GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 169253
Browse This Album should clear other browse settings
Last modified: 2010-10-30 18:36:42 UTC
Currently there's no good way to go from an artist's track in a multi-artist CD to the whole CD, as reflected in bug http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127849 about browser columns resetting when attempting to go back to All Artists. Browse This is a good way to winnow down to an album, artist or genre from a large selection, but when an artist is already selected in the browser window, Browse This Album filters the list down to only songs by that artist on the album. It would be an improvement if it instead displayed every track on the album, as if one had had All in the Genre and Artist columns and went and selected the album. Even if Genre and Artist are selected, those filters should be cleared. Other information: Borrowing an example from a dupe of the columns bug: "Well, I have a lot of "Various artist" albums, So usually I get them by selecting an artist I had in mind, (Bj�rk in this case) then taking the album the song is on (Stigmata soundtrack) and then re-selecting the artist to "All". Hopefully, this would give me the right album. However instead it resets the album view to "All" Which impedes the usability of it." Why not go to Bjork, then Browse This Album? If someone wants to play only one artist's songs from the album, the browser whittles it down fairly fast, since after selecting the artist only the albums they're in are shown on the right.
One problem I can see with this suggestion is that it could cause issues if you have two albums (by different artists) with the same name. e.g. if I have selected the artist "Grinspoon" and the album "Easy", and then RB ignored the artist selection to display all tracks with the album "Easy" (I'm sure there are others). In such as situation there would be no way to get the tracks I want.
Perhaps rhythmbox could keep track of the last category (Genre, Artist, Album) picked. If the user clicked in some other category the last time, keep all selections in each category. If the user clicks again in the same item in the same category then all the rest of the categories are reset to "All". That would allow someone to dig down to a specific Genre+Artist+Album and with an another click on the last items selected, expand the scope with only one category filtered. If the user clicks on one that was perviously selected (but not the last one selected) then only the the one that hasn't been clicked this time or last time is reset to "All". That would allow you to isolate two albums with the same name but different artists and also easily expand the scope of a single album with multiple artists (like a movie soundtrack).
Isn't this same effect achieved by selecting "All Artists" and then browsing the albums? I don't see why we would need a plugin to do this. I'm agreeing with Livingston on this one that it would also cause the potential for multiple albums that share the same name. I suppose one workaround for this, however, would be that Rhythmbox parse the file tags and organize albums first by name, then by year. I suppose I will suggest this in a separate request. Would it be safe to close this?
I assume this issue to be OBSOLETE based on comment #3. Please reopen if this is not the case.