Idea: Decade Filter

[fossfreedom]

One option I've been contemplating for a while is a decade filter i.e. 60's, 70's, 80's music etc.

I listen mostly to 60's, 70's and 80's music!

Few issues - what is the best way to implement the filter?

We have a calculated year for an album at the moment for the sort by year option. However unsure the most efficient way to calculate a "decade" value - calculated "decade" property on the album class?

The decades I was thinking was starting from 1930's - through to 2010's. This though introduces a complication - classical music would be before 1930 so perhaps an "older" option would be used to find this type of music? How would a standard filter cope with and "older" value?

Since the current filters are graphical buttons - need a similar spritesheet. Maybe a standard symbol with "30s" , "40s" ... "00s" "10s" as small text within the symbol?

Thoughts?

[asermax]

Another idea you may take into account: Add a year filter to the search entry, with some special keywords for decades. That way, an exact year would filter all tracks of that year, but using some special keyword (like adding 's at the end of the decade) would filter by decade instead. I think it's the easier way to implement it (no new buttons needed, just a new filter) but it may be a litter cumbersome to the user. Anyway, I thought I would leave the idea so you know the options d:

[jrbastien]

Or another idea (stolen again from iTunes), with version 10, if you sorted by year, it used to display a fine line with the decade number before each decade. Not sure this is really easy to implement though.

[asermax]

Don't think so, unless we reimplement the IconView from scratch. It does have a lot of issues, so we may have to reimplement it sometime, but it would be a lot of work, so I don't think it will be soon d:

[fossfreedom]

ok - on the "decade" branch I've knocked up this functionality.

Let me know your thoughts.

thanks.

[jrbastien]

This is working well. Two observations:

1. Same observation as before, there is no feedback on the selected decade. I can work on new set of icons for this filter.
2. Since "All" is now used for the genre and the decade, the tool tips should be changed to "All Genre" and "All Decade".

[fossfreedom]

that's quick!

That'll be great if you can do your magic with the "decade" spritesheet :)

N.B. there is a hidden "20s" menu option for 2020 - obviously you will not see that menu option until 2020 hits ;)

Will do the tooltips.

[jrbastien]

OK, can you try this spritesheet? I'm not too sure about the final appearance but looking at it in action will tell us if it is good or not.

[fossfreedom]

@jrbastien - thanks for this. I've added the necessary code for this to display - together with the tooltips.

oh - and before I forget - happy new year to your good self

@asermax - similarly - have a prosperous new year!

[jrbastien]

Happy new years to you @fossfreedom and @asermax. Whishing you health and prosperity.

OK, these icons definitely need improvement from what I can see. Now that I have the code, I will play with them and hopefully come up with something better. If you have an idea for the "All decades" symbol let me know. The "D" might not fit all languages.

[asermax]

Same thing to both of you :) hope we keep working hard on this next year too d:

[jrbastien]

Here is an updated sprite sheet. Curiously, I haven't moved any icons but the lower part of the grid is not picked up correctly anymore.

[fossfreedom]

@jrbastien - they look very smart.

The issue was the blank space on the right-hand-side - there was just enough space (according to the code calculation) to fit another icon - so it did! - thus it thought the grid was 5 x 3 instead of 4 x 3. I reduced the right-hand side and now it works great.