An outstanding idea.  So good that I am cc'ing Dean to verify if we should include this for product launch.

This is easy to do now (after some unrelated changes I made today). I've check in a fix in r441, but I'm not sure I like this. I am going to leave the bug open for feedback at the moment.

I haven't noticed any difference yet.  Am I missing something or did the fix get backed out already?

Sorry, my mistake - I copied the firmware to my remote but forgot to tell the remote to update.

As far as I'm concerned, the new behaviour without the no artwork image is a definite improvement.  However, it does seem to waste quite a bit of vertical space.  I haven't yet seen an album where 3 lines are needed, but it nevertheless seems to be allocating 3 lines per album.  This results in a very large gap between each album.

As for the look of it - it may not be as pretty without the images beside each album, but it's a lot more functional.

This is backed out for now, it's still under debate.

It's been quite some time since there was any news on this issue (last update: 17th Oct). It would be a shame if all the more recent work means that this gets forgotten. I personally do not use album art and would very much like to have an option to tell Jive not to display it.

nothing gets forgotten, but you can see from the target that it has been pushed back to give room for other priorities.  There is a massive workload right now, and very limited resources. Best course, learn lua or recruit ppl who want to learn it and help :)

Assigning to unassigned so it will be reviewed in our meetings

We'll be reviewing this UI change after 7.0

Actually, even when there is cover art, it would be good to be able to disable it for the browse and/or playlist screens. The size of the artwork in these screens is of limited utility, especially the current playlist where often all the tracks (or a sequence of tracks) are from the same album.

Just want to add my two cents.  I got my Duet yesterday.  I do a lot of scrolling through playlists, lists of songs by an artist, and the Now Playing list.  I do not have any album art.  I would very much like a way to disable album art so that each song/album would take maybe a line or two of display space, rather than their current size.  It would be very nice to be able to see more songs per screen, especially since the extra space is being used to display the same generic music note picture next to every song.  :)

*** Bug 7976 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I have to comment that this is a MUCH NEEDED enhancement. It would be great to have the option of TURNING OFF album art altogether. When "DJing" an event off of a playlist, it is quite frustrating to only be able to see 3-4 songs on the controller screen at any time due to the empty album art boxes taking up approx 3 lines of real estate each. In addition, if I pass the controller to someone to choose a song, the empty boxes and limited number of visible songs on the screen is unimpressive. If those boxes were not there, there would conceivably be a list of 12 songs on the screen to browse (instead of 3-4). Bottom line: The device would be much more functional and user-friendly when browsing and selecting songs off playlists. Even if I HAD album art, I would elect to turn it off (if given the option) when browsing songs in a Playlist. My two cents.

*** Bug 8126 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

assign to me, target for 7.1

Created attachment 3529 [details]
patch to set a preference for suppressing artwork

This SC patch is half of the fix, because after setting the pref there is no support for restyling the current playlist menu, only local browse lists (e.g., Music Library->Albums). Fixing that window is really complicated and will also involve jive-side changes.

I'd actually like to approach this from the other direction: a jive-side change to allow the user to save a setting for suppressing artwork; under the hood that will be a skin setting. Code-wise this would be a far more parsimonious solution than a doing this via a SC preference.

However, this would suppress artwork from all menus that normally would have album-style icons (e.g., Internet Radio, Music Services, Favorites, XMLBrowse menus), not just album art menus. Perhaps that would be a preferred behavior though?

Assigning to Dean for comment.

Not going to happen for 7.1

Ben: Is this still on target for 7.2?

The patch attached to this bug is a good part of the work, but the current playlist window on jive is much trickier and that would involve some non-trivial Jive-side changes. Not sure if it would make the 7.2 cut.

I think if I were to take the alternative approach I mentioned in comment #17 would be doable for 7.2, but it's not what you specified. There are a fair number of people cc:ed on this bug...what's the opinion? Suppress artwork *everywhere*, or just for album artwork?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: disabling artwork on controller
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:14:35 -0700
From: dean blackketter 
To: ben@benklaas.com, Ben Klaas 
CC: Richard Titmuss 

Just for album artwork, I think.

