Third: Understand that there's three different orders we're discussing here. There's the play order, in other words, what the Empeg does when unshuffled. This is represented by the "position" column in Emplode. Then there's the menu order on the Empeg's front panel, which is hard-coded to be alphabetical no matter what. Then there's the order that items are displayed in Emplode, which is fully sortable in the right-hand pane.

Is it these three different orders that's confusing? I wonder, would there be any way to make it clearer?

Well, one way would be to have only had one order in the first place. :)

This is one of those things which has bothered me for a while (and the Empeg people know it, though I haven't discussed it here) - while it's true that there are lots of different approaches to user interface design, and no one interface is good for everyone, I think that every user interface designer out there will agree that consistency is a key element of any good design. This, to me, means that if I drag things into a particular order in Emplode (see note below), then I should see them in that particular order on the Empeg when I'm navigating playlists - otherwise, what's the point in dragging them around? Moreover, if I see playlists in a particular order while browsing them on the Empeg, and then I choose to play the entire set of playlists, they should play in the order in which I see them while browsing. Anything else will be completely confounding to any user who doesn't know that there are multiple unrelated playlist orderings at work - such as the person in the passenger seat who is playing with the Empeg during a lull in conversation, or the spouse or friend who may not be involved with actually synchronizing music onto the Empeg but who drives the car in which the Empeg lives on a regular basis.

The objection to this, as I understand it, is that it prevents you from using "remote shortcuts" (like "press A, which brings you very close to all the artists which start with A") - but why do these have to be the same list you're navigating through? When you do a search by artist, it pops up a screen with a scrolling list of artists and you get to choose one; why not have a "search by playlist name" as well, with similar functionality, but listing playlist names (hierarchically) instead of artists, or genres, or track titles? This keeps the people who use the alphabetical shortcuts happy, by maintaining them in their full splendor, while keeping people like me who like seeing things in the order I put them in happy as well.

Of course, one might also want to have a customization option (which may or may not already be in v1.1 - I hope it is, and I think it might be based on some of what I've heard) to list in "emplode" or "alphabetical" order in the playlists menu.

Another thing to consider is the following: Remember my "The Cure"/"Cure, The" example, above? Well, what the ID3v2 people have done about that (at the suggestion of myself and a colleague of mine ;) for ID3v2.4.0 is to add some "sort key" tags, for artist, album, and track name. So in a track by The Cure, I'd have the artist as "The Cure", but the sort key as "Cure, The", and a sufficiently savvy program would sort them correctly. The Empeg can add this concept as well - which would very neatly take care of a lot of the problems people have been having with alphabetization in general, so that even if I chose to have things displayed in "alphabetical" order, it would be a sane alphabetical order. :)

(Note (from above, on Emplode drag&drop sorting): I'm really having trouble understanding why people are having problems sorting things in the left pane - for me, if I drag them around in the right pane, having selected the "empeg-car" playlist or a subplaylist thereof, the things in the left pane move to reflect the order I've dragged them into in the right pane)

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Daniel M. Zimmerman
Mk.2 #060000058, 36GB, Red
Mk.1 #00101, 10GB, Blue