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Topic: Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place? (Read 1271 times) previous topic - next topic
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Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place?

It's been nibbling and gnawing away for so long I had to post.

As you know, there can be multiple rows of Playlist Tabs.
And while each Row contains a set of ordered tabs that do not change, the vertical order of these rows does change.
Any selected Playlist Tab and its parent Row will be displayed in the lowest tiered position.

I tried to get used to it. I really tried so hard. The worst thing is, that it feels like it shouldn't be that hard to keep track of (in my case) the ordering of 3 rows, right? Because after all, it's only the rows that swap position and the horizontal positions stay the same.

But it never permeates my spatial memory deep enough to become permanent, and every tab change, even quickly that involves a row shuffle leaves me darting my eyes around labels trying to find that elusive V.... tab I had selected just a second ago.

So, I was wondering if there is some way to freeze this in place. I really don't need or want my currently active tab row to be displayed in the lowest position. Logically this makes no spatial sense to me to do this. It perhaps makes some kind of bizarre, overengineered aesthetic sense - in that you are keeping the active tab connected to the active screen to give a feeling of continuity. But that's where the logic ends though, because the active tab is always highlighted after all, so you only gain a mild sense of connection to which tab visually represents the one you are currently in, but you gain it at the price of near total loss of spatial awareness in every other dimension.

Anway sorry to go on. I don't want to sound like I'm having a go at Foobar. I've been using the player for over 10 years and I love mostly everything about it... mostly. And it's important to remember that the core and styling was designed in a different time when UI's were nowhere near as refined as they are now.

It's just something that...yeah.... bugs me :)

I did find a forum post with another user asking for ordering alphabetically. I think we had similar annoyances to some degree, but essentially they were enquiring about something different, so I started this new post. I really don't care about alphabetical order. Just stopping vertical jumping.

There was a lovely gif posted by one of the developers in that post that shows what I'm on about, albeit for slightly different purposes. I hope it's ok that I relink to it here.


taken from this post here

Marc2003, the dev that posted that gif seemed to be saying that it was pointless trying to apply an alphabetical sort to the tab order because the vertical shuffle would displace that order anyway. Buuuuttttt.... what if you just remove the vertical shuffling??

Perhaps I missed something? Some kind of workaround this? Any help given appreciated!

Re: Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place?

Reply #1 –
foobar2000 uses system controls, so this behavior is controlled by MS Windows.

Re: Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place?

Reply #2 –
Hmmm that's interesting because I can't think of any Windows system that uses tabs of that style anymore. The only one I can think of that even used multi-row tabs in the past was Windows Media Player settings, but that was a long time ago.

Thankyou for the info.

Re: Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place?

Reply #3 –
I think I found a possible fix using TCS_BUTTONS and maybe TCS_FLATBUTTONS looks like it could be used to give them a similar look to tabs. No idea how to implement, though. lol?

Oh :( it looks as though Foobar isn't open source.

Re: Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Dannii on
I can't think of any Windows system that uses tabs of that style anymore.
The Properties dialog in Windows 10 uses it.

Re: Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place?

Reply #5 –
ah, so it does. It is, of course, no surprise that Windows OS chose to leave such a vile system intact.

Re: Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place?

Reply #6 –
"Vile"? It works fine for me.

Re: Multi-Row Playlist Tabs: Possible to Freeze In Place?

Reply #7 –
It works fine for me also, but it certainly isn't fine to work with.
At least somebody finds it to be a satisfactory solution. Judging from the number of posts I encountered during my research declaring the use of multiple tab rows as a cardinal sin in design, I would guess part of a minority.