE. And next the skins can satisfy any user mood!  ...
But i have confidence in Audiosoft, it's just a question of time.
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timmyotoole
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posted on 11-1-2003 at 02:30 PM
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this is just an idea. i didn't have a lot of time but i think it looks nice. maybe you can take some ideas from it.
timmyotoole has attached this image:
If Nothing We Do Matters...
Then All That Matters Is What We Do
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Pirk
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posted on 11-1-2003 at 04:00 PM
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Good timmyotoole!
It's a quite attractive attempt... The menu bar on the left side is an innovating idea. The only problem concern the letters vertically
aligned... it's not very legible.
Otherwise i like the rounded corners, and the design for the background too. The Top ratings list is also quite attractive.
It's a good start on the right way!
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Rich
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posted on 11-1-2003 at 06:31 PM
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I agree that it's a great effort! The left-side alignment wouldn't work well with the A-Z Artist selection as it currently stands, unless
one was in extended mode and everything shifted right when Artists was selected. Nor would it fly with the split-screen Songs / Albums feature.
Top or bottom is pretty much where those options would have to remain, I think.
-Rich
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timmyotoole
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posted on 11-1-2003 at 09:18 PM
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i also made this little image to replace the play now icon. it's a little music note. i think it looks pretty good. just put it in you
ejukebox\images folder. make sure to backup the old image first.
timmyotoole has attached this image:
If Nothing We Do Matters...
Then All That Matters Is What We Do
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timmyotoole
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posted on 11-1-2003 at 09:19 PM
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here is the mouse over image
instructions same as above
timmyotoole has attached this image:
If Nothing We Do Matters...
Then All That Matters Is What We Do
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jhlurie
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posted on 11-1-2003 at 11:11 PM
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timmyotoole, one issue I have with your mockup is that the wide borders between each area are kind of space-wasting. Don't get me wrong, its a
nice look, but I already find things kind of tight in that Home Page view.
Things I'd like to see:
1.) Alternate color schemes - this shouldn't be that difficult to do (I recall the brief attempt at "skins" in one recent version, but
it didn't go far enough because it didn't change anything except the album view. At minimum, I'd like to see a red/white/black scheme
(current blue as red, current black as white, current white as black, with white text however....) and maybe also silver/black and some kind of
tan/brown scheme as well.
2.) Slightly better use of Expanded view, at least on the Home page view. Use that extra space somehow.
3.) Better use of the Queue list area, when the queue is empty. The unrelieved black (or whatever color it becomes in another scheme) is uneccessary.
Best case? Maybe MORE than one Autoplay prediction? Otherwise, maybe just some background graphic (a nice graphical representation up and down it
that says "Playlist" or something similar?
4.) Yes, more defined borders between the parts of the Home Page. Just not as thick as timmyotoole's version, as nice as it is.
The "Top Songs By Rating and Playtime" is REALLY nice though. Pretty much perfect aesthetically, except that in real life I'll bet
that the ratings all are pretty close for the top 5 songs. :-) Perhaps the idea could be tweaked somehow to show the highest rated songs played
during a certain period? Instead of the SAME period as everything else on that Home Page (which could be as long as "Month" or
"Forever", maybe it could be something like "out of the last X songs played", with X being a pull down? Or is that too
complicated?
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junk
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posted on 11-12-2003 at 01:35 PM
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That's a good idea, the last thing you mention there. It reminded me that I am quite tired of seeing the same old songs in my home view... it has
almost come to the point that i want to pick any random song number of times, just to get rid of sturdy old bastards such as "Manhattan
Skyline" by a-HA, which has been conquering the top ten songs ever since i got eJukebox. It's no use doing the "Remove Songs's Popularity" either, since it will reclaim its position
the next time i rebuild (and i rebuild all the time). This function ought to remove the popularity from the tag of the mp3 itself, not just the
database.
But i like your idea with top 10 songs last week, or last month a lot. Would be great with tabs where you could choose between the popularity of the
last week, last month, last 2 months etc... and this would ofcourse affect the whole home view, not just the last star/popularity panel.
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Pirk
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posted on 11-12-2003 at 08:43 PM
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Junk,
Maybe i don't understand what you say - i'm sorry if that is the case - but you can already change the popularity statistics on the Home
page: Last 24 hours, week, month or disable... and so not be tired to see the same old songs! I have experienced that too...
The only problem is that only work for the U.S. USERS! Because for us - europeen users - the Windows time/date format is not US English... If you
change your regional options to US English in the Windows control panel, then the eJukebox Home page will works perfectly...
