Isn't this just another place to display favorites? It's kind of back to the roots: Favorites started as a way to keep your favorite _radio_ stations only.

OPML is a file format - does the user care about this? Favorites are already saved as OPML files. And it offers a way to import .opml files. 

Please help me understand this request :-)

isn't this kind of what mypicks (which became the current favourite handler) does?

From the campfire transcript I think Dean wants a Radio folder on your disk, like the playlist folder, from which .opml files would be read automatically?

Punting enhancements post 7.0.x series

Dean - could you please describe in more detail what you really wanted?

I'd see this as being essentially the same as the Favourites/MyPicks functionality but sitting within the Internet Radio section.

What I was hoping for was a simple way for a use to create an OPML file and drop it somewhere on their disk so that they could build out their own hierarchy that they could then browse. 

It could be in a new folder, or it could be in their playlists folder and the user could browse it there like a PLS or M3U file.

Ditto to Comment #6 From smc2911.  I originally I thought that's what Dean wanted too, but now I don't think so.  Does a new feature request need to be created for smc2911's most excellent idea?

So, why do you want a separate Favorites for Radio?

For me it comes down to how you define Favorites.  My favorites are truly my favorite items.  As a result I have memorized that when I hold down button 1 I know what music will play.  Same with buttons 2-9.  I like this quick access to my favorites, because this music is my favorite stuff (I only have about 10 favorites).  Keeping my favorites list short gives me really quick access to the music I listen to 90% of the time.

In SC7 favorites can hold your favorite local music as well as every single radio URL you've ever came across and may be remotely interested in listening to again.  I.e. it's not really my favorite radio URLs, but it's every radio URL that I may want to listen to once in a blue moon.

What makes more since to me would be to have a "My radio stations" menu under Internet Radio.  That's where I'd like to store all of the radio URLs I like.  Then the few, the proud, the great radio stations that I really like get the privilege of being added to favorites, which is just a short list of my really good music.

bulletmark makes a better argument than I do for this in his post here:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=261579&postcount=15

Dean - .opml files can be imported into the favorites. I don't see the need to add yet another menu option.

Jim - you still can have you very favourite favourites on your 10 keys, and the more esoteric favourites in a sub folder. What's wrong about this approach?

Jim's comments are spot on. It might seem trivial as the functionality exists within Favorites, but I think that it is more intuitive for people who may be less familiar with the SB interface to look for radio stations under "Internet Radio". As it currently stands, you can only get the standard set (Staff Picks, Radio Time, etc) and so it would be good to be able to add more. It's a UX issue rather than a technical one. I do currently have a number of radio stations in Favorites but still sometimes forget and browse to Internet Radio first before remembering.

Michael, there is nothing "wrong" with storing everything in favorites other than  the non-intuitive situation of storing non-favorites within favorites.  I can even understand why some people would prefer to do it that way.  I don't understand why the pro "favorites only" crowd can't understand why there's many people that would prefer to have "My Radio Stations" underneath the "Internet Radio" folder.

Yes, I suppose this is a relatively trivial issue.  However, since all the opml code is already present in SC wouldn't it also be trivial to give users the option of having the "My Radio Stations" subfolder?  What would be the downside to this?  The users who want to can use it, those who don't can either simply ignore the "My Radio Stations" subfolder or remove it from the menu.

If I got you right, you consider the Favorites the "0-9 button assigned top 10" items. And what we've got today is overkill. But you'd rather like all of Favorite's functionality in a separate item, under internet radio? 

Yes, I'm of the party who doesn't understand the need of yet another hierarchy :-). I got my hand full of favorites assigned to buttons, and some more stations in Favorite's sub folders. Can't see what's wrong with this. Having Playlists, Radio Stations and Favorites sub folders imho is three different approaches to the same result: having quick access to my beloved sound. And that's clearly one too many.

As for the ease of implementation of such a secondary/tertiary hierarchy I'd be happy to hear Triode's meaning.

No, I don't think what you have today is overkill.
Yes, I'd like all of Favorite's functionality in a separate item, under internet radio.
No, I won't be able to prove why some people prefer it this way.  :)

There are a couple of separate things people are asking for here:

1.  The ability to use a local OPML file to manage a hierarchy frequently used stations.

We sort of have this ability via importing OPML into Favorites, I'm not sure if we can browse a local OPML playlist file without importing it.

2.  The ability to create new items in the hierarchy (like in Internet Radio) to shortcut to these items.

We don't have this now, but Ben is starting to work on menu customizability for Controller/SqueezePlay now.

I can imagine a framework where a URL pointing to a local file or a remote OPML feed could be placed in the hierarchy where the user likes (with limits).   Favorites is special functionality, it handles one-button playback, has a built-in editor, etc, but I don't see why that code couldn't be reused in a more general fashion for those who want to organize their world as they see fit.

