Hello and my MP3 Jukebox program help!

[Jaypeeff]

Firstlt like to say hello to everyone here, for some strange reason I just stumbled over this board a couple of days ago. I thought I was alone out there!!! How wrong I was....

Anyway I've been tinkering with an MP3 jukebox over the last year or so after seeing one in a local pub and thinking I can do better than that.

So what has evolved is MPhonic, an MP3 Album Art based jukebox and MP3 managment program. It's designed to work with a touchscreen, as one of the pix shows it running on an industrial 15" flat panel (which hopefully will make it into a proper jukebox at some point). It's designed to run at 1024*768 res, and is album based (Singles are just albums with 2 tracks!). Handles Compilations as Albums themselves or Artist based when showing thumbs. You can also view the back cover of the album too.

Live albums can have no gaps between tracks, or you can have up to 7 seconds of overlap between tracks. Playlists created (auto top 10 etc) and handled. CDDB lookup, CD ripping and lame encoding, update edit tags. Reports can be run on your music collection, listing music showing bitrate, frequency etc

It's database driven, so once an album is loaded the program has no need to read the tag data all the time, makes it very fast.

As well as running in normal or touchscreen mode, it also works with a remote control.

It currently is running with 1370 albums, about 20k tracks. It will handle infinity though...
I've attached some photos, I really need some help on the graphics/design side though!



I'm envisiging it splitting into 2 distinct ways at the moment, the touchscreen needs work making the user interface better looking (bigger buttons) etc. And the other version for running on a panel at 1280*720 from a remote control.

Both slightly different user interfaces!

Anyone with any design skills fancy playing with this, or if anyone want's to have a go at beta testing then let me know.

Thanks for looking

Jonathan

[Barry Barcrest]

Always good to see another program out there. If you want to put up a link i will take a look.

I can tell you now that you will have to get rid of thoose windows list boxes, i used them initially in my app but they are no good for touchscreen use as the scroll bars are just too small.

Also you will want to make everything skinable as early on as you can, i didn't and it's a pain going back and changing it all afterwards.

Obviously i can't really say much more as i have only seen the screen shots, good luck with it anyway.

[Jaypeeff]

I can tell you now that you will have to get rid of thoose windows list boxes, i used them initially in my app but they are no good for touchscreen use as the scroll bars are just too small.

Also you will want to make everything skinable as early on as you can, i didn't and it's a pain going back and changing it all afterwards.

Hi Barcrest, yes the windows list boxes are currently being rewritten, making them a bit fatter and easier to use. The maths has been doing my head in though, but I think I've sorted it.

I was trying to avoid making it too skinable, I'm putting in alot of effort to try and get the user experience right, looks v's usability, OK we can change the graphics for buttons, screen colours etc but the layout is going to be fixed, as pretty much is the resolution that it's designed to run at.
I'm away at the mo but when I get back, I'm gonna get it up with a bit more details into cyberspace.

J

[Space Fractal]

Nice interface, even they have scrollbars and all, but good start. It dosen

[Barry Barcrest]

I was trying to avoid making it too skinable, I'm putting in alot of effort to try and get the user experience right, looks v's usability, OK we can change the graphics for buttons, screen colours etc but the layout is going to be fixed, as pretty much is the resolution that it's designed to run at.
I'm away at the mo but when I get back, I'm gonna get it up with a bit more details into cyberspace.

J

You are really limiting your potential users here as other have found out by limiting to one resolution.

Also i noticed the size of your jump letter buttons, you need to increase the size of thoose as they will be useless on touch screen also.

I'm not trying to put a downer on your project just letting you know what i have found out over the last 2 years.

Once you get the app up where we can download it then i can give you more feedback, from the screen shots i would say it looks a lot like album player.