-dean

On Jun 13, 2008, at 10:41 AM, Ben Klaas wrote:

> hey Dean-
>
> I need your feedback (offline) on bug 5376
> https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5376
>
> Richard and I discussed this today, and the question is this:
>
> Should the user setting for suppressing artwork only for SlimBrowse  
> items (i.e., playlist, albums), or globally (i.e., also internet  
> radio and anything else that has the 4-item-per page style?
>
> The answer to that question is important before starting on this...
>
> cheers,
> #!/ben

In my opinion, this enhancement is needed the most on the controller's playlist screens. It is extremely cumbersome to browse through the songs on a given playlist due to the "reserved" space for the album art. That said, I feel it is necessary to have an option to remove the album art from all the screens, but the playlists are the most affected and difficult to use as is stands.

Thanks for the feedback, Ryan. I'm in total agreement that if this user preference is made available, the most important spot for it is the playlist menu. That's actually going to be the case with either method of fixing. Looking back on my previous comment, I think I was unclear. To clarify, here are the two proposals:

A. Suppress artwork when browsing music lists that involve album artwork. This would include Local library browsing of Albums list *as well as* the current playlist menu.

B. Suppress icon artwork menu styles everywhere on the controller. This would include everything in A., plus things like the Music Services menu, which has icons for Pandora, Rhapsody, etc., and the Internet Radio menu, which has icons for Shoutcast, Sirius, etc., as well as any SC plugins delivering menus with icons

A. would be accomplished with a SqueezeCenter user preference and is much more complicated to implement (patch attached to bug covers part of A.). B. would be accomplished with a controller setting that would set a UI skin preference for how the menu would be rendered.

A. is what I'm currently tasked with, but I'm arguing for B.

OK - I understand now, sorry. My personal preference would be "A" (album artwork), however I would accept "B" (all icon artwork). Both are actually useful options. Ideally, it would be nice to be able to remove the album art for those of us who don't use album art or want the screen real estate without having to disable all the icons on the device. Is it an option to start with the "B" enhancement and then get "A" done a release or two down the road? 

punting to 7.3

this isn't going to be fixed by 7.3. retarget for 7.3.1

Changing target to next release

with only these exceptions, my bug list is being retargetted for 8.0

for 7.3.2 (very soon):
https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7186 Browse albums/artists/genres/  years should remember previous state 

for 7.3.3 (later, but before 8.0):
https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7139 Add editable "Network Settings" page

https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7502 Add setup mode to set Static IPs (even if DHCP is present)

https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7829 Jive menu broken if BLOCK_SIZE == list count + 1 and "Pla...

https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8878 Party Mode

https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10064 SqueezeCenter doesn't always auto-generate playerstatus w... (which will fix 8300)

https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6334 add applet for network diagnostics (currently assigned to Tom)

Moving to the product SqueezePlay because this bug appears to apply to any player based on that application code.  Feel free to move it back if it's specific to the original product.

Reset priority before triage.

this is an administrative shuffle on priority fields to help make better judgment on the top end of the priority list. P4->P5, P3->P4, and P2->P3.

This bug has been around forever, which is truly unfortunate. I'd like to recommend that this be rethought as a SP-only fix where if a user setting is made to suppress artwork then the window style for the Current Playlist and My Music->Albums (and perhaps even the home menus) changes to be text-only. I think this makes the potential fix much simpler as well.

7.4 controller reskin makes this bug a bit different in that regardless of whether the menu has artwork or not the menu is 6 items high (for an example, go to Settings->Advanced). That's more than used to be delivered for menus with artwork (I think it used to be 4) but less than used to be delivered for text-only (used to be 9).

Targetting for 7.4.x as 7.4.0 is passed and 7.4.1 is only for emergency fixes.

Ben, surely this is at least a 7.5 issue, not something suitable as a 7.4 bug fix?

I like Ben's proposed solution, it seems pretty graceful/reasonable.  No idea what priority level or target is appropriate...

Retargeting since the 7.4.x target is in the past

apologies, but this bug is not going to get looked at in the near-term

I came across this bug by accident when I was googling for a way to disable art on the Controller.

For me the limited amount of text showing on the controller is extremely frustrating indeed. This applies whether browsing albums, etc, viewing search results - in fact everything. Waiting for the text to scroll is a pain in the *ss. 

So - the ability to turn off the artwork to allow more room for text would be a boon. Personally I wouldn't mind having the option to have no at all.

In the meantime I've been looking round for an alternative remote and, as a short term measure, have resurrected an old laptop to use with my NAS (actually a Proliant Microserver.)