This one seems pretty obvious, but what's the deal with all the wasted vertical real estate? When I'm selecting items in my playlists, i see one to three of them at a time, but it's a pain because of the varying lengths of the names. If it were a vertical list, you'd see 3 or 4 and because they all start at the same horizontal point, you could read them all at a glance.

I had to vote yes 'cos the wording of the poll just doesn't give any reason to vote no.

In reality I'd have to see how it looked before switching to it. I actually like horizontal menus except for when the playlist entry name gets too long.

Just so you know, your request for vertical scrolling arrives a couple of years too late.

And if you're looking to influence those writing their own player applications, you're probably preaching to the choir.

I had to say "no" because of font size. Vertical playlist content lists could show three lines in that standard small font, but the horizontal playlist item font seem a bit more readable.

While the long item names are kind of a pain, I personally tend to name stuff reasonably shorter for that very reason. Also, when a long item name fills the screen, as long as I can see a few letters of the next and previous item, I can generally tell what they are. So, I can scroll over three items at a time, since I can kind of see three on the screen at once. ::shrugs::

same for me - when driving I want a nice big font so I can quickly flick my eyes down and instantly pick up the name. A smaller font just increases the perception time.

Count me as another vote for vertical menus. I've wanted that from day one.

I've seen some nice implementations on some standard CD head units where you get sort of a swing out/orbit effect... where the line in focus is a larger font, above and below are the previous and next items in a smaller font, and the transitions animate to shrink and expand. Hope that makes some sort of sense. There would be PLENTY of room on the empeg screen for that sort of implementation... in fact it appears just from eyeballing it that the selection font could then be bigger than what we have now. Ever since i saw that i've been wanting it on my empeg. The perception time was much less than a horizontal scroll. It would also work very well with the volume knob as a controller.

Vertical, definitely.

Are you volunteering to implement this for us? (please!!)

It can be "easily" done as a user-app through the existing Hijack API; no need for the Cambridge team to do anything here.

(for those who weren't around, I once converted the Hijack menu to "horizontal" format similar to playlists, and it became MUCH MUCH more difficult to use as a result.

Cheers

I voted "yes" because I'd like to see them. I can't say I'd like to have them implemented as the default nor even an option, but I'd like to see what it would be like at least once.

The Chiba and Cali have vertical menus... And I think the UI on those players is umm... With all due respect, terrible. I couldn't even believe the Chiba had ever been touched by any of the empeg guys. But I suppose my biggest problem with it was the very inconsistent application of back/forward (cancel/confirm) using both buttons and the little joystick.

I'm sure a vertical menu system could be implemented on the empeg to be much more intuitive. That said, there are a bunch of things I'd like to see before converting the main menu to vertical. One of the better applications for vertical scrolling will be for content lists (songs). With a meta-data based automatic playlist, I think vertical will be a must. It will also allow more info to be displayed for each entry.

Bruno

Heh - drive slower...just not possible.
To be fair, I don't tend to speed (if you exclude the going at 80 on motorways where it seems reasonable) but then again I don't tend to slow down for corners, and if I'm selecting songs while four wheel drifting I don't want to have to look down for very long at all

If vertical menus can use big fonts then I am interested.

Yeah, that's how i'm picturing it. Except have the highlighted/larger selection tabbed out a few spaces so you get the swing effect. Maybe some sort of spacing to the left to indecate you are in submenus similar to how it's done now horizontally.

As for the wasted real estate... are you refering to space to the right of the text, if the text isn't long enough to reach the other side of the screen? I'd say that space SHOULD be blank (or a dimmed out background) for readability sake and to allow for many charactered items... which is the biggest benefit as far as i see it. With this setup you can have a long band/album/song title and still be able to see what's before and after it.

Good ideas. I'd vote for having the menus layer to the left to show your depth (like they layer on the top now). But your idea is good about leaving plenty of space on the right for long track/playlist names. Good ideas, I change my vote to "yes".

The Cali belongs to my girlfriend - the player has her approval (as long as I do all the music loading for her - for now). When I get the chance I'll let you know where I find the UI a little weak. I understand the myriad of constraints you must have been under with such little real-estate as well as trying to please a very large populace.

One thing, non UI-related, that I really found a PITA were the colour choices on the product. Having the colour change with the capacity might be great for simple visual differentiation, but anyone who wants a 256MB Cali is going to get stuck with a dark-green puke-coloured bobble. The nice shiny yellow is much more attractive. Is the 256MB supposed to be hunter-friendly?

If you're going to the beach or you're a lifeguard, take the yellow Chiba, while knowing you're limited to 128MB (built-in). Likely fine because there will be so many ladies to save in the ocean.

If you're going out to point a gun at things in the woods, take the dark-green camo-Chiba. Then you've also got 256MB of built-in storage to help you pass the time and let you reflect on why you're sitting in the middle o fthe cold dark woods hunting down innocent creatures to begin with.

I do think the unit sounds great, but as mentioned by many others, the headphones are [censored] (hurt ears, short cord, foam pads come off and get lost easily...) Also not a fan of the Cali form-factor - just not comfortable to hold in the hand while controlling - too much of the hand is wasted. It's like you're picking up a delicate tea cup with two or three fingers. Grab it any other way and it involved covering the screen. Not the greatest for holding in your hand while trying to run, IMO.

I haven't used any other flash players for more than a few seconds. And that was ages ago. They were really (really) bad. I just expect a lot more after using things like the empeg and iPod (not anywhere as extensively as the empeg since I don't own my own iPod - waiting on the next killer Rio HD player (must be solid and at least 60GB)).

Chalk up another couple of negatives I just remembered: the "random" repeats songs way too often - I'd prefer a shuffle that never repeats. There's also no support for sorting by tag info (ie. dynamic lists aka soup views) this is a must-have, IMO, even on a 256MB flash player (don't know if it's available on anyone else's though. )

Bruno