Random Lurker;401419 Wrote: 
> I finally took the plunge, and picked up an Ipod Touch to use as a
> controller with iPeng to run a new Squeezebox receiver.  The short
> version is.....I love it!
> 
Good to hear that.
> 
> The longer version - Some comments/questions:
> 
always welcome! Seriously!
> 
> 1)... The Artists->All Albums list.  I prefer this list order for
> browsing....just like you would see them in a record store.  When I
> first selected this item, all you see is a blank screen.  (I assume is
> is getting/sorting the list).  It takes a VERY long time for anything
> to display.  When it does, it is very responsive.  I have seen vague
> comments that this timing will improve... is this true?  If I left the
> list and returned, it still took a long time to load.
> 
You guess right, it's the sorting.
I really want to improve this on 1.1 - all other lists do already live
without sorting, this one will need some special consideration.
If you want to make sure I don't forget it, please file a ticket :-)
https://trac.penguinlovesmusic.de/trac/ipengnat/newticket
> 
> 2) Blank screens - on the above mentioned view and on search, when
> something is actually happening but all you see is a blank screen, it
> is hard to tell if the device is actually doing anything.  Some sort of
> progress indicator would help immensely.
> 
Err.. Yes. For this screen, I plan on one, Search will be a bit more
difficult, I'll see...
> 
> 3) Custom Browse - I have seen some comments about CustomBrowse with
> iPeng - but I assume they were talking about the plug-in, right?  And
> these are planned to be supported in 1.1?  Do I have that right?
> 
Yes, that's currently beta testing. Quite cool.
> 
> 4) Pre-fetch - I appreciate that you have set it up so that it does not
> lag while loading artwork.....but is there anyway to add an option to
> pre-fetch all artwork?  I would like to have all the art in place when
> flipping thru the LONG list of albums, and would be willing to set
> aside the iPod and wait while it grabbed all of this data, rather than
> populating it as it was browsed.
> 
Short answer: mostly no.
The problem is two-fold.
#1: Getting the artwork onto the device. I could indeed add a prefetch
for this (another ticket?). But this will only get you half of what you
want since...
#2 Displaying the artwork while scrolling requires the images to be
created in memory (RAM) since scrolling consumes almost all of iPhone's
computing power and there is simply no way I can cram 8,000 images (plus
all the radio artwork) into memory, it would alone consume more than I
believe is typically available.
There's another thing, however that I would like to do (ticket #3?): Do
a more intelligent read-ahead that gives a chance to get artwork into
memory you are likely to need next. Will probably give you the desired
effect.
> 
> 5) Search navigation - The one place I got confused in the UI was while
> using the search screen.  When the keyboard is up, I wasn't sure how to
> "escape".  I didn't intuitvly realize that I needed to make the
> keyboard disappear to open up my navigation options.  Maybe it's just
> me, but it was a little confusing.
> 
Yes, but I didn't find a way to place the keyboard above the buttons.
Apple Remote does it the same way.
> 
> 6) Pauses in tracks - When I performed a search, it caused to audio
> playback to stop.  It also took a very long time to return a result. 
> With no progress indicator, no results shown for a long time, and an
> audio dropout, I had assumed the app had crashed.  Is the search time
> due to the size of the library?  Or is something else happening here?
> 
Maybe. And maybe your server is a bit slow.
And - agreed - iPeng is quit demanding here, since it starts an
incremental search with one character only.
Actually it's a bad design on SC's side since iPeng only fetches 8
elements per category and those should really be available fast, but
obviously SC does a full query first.
I consider doing it the same way as the controller and require two or
three characters before starting search.


-- 
pippin

---
see iPeng, the Squeezebox iPhone remote, at penguinlovesmusic.com
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