Specs for a new browser.

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
re:dream
Posts: 4598
Joined: Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:42 am
Location: Hoerikwaggo's sunset side...
Contact:

Specs for a new browser.

Post by re:dream » Fri Jun 21, 2013 10:00 am

So, there seems to be pretty broad agreement that the new browser leaves a lot to be desired.

There are lots of particular things people want improved.

But designing something as central as a browser needs more than gripes and individual feature requests. It needs a clear sense of what the browser should be able to do, and what kinds of use requirements it needs.

There might even be an outside chance that a clear and fairly coherent proposal from the user base might be implemented in version 10, or that 9.0.5 or 9.1 might see some real shifts in functionality.

We can dream, can't we?

So I wonder whether it makes sense to try to start a thread on positive, implementable, requests for the new browser.

- It might involve proposals as to the 'philosophy' and approach about the basic things the browser should be trying to do or not do

- It might involve specific feature requests.

Flame wars, name calling, conspiracy theories etc may be tempting. But there are other threads that already allow full expression to those. The idea is to have a thread that collects clear and coherent proposals for what should be done to make things better.

What do you think?

re:dream
Posts: 4598
Joined: Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:42 am
Location: Hoerikwaggo's sunset side...
Contact:

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by re:dream » Sat Jun 22, 2013 12:52 pm

8) Yes, well I guess no-one will disagree with that.

But what about the features? Shouldn't we be more specific?

Lemme see.

(1) Categories are nice. But they should be editable or assignable. You should be able to create new categories (I need one for 'wibbly sounds', for example). You should be able to delete categories or rename them. As some ppl on this forum have said, a tag system is probably most sensible since a sound should be able to belong to more than one category.

(2) Scanning should be optional. I want to have my music collection as a folder under my places, but I don't want it scanned, and I don't want it to be searchable.

(3) If Abes implement (2) they should then also be able to make it possible to open your open your own folder structure within the Live browser.

(4) You should be able to choose what goes in your core library. You should be able to delete presets and options you don't like. Stuff you don't want should not be sitting there, obscuring the stuff you do want.

It seems to me those four things would sort out a lot of problems with the browser and get rid of many of the features that are driving a lot of people crazy. I think any browser rebuild that does not contain these four features would miss the point; the browser would still be essentially irritating.

Then there are some nice-to-haves

(1) Ability to audition your own presets. I like the Live 9 audit function - I can find sounds easily without actually installing the instrument in a track. Seeing that Ableton allows me to save my presets, shouldn't it be possible to save a sound wav file with it?

(2) Ability to read mp3 tags. It would be nice to have information about e.g. the artist, the album, the bpm etc. This is probably a tricky thing to implement.

(3) The Christopher Walken clip colouring service should be extendable to browser folders. It would make things easier to find. I want my wibbly sounds in a purple folder, for example, and the knobbly ones in a green one. And so on.

Hmmm. that's all I can think of for now...

tone61
Posts: 376
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:09 am

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by tone61 » Sat Jun 22, 2013 2:04 pm

Funk N. Furter wrote:
I think any Live browser should be:

1. able to find what you want

2. quick, very quick
Both would be improved with a user definable tag system.
You could make hierarchical tag categories that YOU want,
add those tags to things shown in browser (instrument presets, samples, Convolution Reverb IR files, etc.) and
later search/filter browser items matching tags that YOU want.

re:dream
Posts: 4598
Joined: Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:42 am
Location: Hoerikwaggo's sunset side...
Contact:

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by re:dream » Sat Jun 22, 2013 6:24 pm

tone61 wrote:
Funk N. Furter wrote:
I think any Live browser should be:

1. able to find what you want

2. quick, very quick
Both would be improved with a user definable tag system.
You could make hierarchical tag categories that YOU want,
add those tags to things shown in browser (instrument presets, samples, Convolution Reverb IR files, etc.) and
later search/filter browser items matching tags that YOU want.

Nested tagging is the way to go.

