Windows Explorer Like Interface

[Luc The Perverse]

First off - I swear I have asked this question before but searching Google
groups comes up with nothing. I'm sorry if I am repeating myself.

Right now my MP3's are a complete mess. Historically I have subdivided my
music by Language with a few minor exceptions, (English, French, German,
Spanish, Classical, Opera, Parodies) Sometimes I would give very distinct
bands or compilations their own subdirectory (TMBG, Les Mis, Eminem etc.)
It worked fairly well. All the sudden, one day windows had a new feature
which "looked" at media files, and opening my English directory took
literally upwards of 3 minutes. So I had to begin nesting directories by
bands. The end result - I simply do not listen to my music or end up
listening to the same songs over and over again.

I want to design a database application which has a front end which looks
and behaves like Windows Explorer. I even want drag and drop file copying
enabled. But paths and search criterion and naming would all be dynamic.
If I wanted to see all English songs I could navigate that way, or if I
wanted to see all Ace of Base songs I could search that way. Naming would
be dynamic and I could dynamically change the naming as desired. %A - %N
would display artist followed by the name of the song - which would make
sense if viewing a language, but make little sense if viewing an artist.

I've never made a database application and would like to focus on the
database part of the application, and worry as little as possible about
icons, displaying text, multiple selections, drag and drop, right click
menus etc.

Is there an interface, API, or some kind of package which makes creating a
Windows Explorer Like front end GUI exceptionally simple?

To make myself happy again - I almost need to design my own player. AOL, as
expected, has found ways of fucking up Winamp. I don't wish to discuss the
introduced inadequacies here - but would welcome and alternative. (The
lowest bloat possible, efficient, streamlined AUDIO player capable of
playing WMA, MP3, FLAC and Vorbis files. No eye candy, no full screen mode,
no skins, visualizations can be disabled. You know, like an music player
should be - like winamp used to be when you turned the stupid stuff off.)

 

[Christoph Watzl]

[snip]

(The lowest bloat possible, efficient, streamlined AUDIO player capable of
playing WMA, MP3, FLAC and Vorbis files. No eye candy, no full screen mode,
no skins, visualizations can be disabled. You know, like an music player
should be - like winamp used to be when you turned the stupid stuff off.)

xmms2 :-D

 

[Luc The Perverse]

[snip]

(The lowest bloat possible, efficient, streamlined AUDIO player capable of
playing WMA, MP3, FLAC and Vorbis files. No eye candy, no full screen
mode,
no skins, visualizations can be disabled. You know, like an music player
should be - like winamp used to be when you turned the stupid stuff off.)

xmms2 :-D

Thanks I will look into it.

Ok I never sent this message so I can append to it.

THAT LOOKS FRIGGIN AWESOME!

Now I just have to port it to windows or start using Linux

 

[Luc The Perverse]

*snip*

I think I got so carried away describing what my problem was that no one
really saw what my question was.

I want to design an interface with pictures, icons and text (or any
combination thereof) and ultimately the goal is make something that behaves
very much like Windows Explorer. What's the easiest way to do that in Java?

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

Thanks I will look into it.

Ok I never sent this message so I can append to it.

THAT LOOKS FRIGGIN AWESOME!

Now I just have to port it to windows or start using Linux

xmms will also use winamp skins (I have this ancient skin called chaos
that I love to install. Unlike most skins, it actually enhances
usability rather than looking like Hello Kitty puked on the app).

You could also do something like storing your music on a fileserver
and running some sort of streaming server. slimp3 is an example of a
streaming server, although it seems to get confused sometimes on my
linux box, so at some point I'm going to look for something better.

 

[Luc The Perverse]

xmms will also use winamp skins (I have this ancient skin called chaos
that I love to install. Unlike most skins, it actually enhances
usability rather than looking like Hello Kitty puked on the app).

You could also do something like storing your music on a fileserver
and running some sort of streaming server. slimp3 is an example of a
streaming server, although it seems to get confused sometimes on my
linux box, so at some point I'm going to look for something better.

My reservations with a remote server would be the issue of latency, as I
know throughput would be fine.

But if I kept local copies of the music database on every computer, that
should effectively eliminate that problem.

I've also considered making my own streaming format based off of UDP packets
(the idea was inspired by Roedy Green's SAX idea, although this would be
admittedly a significant variation.) I simply love UDP packets and I have
an inexplicable fascination with killing TCP everywhere.

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

My reservations with a remote server would be the issue of latency,
as I know throughput would be fine.

The only issue I've seen with this is the latency inherent in the
fact that streaming clients (winamp, xmms) like to buffer streams, so
if you switch to a different song, there will still be a few seconds
of the old song (the buffered bit) before you hear the new one. If
that bothers you, it's easy enough to change the client configuration.

Er, that's assuming remote means "on the local home network, but not
on the client machine itself."

But if I kept local copies of the music database on every computer,
that should effectively eliminate that problem.

But, er, why? To me, that's the beauty of a fileserver -- keep data
in one place, use it everywhere. (And, of course, back it up.)

I've also considered making my own streaming format based off of UDP
packets (the idea was inspired by Roedy Green's SAX idea, although
this would be admittedly a significant variation.) I simply love
UDP packets and I have an inexplicable fascination with killing TCP
everywhere.

Whatever makes you happy ... =P

 

[Luc The Perverse]

The only issue I've seen with this is the latency inherent in the
fact that streaming clients (winamp, xmms) like to buffer streams, so
if you switch to a different song, there will still be a few seconds
of the old song (the buffered bit) before you hear the new one. If
that bothers you, it's easy enough to change the client configuration.

Ugh . . yes. Delays of longer than about 1/5 second REALLY bother me.
(MenuShowDelay?) Gotta keep it under a few dozen ms.

Er, that's assuming remote means "on the local home network, but not
on the client machine itself."

Of course

But, er, why? To me, that's the beauty of a fileserver -- keep data
in one place, use it everywhere. (And, of course, back it up.)

Latency is the enemy and is the entire point of the project. Latency must
die.

I used to have all my folders hot keyed, but now if I want to find a song
(let alone build a playlist)
I press the windows key + R
Type c:\media\my music\ (hopefully it auto fills)
Press F3
Wait for the dog to stop dancing (Forever? )
Press L or click
Then I wait for the folder list thing to stop updating (3/4 seconds?)
because if not it will lose focus
Then I type in something from the song title
(Don't even ask what you have to do if you type it wrong)
Then I wait 3-12 seconds
Then I double click the song and it starts playing
Then close the window

It's not even enjoyable - I just don't listen to music because of this.

Now this is what I want (of course I would need to be running JVM as a
service to eliminate delay in loading program)

Press Ctrl + Alt + F3
Type name of song
Press Enter
Search pops up instantaniously (<0.1 s)
First ten results correspond to Function keys
Default action for me is replace so I press F4 (for song 4 in list)
Song starts playing and window disappears automatically

So in the time it takes the dog to stop dancing I have started a song
playing and the window I was at before the ordeal is back up and has focus.

Of course I would have different ways to allow multiple song selections, to
enqueue instead of play etc. Higher learning curve, but much much faster.

If I could populate a search result in less than .1 seconds, then I would be
ok with a remote server. But my experiences with databases has been that
something, somewhere makes searches very very slow.

Now I am learning that I am alone in hating latency - as is evident by the
fact that people still use Adobe Reader which has a 3 hour and 25 minute
(estimated) splash screen before a document is displayed. (Long live FoxIt
PDF Viewer!)