Official moOde 6.5.0 support thread

[moodenigo]

I am completely baffled. How do I get to library view? There is NO place top click to get it.

[TookaFace]

Click on the cover album

[Tim Curtis]

Hi Tim, thanx for your work, i love and use Moodeaudio nearly everyday and this help me throu the actual time at homeoffice.
I am using Moode since 6.2.1, actually on a Rpi4 (2GB) with a USB HDD drive connected. My usecase is to only switch on the Rpi and want to play randomly thru my collection in the best case without any interaction. I used this in the previous version 6.4.x with the options Auto-Play and Auto-Shuffle set to on. After a clean install on version 6.4.2 the Auto-Shuffle feature did not working for me. After every boot now i have to click the crossed arrow button in the UI. A functional Auto-Shuffle was last seen on the Version 6.4.1 (and updated to 6.4.2, but not on clean 6.4.2)

Today i have big hopes after installing 6.5.0 but for me Auto-Shuffle is not working. Only after hitting the arrows, but not "auto" after reboot.

Is this a known bug or did i something wrong ??

Thank you and much greetings from munich
Alex

Your usage scenario is certainly valid. 

Looking through the code I see that Random play is turned off during startup but I'll have to investigate because I don't recall why this was done.

Converting from a button bar to a menu in the Library gives us more flexibility to add new views or other features without worrying whether we have enough room for more buttons plus we needed the whole title bar for displaying useful sort or filter information for example "Albums from 1995 to 2005" or "Albums by The Allmon Brothers Band"

[Tim Curtis]

Awesome work guys !

When you click on the next button, the title played becomes bold in the playlist (normal), but the display of the playlist does not follow if the title played is not displayed in the playlist anymore, not sure if its clear. Seems to works as intented with the previous button.

Im not sure if it was like that in previous version, i also have a pi with moOde 5.3.1 running and i dont have the problem with that one.

What are steps to repro?

[moodenigo]

Click on the cover album

Uh, ok. This makes absolutely no sense. And then I have to select the view from a menu. Useability fail.

[TookaFace]

Awesome work guys !

When you click on the next button, the title played becomes bold in the playlist (normal), but the display of the playlist does not follow if the title played is not displayed in the playlist anymore, not sure if its clear. Seems to works as intented with the previous button.

Im not sure if it was like that in previous version, i also have a pi with moOde 5.3.1 running and i dont have the problem with that one.

What are steps to repro?

Clean your playlist
Set random on (its more obvious this way)
Add a bunch of titles in your current playlist (100 or more)
Click on play (no problem at this point, display of the playlist (scrollbar) while move if necessary, if the song played is at the end of the playlist for exemple)
Then click on next button and the scrollbar do not follow anymore, even if the next title played is not currently displayed on the playlist

You can fix the problem by clicking on the time knob, the playlist display move until it show the current played title

PS: Even without clicking on next button, when a song is finish and the new song start, display (scrollbar) will not move

[moodenigo]

Hello.

first the good news: as usual, there is a lot of configuration options, and the sound is good, there are no glitches, it does work as it should. And now the on/off option if called "power options" so rebooting or shutting down is more intuitive.

Second, the not-so-good-news: Now the option so update the thumbnail cache is gone. I can only regenerate? Why?

And last the extremely bad news. The usability of the UI of moOde has been going downhill now for several releases. Introducing the "adaptive UI" with the playlist "rising up" from the reduced version at the bottom has been difficult to digest, because it increases the number of steps to go from playlist to file browser or library browser from one to two: first collapse the view, then choose the type of library view. This was bad and until 6.4 I found it painful.  Maybe people used to windows or, worse, to the various linux UIs can cope, but I am used to higher standards of navigating software.

Now there is no visual cue. I have to guess that clicking on the cover art will lead me to library view – this absolutely makes not sense, it is not intuitive, please do not take my message as trolling, I am calling for a little break for breathing in deep and think about UX: also great people can do mistakes, and since they are great, sadly also the mistakes are great. moOde has great features, but the UX is a pain, and you will find reviews on the internet that define the UI as "clunky".

There is no visual cue, I have to click on the cover art. The I discover that to go back I have to "close" the bottom pane?!? Why should I have to click there? One is temped to click on the "back" button of the browser, ending up to who-remembers-now-wherei-it-was.

AND, to add more lack of intuitiveness, one must choose the view from a button.

The approach that was there in 3.x (4.x as well IIRC) was: there is a series of "tabs" and one chooses the right one. File browser / library browser / cover view / playlist. Like it is now for the configuration mode. This is the right way to do it.

For the first time in years I am thinking of throwing the towel and look for other systems. With each release moOde is becoming less and less intuitive and useable. There are misalignments: see the following picture



and other visual problems. The number of steps needed to do anything increases. At the moment I am sticking with moOde only because I do not have to pay for an equaliser (and the parametric one should really have more than 4 bands, since this makes the use with, say, REW, impossible).

Please reconsider very seriously the insertion of a navigation bar, and restore the ability to go to a "large cover" view of the playlist by clicking on the cover art.

UX is not about changing the UI to make it "cleaner" and new fonts. It is about the actual useability of the UI.

Again, I am not ranting. I am trying to be useful. Put a bar to quickly change view at the top, same as when you are configuring (also configuration should NOT need an extra click either, you just go to the last used higher level pane, without the intermediate selection of Audio/Library/Network/System).

[moodenigo]

True. Generally, when our project creates a new moOde release that's based on a new release of Raspbian OS, in this case its 10.3, its an image-only release.

If a dev volunteers to create and support a reliable upgrade process for major Raspbian releases for our project then I'm all ears :-)

-Tim

With raspbian I can update or even upgrade to a new kernel without having to reinstall the applications or even reconfigure them. The fact that I have to regenerate the library, and to re-enter the equalisation parameters, makes no sense in 2020 (in fact, it would have made no sense in 1990). Update kernel, update modules, and require regeneration of libraries only if the format changes.

[TookaFace]

Other small thing, in coverview, when you show the current playlist, and click on a title, the new title doesn't bold and doesn't change the color, see the picture.

Repro:
Go to coverview
click on button to show playlist
click on new title

[Tim Curtis]

We think our WebUI is light years ahead, fast and really easy to use. It's not cluttered with unnecessary buttons, visual cues and first-use stuff. As I mentioned in the announcement post, read Quick Help which clearly explains how to navigate the UI.

Developing and maintaining in-place moOde updates across major Raspbian releases requires funding and resources that our small project does not have.