So I think Alien and infobrowser do this at present...

For both you can drop opml files into the addons directory and these get added to the top level menu.  The addons can also include perl parser code in .pm files.

So it would be trivial to do something similar for this or just reuse the mechanisms to mean the .opml files link into the top level favorites menu.

To make it user friendly we probably want to automate download of the opml files though?

The favorites code is really an extension of mypicks so includes the ability to add/edit abitary opml files.  (Enable opml editor mode under favorites settings)  We could possibly add to this to allow users to create opml files which become top level menus?

Triode - sounds like a good plan. Especially now that we've further improved Favorites. You say it's trivial? (nudge, nudge ;-))

So I've reread these comments and think the automatically droping opml files into it is probably not the key thing here.  

What if we had the option to create essentially a duplicate of the favorites web interface under Radio as "My Radio Stations" this would give you the full import/editting as favorites gives but in a separate opml file which is browsed under radios and which can't be added to from the remotes.

[this is what mypicks did!]

Created attachment 3327 [details]
my radio plugin

How about the attached - its a wrapper round favorites/omplplugin to give a second version of favorites under the radio menu.  Does this do what people want?

I'm tempted to suggest this defaults to disabled to avoid confusing people.

Michael - if we can add the sess param to xmlbrowser then we can allow favorites to drop into xmlbrowser for refered opml files (its prevented at present as xmlbrowser will loose the session id and you will end up editing the wrong file)

do we silently assume sess=1 are the Favorites?

Yes at present any caller to the favorites handler without sess or new set is assumed to be favorites.  This is how we can drop into xmlbrowser for favorites and then back up the breadcrumb and it still edits the correct file.

To extend this to another file all we need to do is maintain the sess param for any links which may get back to the favorites editor.  [note for this reason dropping into xmlbrowser is blocked off for non favorites at present, but this prevents linked opml files, playall and other things only supported in xmlbrowser]

(In reply to comment #20)
> Created an attachment (id=3327) [details]
> my radio plugin
> 
> How about the attached - its a wrapper round favorites/omplplugin to give a
> second version of favorites under the radio menu.  Does this do what people
> want?

Sounds like it does what I want, but (being a stupid user) I can't figure out how to use it.  When I look in "Settings->Plugins" "My Radio Stations" is enabled.  However I don't have an option to edit the "Internet Radio" folder like I can my favorites.  I'm running SqueezeCenter Version: 7.0.1 - 19177 if that matters.

There is no special edit icon on the main page.  To edit, just click on the "My Radio Stations" entry under Radio.

Looks like this needs some work on the javascript Michael - it does not sent the play actions when I was expecting it to.  It should give an indication of the user interface though, so it is useful for people to try and confirm this is what they were looking for.

(In reply to comment #24)
> There is no special edit icon on the main page.  To edit, just click on the "My
> Radio Stations" entry under Radio.
> 

I have no "My Radio Stations" entry under "Internet Radio"

In this case the plugin has not loaded ok, its a plugin to go in the Slim/Plugin folder which may be causing the problem.

Michael - can you try it and see why there are js errors - I get "ajaxRequestNotDefined" when trying to play something.

in Favorites/Plugins around line 325 there's the following comment:

# this is not the favorites session - if we pass through to xmlbrowser we loose session state, so dissable for now
return;

Is this true for the play/add actions? These action don't need a session, do they? Seemed to be working for me.

One other issue I've seen: all entries in the My Radio menu are marked as favorites. How can this be fixed?

change 19917 - fix the missing ajaxRequest

Dean - is My Radio what you wanted to see? Should we check it in to 7.1?

(In reply to comment #30)
> Dean - is My Radio what you wanted to see? Should we check it in to 7.1?

I can't speak for Dean, but I love it! thanks a lot!

Let's publish it as a plugin and see how folks like it...

added in in change 20534

Triode - there's till the issue with all items being marked as favorites (see comment #28). Any idea what's wrong here?

Michael - they show the heart icon which means can be made a favorite, not they are favorites?

(note the favorites code just searches for the url so if you already have these items in your favorites they will show up as favorites whether you added them from My Radio or elsewhere)

Oh my... sure. Thanks for waking me up. :-)

Michael - can we get an official icon for this?  The radio one looks out of place on the top level menus as it is not of the same style as the other radio station ones.

Opened new bug 8534 for the icon request. Thanks!

This bug has now been fixed in the 7.1 release version of SqueezeCenter!  Please download the new version from http://www.slimdevices.com if you haven't already.  

If you are still experiencing this problem, feel free to reopen the bug with your new comments and we'll have another look.

Reduce number of active targets for SC