Silice
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Jul 02, 2009 1:07 pm

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by Silice » Mon Jul 15, 2013 6:03 pm

Tag system is the way to go. A file can belong to many categories and it's a system that is 100% customizable.

login
Posts: 1870
Joined: Sat Jul 16, 2011 12:41 am

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by login » Mon Jul 15, 2013 6:13 pm

Some small suggestions for the current browser

1.- Being able to delete presets from included packs, why?
- Just keep what we will use.
- Making browssing less time consuming.

2.- Add option to "Hide" abes libraries.

3.- Or rating system, those presets rated low just doesnt show.

4.- Users can add custom categories to the subfolders

5.- Custom folders in Samples category.

6.- Options:
- Show only User content

That could help a lot.

re:dream
Posts: 4598
Joined: Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:42 am
Location: Hoerikwaggo's sunset side...
Contact:

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by re:dream » Wed Jul 17, 2013 6:37 am

login wrote:Some small suggestions for the current browser

1.- Being able to delete presets from included packs, why?
- Just keep what we will use.
- Making browssing less time consuming.

2.- Add option to "Hide" abes libraries.

4.- Users can add custom categories to the subfolders

5.- Custom folders in Samples category.

6.- Options:
- Show only User content

That could help a lot.
+1 to all these.

Dom Murphy
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Apr 04, 2010 8:54 pm

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by Dom Murphy » Fri Jul 26, 2013 1:16 pm

The means to access, browse and retrieve seem to work well for me, but I expect most users want to customise where content lives and how it's ordered.

For example; let's imagine a record shelf is the browser. Walking up to, browsing and selecting a record is the process Live should handle. The order that the records are in is up to the person who's collection it is. Of course, Live could by default recommend a best practice but from there it's up to me. If I want to order by name then cool. If I want to put coloured stickers on my records to a denote genre then that works too.

Live = Browser functionality
User = Collection structure

re:dream
Posts: 4598
Joined: Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:42 am
Location: Hoerikwaggo's sunset side...
Contact:

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by re:dream » Fri Jul 26, 2013 2:00 pm

That's well put.

And therefore, the two things that the browser needs to offer is:

(1) Simple, flexible tools for users to structure and order the content as they see fit (e.g tagging, nested folders)
(2) Simple, flexible tools for search and access (optional indexing, preset auditioning etc).

Go for it, Abes!

tone61
Posts: 376
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:09 am

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by tone61 » Sat Jul 27, 2013 1:06 pm

+1

102455
Posts: 1733
Joined: Sat Nov 21, 2009 1:41 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by 102455 » Sun Jul 28, 2013 11:06 am

Dunno if you're serious or not, but:

A record shelf is a shelf where (vinyl) records are stored.

hec
Posts: 52
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2009 5:40 pm

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by hec » Tue Dec 10, 2013 7:04 am

Silice wrote:Tag system is the way to go. A file can belong to many categories and it's a system that is 100% customizable.
A tag system is hands down the biggest missing feature in the Live 9 browser. I would imagine that omission has something to do with Push, which Ableton is trying to make more important than the software itself.

Side note: You can't pirate hardware so expect more and more sacrifices in the name of Push.

victap8
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2012 7:05 pm

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by victap8 » Fri Dec 20, 2013 2:53 pm

login wrote:Some small suggestions for the current browser

1.- Being able to delete presets from included packs, why?
- Just keep what we will use.
- Making browssing less time consuming.

2.- Add option to "Hide" abes libraries.

3.- Or rating system, those presets rated low just doesnt show.

4.- Users can add custom categories to the subfolders

5.- Custom folders in Samples category.

6.- Options:
- Show only User content

That could help a lot.

+1 here

autozone
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Sep 03, 2013 12:01 pm

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by autozone » Sat Jan 11, 2014 5:39 pm

++++1 on the options to include specific Metadata in the browser. Would love to be able to sort by artist, track-name, BPM, genre etc. Would be sooooooo helpful.

bakku
Posts: 38
Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:11 am

Re: Specs for a new browser.

Post by bakku » Sat Feb 01, 2014 7:38 am

I just want to browse my drives as Live 8 browser did. :evil:

Post Reply