[jaga]

i love the large icon feature for doing directory browsing, specifically because i as most of us organize our music as /artist/album/songs or /genre/artist/album/songs. icons (large or small) are great for directories, but when i get inside of an album directory i'd love to have it auto-switch back to list mode. is it possible to implement a large icon hybrid mode wherein the directories would appear as an icon (using the folder.jpg) but all mp3's (or wma/ogg/avi/non-directories) would appear in list mode. or maybe the logic could be that if only directories are in a folder, than use [large] icon mode, and if it's all files use list mode? any thoughts?
--jaga

upon further thought, maybe there could be a special file, such as viewmode.txt that could contain either 'largeicons', 'smallicons', or 'list' that could determine the default display of the folder.

[Wuslon]

yes thad would be nice. makes the icon view mutch more usefull.

[[AssMan]]

i would love to see this again... worked very well in xbmp!

[Illsley]

was just going to add a new topic when i spotted this thread :d

icons for folders containing subfolders. listview for folders not containing subfolders.

keep up the great work!!

[jaga]

<redundant>
burriko had a great logic suggestion in #xbmc:
icons for folder with subfolders, list mode for everything else.
</redundant>

updated becuase i'm a dumbass.

[burriko]

burriko had a great logic suggestion in #xbmc:
icons for folder with subfolders, list mode for everything else.

heh, i copied that from the above post by illsley. :lol:

[Illsley]

hehe :d


would love to see it implemented in xbmc sooooon..

[jaga]

should i post this to the sourceforge feature request area? i just took a look over there and it seems like there are a ton of items that are not addressed at all. is this the place for this kind of request?
--jaga

[Rocky]

yes please add this, i was just going to post a new thread also! :-)

i have mp3 in artist\album\*.mp3 form, and would love:

1) artist level in list form
2) album level in icon form (using folder.jpg underneath)
3) *.mp3 level in list form again

i.e. stay in currently selected mode (i.e. list), unless a folder.jpg is seen underneath, then goto icon mode.

rocky

[kraqh3d]

cant please everyone becuz everyone has their stuff laid out different. hybrid view should just check if the current page contains folders or not. if theres a folder, then show icon view. if no folders, show list view.

also, the "switch view" button is kinda confusing. what's called "songs" and "movies" should really just be called "files." its really showing the filesystem.

[jaga]

how about this:
*first seperate the icon modes from the view menu/toggle and move it to settings (by that i mean the choice between large and small). in fact, it could be either in general settings or both in video and audio settings. that would allow a user to specify large icons for music and small for video.

*next change the view menu/toggle to have the following three choices: icon mode, list mode, or smart.

icon and list would work as expected (with icon mode respecting the size choice from settings), and smart mode would follow the logic to use listmode if no folders are contained in the current folder, and icon mode if folders are present in the current folder. what do you think? i really wonder what the dev's think about this, since none have chimed in yet.

also i do stronly agree with kraqh3d that songs and movies is really confusing, when in fact it should be files.
--jaga

[jwerlend]

a great idea. but it would be best if you could save the folders settings for each folder. that way everyone would be satisified!

[jaga]

i know/and agree with you. since this is a feature that i really want, i've thought about it a lot. a way to make everyone happy all the time would be to tell xbmc to look for a file named folder.prf (folder preferences) which could/should be in every folder. folder.prf could be something like:

---start of file ---
view=list
tag=track,title,time
sort=name
id3=yes
---end of file ---
which for would great for the standard 'album' folder.

or, for a folder with a mp3's from a number of artists:

---start of file---
view=list
tag=artist,title,time
sort=name
id3=yes
---end of file ---

or, for a folder containing only/mostly* folders:

--start of file---
view=largeicons
tag=artist,title,time
sort=name
id3=yes
---end of file---
in this case, if any mp3's were found it would still show them in large icon format, but you could specify the id3 tag to be shown.

finally, say you have a folder containing over 200 mp3's. as we all know, entering this folder can take a long time because xbmc tries to parse the id3 of each file. so if you use:
---start of file---
view=list
tag=artist,title,time
sort=name
id3=no
---end of file---
xbmc would know not to parse id3 tags (making the tag line useless).

now, the --- ---- tags are just for clarification here, and if the devs prefer a more xmlly style, that's cool too. but, afaik, this could please all the people all of the time. this could also work for my movies, and my pictures with them ignoring the data that they don't have (id3 and tag).
how about it dev's, give us the power to control our layout per folder.
--jaga

[Rocky]

jaga, what you propose would be amazing; it is currently the number1 thing on my list of wishes for xbmc :d

[kraqh3d]

sorry, that's getting way too complicated. i have way too many folders that i would need to make preference files for. its just not worth the effort. there would have to be some default smart behavior as well. simply switching to listview when no folders are found is easiest.