The letter bar is a big helper for selecting and navigating in a big database.
But I think it could be a bit more convenient for the user. Right now you have to long press each letter and the last tapped letter starts the jump to the entry.
If the screen isn't not that responsive it takes a while to long press the letters and if you accidentally tap or press the wrong one you have to start over.
May I suggest this enhancement: Only the first letter has to be long pressed to start the further letter selection process. The next letters only need to be tapped and after each tap
there is a jump already to the specific position in the songlist (and the next letters can still be tapped with more selective jumps). The selection mode is only finished with selecting the song.
I think that would be quite a bit better than the current selection method.
Sure, I can change that for the next update and people can see if they like it better.
Thanks,
Mike
Thanks for putting that in the last update. But that's only half of my proposal and this way it breaks the selection because you can't finish with a tap anymore until the last available letter.
I wanted the jump in the songlist for every tap. Otherwise you need to be able to initiate the jump with the last letter (long press again? But immediate songlist jump is better).
I guess I'm confused what you mean. If you long press on a letter, then tap another letter in the following popup, the list will immediately jump to that letter. Each letter you press in each consecutive pop up from that point on will jump to that position in the list (i.e. if I tap "J" then "U" then "S", the list will jump to the first word starting with "jus"). If at any time you tap away from the popup, it will close it and then you can tap a song to load it. Is there a reason you need to tap on the last available letter instead of just tapping on the main list? Due to the fact that I'm jumping to a new position in the main list with each letter that is being tapped, you should end up at your destination within a few letters.
Am I missing something? Were you envisioning a different workflow?
Thanks,
Mike
No, that's the workflow that I wanted.
But there was no jump in my list with the tapping. I'll check it again. There seems to be going something weird on with MSP on my tablet anyway (like the crash I reported, the reloading and so on). I will test and report.
But I got the Onyx Max 2 delivered half an hour ago and it looks gorgeous. Could well be I'll retire my Z4 for MSP soon (or use it only as backup).
Works for me as advertised...
Excellent. Thank you Brix & Mike for idea and implementation.
Looks like a small change but is extremely helpful and convenient when the library gets bigger and bigger.
Yes, I can confirm it works for me now as well. I don't know if I was too tired when I tried first or it changed after a reboot in the meantime.
Anyway, it works as I wanted. Big thanks, Mike.
Interestingly I wanted to comment something similar like itsme, that it's a small change with big benefits in the usability.
I can imagine even one more tweak, but it's not that essential and you can leave it as it is, if it's too much work or too complicated.
If you could add another field in the letters list (only showing up after the long press, above the space one, if it's displayed) with a little "backspace arrow" so you can "untap" the last letter and jump to the previous position and letters to correct tapping mistakes, I think the letter bar couldn't be improved any further.
I've added the backspace arrow so it will be included with the next update.
Thanks,
Mike