A dozen or so suggestions for OrangeCD

[Guest]

I've been using OrangeCD just long enough to request a few enhancements. For background, I've dumped my 700+ CDs into the database--no vinyl (can't bear the the data entry), and I don't use MP3s (being a devout MiniDisc user). Take these for what they're worth:

** HOME PAGE
I should be able to customize this page, with text, graphics, or custom links. This would not necessarily be exposed in the UI--it could just be a documented template format. Also, I hope you fix the "most recent additions" feature, which is inaccurate at best (or severely broken, depending on your point of view)

** ARTIST PAGE
In practice every artist has its own page; it would be great to add artist-specific text, images, and links. That would also enable you to reduce the scope of URLs added on the album pages, so they only appear on that album page (or perhaps give a choice between making a link "local" or "global"--meaning it would appear on every page for that artist)

** ALBUM PAGE
I really want to mark my fave tracks on an album, and display the rating at a glance on the Album page. There should also be some sort of visual cue on this page to indicate that a given track contains data (be that a lyric, performer info, etc)

** STANDARDS-BASED DB EXPORT
We must have the ability to export the whole database in XML; someday (hopefully a long ways off) there won't be an OrangeCD, and I don't want to start from scratch with another database.

** BETTER SEARCH
Several suggestions here:

* Search for title - right now you support searching title, title and artist, or everything. Since many of my queries are for song titles, you should add that as an option--searching "everything" turns up too many hits.
* Hit highlighting - it's difficult to comb through content looking for a search result; we need hit highlighting.
* Search results - re-query a result set to further reduce scope

** VARIOUS ARTISTS SUPPORT
A coupla nits here:

* These should be special-cased so they don't clutter up the navigation tree. For example, the "No tracks" option filters most of the various artists noise from the navtree. However, my "Artist (overview)" + "Artist (no tracks)" view is great--I get a list of A-Z, with artists sorted alphabetically within each letter--but Various Artists still appear everywhere. I only want them under "V", or maybe under a special class.
* URLs for Various Artists should be specific to each disc, not global for all "Various Artists". I've got about 50 "Various Artist" albums, and my list of links is unmanageable.

** DOCUMENT THE TEMPLATE FORMAT
The templates are valuable, but without any documentation only the dedicated will dig in and do anything with them (I have't dug in yet)

I realize many of these suggestions are picky, take them for what they're worth!

[andrei_c]

Hi Scott,

Thanks a lot for your long and thoughtful comment. Some of the features you suggest are already in development (such as XML export and template documentation), the others hopefully won't take long to add.


Also, I hope you fix the "most recent additions" feature, which is inaccurate at best (or severely broken, depending on your point of view)

Yes, this definitely will be fixed.


* Search for title - right now you support searching title, title and artist, or everything. Since many of my queries are for song titles, you should add that as an option--searching "everything" turns up too many hits.

You can use Advanced Search and explicitly tell it only to look into song titles. It was the whole idea of basic and advanced searches that basic search is "quick and dirty", while advanced search is tedious and precise.


* These should be special-cased so they don't clutter up the navigation tree. For example, the "No tracks" option filters most of the various artists noise from the navtree. However, my "Artist (overview)" + "Artist (no tracks)" view is great--I get a list of A-Z, with artists sorted alphabetically within each letter--but Various Artists still appear everywhere. I only want them under "V", or maybe under a special class.

Try to use "Artist(overview,no tracks)+Artist(no tracks)". Of course, there is no such preset, you need to construct it manually. If I understand the issue correctly, this is what you need.

Regards
Andrei