Look my reply - and my request... - in another topic concerning the Home page statistics:http://www.audiosoft.net/forums/viewthread.php?tid=501
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Fishy
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posted on 11-12-2003 at 09:44 PM
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How big is your ejuke.asn pirk? Mine is 240mb :\. Audiosoft have requested a ejuke.asn file from a non-english system. I will send mine (norwegian)
if no-one got a smaller one... Gee don't like the though of a email attachment of 250mb, but if it can do great things for ejukebox it's
worth it
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Fishy
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Pirk
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posted on 11-12-2003 at 10:47 PM
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Mine is only 39mb, but my internet connection is too slow. So i have build a lighten version specially for Audiosoft!
I hope that will be sufficient...
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junk
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posted on 11-12-2003 at 11:40 PM
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Hehe, two replies this time:
1: Pirk - you are right, i cannot use the Month, week, 24hours settings, everything turns out blank. Same reason as the rest of us non-US users gets,
i assume. But furthermore, i was not aware that eJukebox was supposed to have this function. I probably have tried this pop-up menu once or twice, and
discovering that it didn't work, i forgot all about it. :/
2: Fishy - you need to delete your .asn file and replace it with a fresh one. You are suffering from the same problem as me and pirk. Use this link to
get a fresh .asn file:
http://www.audiosoft.net/forums/viewthread.php?tid=332
and read this link to get more info concering the problem. (This only occurs to us who encode images in their id3 tags using external editors such as
Tag&Rename):
http://www.audiosoft.net/forums/viewthread.php?tid=332
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Fishy
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posted on 11-13-2003 at 12:40 AM
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Thanks for the info Junk! I'll get right to it
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Fishy
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jhlurie
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posted on 11-13-2003 at 07:40 AM
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Pirk
Junk,
Maybe i don't understand what you say - i'm sorry if that is the case - but you can already change the popularity statistics on the Home
page: Last 24 hours, week, month or disable... and so not be tired to see the same old songs! I have experienced that too...
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Pirk, the language barrier between us is likely to screw up this explanation, as well as the difficulty of this concept, I think.
Perhaps you are right that the same "time" limiters used with the other home page items will "work" with a "Top Rated
songs" list (rated, as opposed to the current "Top Songs" item, which goes by pick count).
But even so, I still see issues.
The normal "Top songs"--the one based on the Pick count-- will always change in time based on what songs are picked and time passing. But a
"Top songs By Rating" will have a hard time descriminating between songs, and will read very similarly most of the time because the top 5
rated songs a person has will tend to be pretty close in score, if not identical.
If I have 5000 songs... isn't it likely that the top 5 rated will all be 5 stars? In fact, I may have 50 five star songs out of 5000... so how
will the program tell them apart to make the list? If it falls back on pick count as a second way to pick these songs, you may change the situation
enough to change the songs... but why even waste physical space in the interface showing the "star score" when they inevitably are all going
to be 5 stars?
Add to this the adjustable time period... Okay, I don't usually play all of my 5000 songs in a month, a week or a day. But I still bet the
preponderance of songs on the list will STILL all be 4 1/2 or 5 stars.
And yet, despite how static this "Rating" list will be, there's still something appealing about the idea. If using a different
delimiter from time like "Top Rated songs out of the last 50/100/300" doesn't appeal, the other thing I can think of to throw some
variance into the list will be for THIS particular list to include songs picked by the Autoplay feature.
Why? Think about it. The normal Top Song list is based on pick count, and thus it makes no sense to include Autoplayed songs because they don't
indicate a human choice. But a Top Rated Songs list doesn't have that problem--it can be used as a method to TRULY list the best songs played in
a certain period. It becomes more of a "what are the best songs to play on this PC recently", while the OTHER Top songs list is "what
are the songs I selected to play most"? See... it gives the lists very different purposes?
My "solution" won't clear up the problem of most of the "best rated" songs being five stars, but there will be less resulting
concern about the "best rated" list looking just like the "top picks" list... and that's at least something. In fact, I
would even use the names "Top Picks" and "Best Rated", since its very specific because "Top Picks" would ONLY reflect
picked songs, while "Best Rated" (or maybe "Best Rated Played" ) would be an absolute list of ANY song heard on your PC in that
period.
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Pirk
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posted on 11-13-2003 at 11:53 PM
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jhlurie,
Well... after a long thought - proportional to your long explanation that require me a sustained translation effort... - i think i start to make out
your sight concerning the Top ratings.
So you wish to see on the home page which of your prefered songs have been played during a certain period? I admit the idea is attractive!
Nevertheless that imply you have FIRST rated your prefered songs... and personnaly i don't rate my songs enough regularly! More often, i pick an
entire album, and if it is good i play it until the end, if not i zap... But i agree that rated songs could potentially give more objective
statistics.
