Skip to main content

3.0 Work in Progress 12: File Browser UI

Next up on the new UI list is the file/folder browser.  I also rewrote the file/playlist handling on the backend to be much more streamlined.  A lot used to go on when playing folders and i've greatly simplified that.  As always, the file browser will show anything on the file system and does not care if its in the database or not.  This is great for navigating, but caused a lot of issues when a user went to play a file or folder.  I am sure some were familiar with the issue where songs would "disappear" from the queue after reloading GMMP.  This was because the user played a file that was not scanned into the database.  GMMP would play the file fine in the queue, but when the queue was persisted to the database those files were lost.  In 2.x GMMP would try its best to get everything scanned in by running silent scans of folders as you navigate into them.  While being pretty inefficient, it worked for the most part.  The big issue happened when a user would select a folder to be played and that folders contents were not scanned it.  GMMP did a bunch of stuff to account for this, but in the end it was very hacky/ugly and really bloated the codebase.

This time around for 3.0 I came up with a much better approach.  The new UI / data backend has some nice capabilities like auto updating when its backing data in the database changes.  Now when a file is played, GMMP will look to see if its in the db, if not it creates a placeholder on the spot.  The placeholder just contains the filename and a track id which is all that is needed for putting a song in the queue.  If any placeholders were created, gmmp will then run a scan to populate all the placeholders with the information from the tags.  Any UI that was displaying the placeholder will auto refresh and show the tag metadata.  So now there should never be a case where files are lost from the queue on restart.

New UI (I switched up the theme colors just to add some variety to the screenshots)


At the top is the QuickNav which is scrollable horizontally and each folder is clickable to instantly jump back up a few folders (the video below will show this).  Like every other list item, the metadata shown is customizable.  In this screenshot below the first item is a playlist which is just displaying its filename and the items below that are showing the song name and duration.



I plan on adding the ability to highlight the currently playing track (i also think i can add that ability to the library views. I know this is requested often).


Popular posts from this blog

GMMP 1.3 Released! ReplayGain, cuesheet, bookmarking, 6 new skins, and much more.

After about a month and a half of hard work, 1.3 is finally available for download on google play and this blog.  I've gone with the pendulum screenshot for the main image for a long long time and with the new album art as a background feature I decided to pick a new song to use. Changelog: 1.3.0 (06/14/12): New Features: -Added ReplayGain support -Added single file cuesheet support (.cue files) -Added manual bookmark option to the now playing menu -Added auto bookmarking options (Preferences -> Audio -> Bookmarks) -Added option to remove a song from the active playlist after it is played (Prefs -> Playlist -> Remove After Played) -Added dsp limiter with customizable attack and release settings (reduces audio distortion and clipping) -Added EQ and Limiter toggle buttons to the equalizer view -Added 9 new EQ presets: Bass Max, Bass & Treble, Classical, Techno, Club, Reggae, Soft, Rap, and Metal -Notification controls added to 3.0+ -The current play

3.4.0

Plans for 3.4 changed a bit when google announced they will be hiding apps on newer versions of android if they dont target the newer sdks.  GMMP always tries to target one of the more recent versions of android, but the unlocker has no need for that since its essentially just a license key.  As of May 1st the unlocker will be hidden on newer versions of android to those who have not already purchased.  Because of this, the focus of 3.4 was to get in app purchases working to allow users to buy the full version after May 1st.  There is a new 'Purchase' section in the settings where the unlocker can now be purchased. One other change in 3.4 is the support for the Android 13+ media controls.  They changed around how to customize them, so that is reflected in a new 'Media Controls' section of the settings. The language can also be changed for just GMMP via the system settings The changelog itself is fairly small but I did a large update of all the libraries / dependencies t

3.4.5 Release / Preview of 3.5

3.4.5 was just uploaded to google play and should be rolling out over the next few days. Changelog: 3.4.5 (2023-08-29): Added Dutch translation Fixed crash editing rules in rule groups Disable IAP donation options if Full Version Unlock has not been purchased to prevent confusion Other changes since 3.4.0: Added Finnish translation and updated other translations Added donation options to the purchase settings area Fixed crash when trying to bookmark / unbookmark currently playing song Fixed Finnish not showing up in the language select Fixed other various crashes Fixed issue where rating or editing tags could potentially split the album Fixed some of the lists/grids not refreshing after changes 3.5 Preview I've been working on some new UI options planned for 3.5.  So far I've finished a new gradient background option for now playing.  There are 2 different styles (linear / radial) with 2 different color sources for each.  One source will take from the theme colors, the other st