The only problem is that, for me, it's not evident to rate the songs gradually. I tend to put 4 stars too often. Also my mood have a big
influence...
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junk
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posted on 11-14-2003 at 11:15 AM
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Hehe.. i don't have any five stars songs yet. been saving that one for a special occasion. When the star system arrived, i decided that the songs
i liked quite good would get a 3 star rating..
So i don't rate as if i were, say a music critic. I i should follow conventional "star" rating, i'd probably end up giving most of
the songs between 4 or 5 stars, and therefore making the star rating quite useless for me.
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jhlurie
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posted on 11-15-2003 at 06:43 PM
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We ARE drifting off topic, but I do rate very few songs above 3 1/2 stars. I think out of several hundred ratings so far given, maybe... 2 were five
stars, and even then I went into the edit mode and made sure the ratings were lower than 100 (five stars covers all scores down to about 95, I
believe, while 4 1/2 stars seems to be the range from 85 up to about 94).
But having LESS highly rated songs only makes things more static if no other qualifer is used.
Again, I'm not going to push too hard for a solution to that, because even a stricter time period on which songs are "current best
rated" will only help so much. However the other idea that came as a spin-off of me thinking about this--to allow "Best Rated Songs
Played" (as opposed to "Top Picks" ) to include Autoplayed songs is important I think. Picking a song and hearing them are two very
different things, and since we have the information on hand to make lists based on both... why not?
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CiXel
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 posted on 11-24-2003 at 05:47 AM
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TouchTunes boxes?
Has anyone ever Had a chance to use any of these boxes by TOUCHTUNE?
They have one of these in a bar near me, and it's what led me to trying to build my own and what eventually led me Here oh so long ago.
Anyways, there are really no Stellar screen shots, however
http://www.touchtunes.com/our_jukebox/wallboxlarge.gif
Album Screen
When you select an Album, from it's list, it goes into an album view mode, with a large album cover on the left hand side, pictured of other
albums containing songs from this artist underneath that (and you click on those it takes you to those) Then there is the song list on the right with
scroll bars up and down. So what you do then, is select the song they hit either play, or play now. (Ie. Queue it, or play it immediately) (There are
orange flames on the right hand sides of the songs that are "hot" or have been played a lot recently) On the left hand side there are two
smaller buttons that when hit, one takes you back to a "now playing" screen that for our purposes could be used to show an extra large
album cover AND the queue (something this doesn't do. There's not way to see the queue by tapping)
The other button takes you to an album list mode
http://www.touchtunes.com/our_jukebox/rhap_large.jpg
Album List
This shows 16 album covers at a time, and there is a scroller on the right hand side that you can move up or down by either using the arrows on the
top or bottom, or by moving this status bar ball in the middle. What it does akin to any normal scroll bar is show you where in relation from numbers
to Z's that you are, and displays that first letter in the ball. So for instance if the album List were showing rush etc. in the window the ball
thingy would probably be like 2/3 of the way down and would show R in it, if I was lookign at Aerosmith albums (and other A's) it would be
quite close to the top with an A in the ball. Make sense?
With that all being said, I think EJ has a TON of great features, but maybe we don't have to take up the real estate trying to show ALL the
information at the same time. We could just limit ourselves to the function we are working on at that moment.
Make sense?
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junk
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posted on 1-13-2004 at 11:13 PM
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I've tried out iTunes recently, and the conclusion is simple: eJukebox is superior. eJ has a lot more to offer when it comes to flexibility,
customisation and functions. And iTunes lack a vast number of displays which i find essential, as well as it does not have an album browsing mode
whatsoever, and no way of seeing the cover art of albums before you click on a file belonging to that album.
But! it does have three good points:
1. The album cover is played in its correct 300x300 size in the "now playing" window. A lot of the text and detail in the covers are now
quite readable and enjoyable, compared to the downscaled version in eJukebox.
2. The "smart playlist", which would be the same as having the possibility to save presets in the custom playmodes, as well as the
possibility to add more qualifiers.
3. It listens to more than one letter, so if you type "sto", it jumps to "Stooges" in the database/playlist (Fishy's
suggestion)
These are the features i'd like to see in the next version of eJ anyhow.
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junk
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posted on 1-13-2004 at 11:23 PM
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Just a screenshot to point iTune's the custom playmode configuration.
junk has attached this image:
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junk
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posted on 1-15-2004 at 07:27 PM
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I made a small design suggestion at last, but i put it up in a new thread, since this one was beginning to grow out of hand.
http://www.audiosoft.net/forums/viewthread.php?tid=633&page=#pid2882
a small preview:
junk has attached this image:
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