iTAB Documentation : last modified 30/06/08,
documenting iTAB version 2.1.48
Overview
iTunes Album Browser (iTAB) is a graphical front end to iTunes. It transforms this:
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into this: |
or this: |
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|
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with various sorting and filtering features to allow you to find the music you want quickly and intuitively.
While
iTunes version 7 has it's own cover art view, this does not aggregate tracks
into albums unless you have ordered your track listing by album. iTunes Album
Browser always aggregates albums correctly, with various sorting options such
as :
·
Showing
the albums you have added to your collection most recently first.
·
Ordering
all albums by average rating, so you can see your top 10 albums of all time, or
with some filtering applied too, your top 10 by decade/year etc.
Further
advantages over standalone iTunes 7 :
·
Very
easy to build and manage an album playlist (without dragging track selections).
·
Can
view detail of the currently playing track/album in full screen view (reviews,
lyrics, lists of similar artists/albums that may interest you - a great way to
find new music you may like).
·
Spine
view - just as if your CDs were stacked on a shelf.
iTAB is written for real music lovers by a real music lover. It was written with an understanding of how real music fans like to listen to their music : as a full album experience; taking the listener on a journey, with tracks in the right order, as the artist and the producer intended.
However, to cater for all tastes, iTAB can also be used as a jukebox, mixing and matching tracks from different albums in a playlist - iTAB makes browsing for your favourite tracks a breeze. While iTAB is optimised for music libraries that contain ratings, this is not a mandatory pre-requisite.
iTAB,
iTunes and iPod
iTAB is the ideal music solution if you have an iPod. All actions in iTAB affect iTunes too, which naturally interfaces with the iPod. Your ratings made in iTAB will be reflected in iTunes and (when synchronised) the iPod, and vice-versa. Furthermore, as well as playing all the standard formats, iTAB will show and play songs purchased through the iTunes Music Store in the .m4p format, and songs imported through iTunes and stored in the .m4a format.
Installation
and Execution
The installation consists of a single .zip file. Open this and execute the iTunesAlbumBrowserSetup.msi file within it (if on Windows XP) or the setup.exe (for older Windows platforms) and follow the on-screen instructions. The user is given the option to install it on the current machine for All Users or just the Current User.
Pre-Requisites
· Mandatory: Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0. You can get the .NET Framework from the Windows Update page.
· Optional: EvilLyrics for lyrics fetchting. Get EvilLyrics here.
The installation creates an iTunes Album Browser program group in the Start Menu:
The first icon runs iTAB in normal mode – this icon is also placed on the user’s Desktop – iTAB can be invoked from either.
The second icon runs iTAB in Debug Mode – this is only to be used when submitting more details for a fault report to the author via the Forum. Running in this mode creates a file IAB.log on the Desktop, containing debug details for the session.
The Uninstall option will de-install the program. Please note that this is not necessary in order to upgrade the program to a later version, only to remove it if you no longer want it (or to reinstate a previous version).
When iTAB is run it can – depending upon a Preference - check the home page website to see whether an update is available. If one is found the user is alerted and will be given the opportunity to visit the home page to download it:
An internet connection is required to carry out this check but is not mandatory to be able to run iTAB. The connection status is displayed by a red or green light on the status line:
Reading
When iTAB is started the first thing it does is attach to iTunes (if iTunes is not running it attempts to auto-start it) and proceeds to parse the entire music library for the current user (different users on the same PC have different iTunes libraries). On successfully parsing the music library (which should take only a few seconds at most) the status line shows the number of tracks parsed and the number of tracks rated (see previous screen-shot).
At any time while running iTAB the user may initiate a re-scan of the iTunes Library via the main menu (File | Refresh). This may be necessary only after deleting or adding tracks to the iTunes library. Please note, however, that this scans the iTunes library xml file, and when iTunes decides to write this file seems somewhat arbitrary, which means that some library changes are not reflected immediately.
Album
Collation
iTunes does not have the concept of an “Album” as a separate entity, it contains only a large database of tracks, each of which can be assigned an Album name. Therefore it is necessary for iTAB to collate these tracks into albums. iTAB normally collates tracks into albums by matching both the Album Name and the Artist Name (or the new Album Artist Name if this is set) fields from the iTunes tracks. It will ignore minor variations in artist and album name and collate albums properly without having to double-check all your id3 tags (eg. differences in case or some artist names being prefixed with "The" while others are not). For multi-artist compilations it relies on the Compilation flag being set in the tracks – see the next section.
iTAB can not only collate named albums from the iTunes track database, it can also collate “Best-Of” albums by Artist or by Genre according to the user’s own personal ratings.
iTAB will collate the albums that are within the iTunes library (and also best-of-artist and best-of-genre collections), according to a set of preferences which determines whether it should be deemed an album for display purposes – see Preferences. The intention is here to suppress the display of albums for which only one or two tracks are owned, though this can be turned off via the preferences.
iTAB will still recognise full albums that have only a small number of tracks (like some classical or jazz albums), provided that the iTunes tracks have the “Total Number of Tracks” fields populated (eg. 1 of 3, 2 of 3, and 3 of 3).
Note that iTAB will ignore tracks that are disabled (unchecked) in iTunes.
Compilations
To correctly collate compilation albums (which have the same album name but different artist names), it is necessary to have the Compilation field set in the iTunes tracks to allow these to be assimilated.
iTAB can help with recognising Compilation albums that do not have the Compilation field properly set – see the Filters section for details.
The
Main Window
iTAB will run on standard 96dpi screens or higher (tested on 120dpi), and is touch-screen-friendly. The layout of the screen is as follows:
The iTAB main window is divided into the following panels:
· Header panel
· Browser panel
· Now Playing panel
· Playlist panel
· Footer panel
Note that most screen objects have Tooltip text embedded within them : simply hover the mouse over the item for a hint as to it’s function. Objects that interact with the mouse normally change the cursor shape from a pointer to a hand :
The standard themes distributed with iTAB use only standard windows fonts Tahoma, Verdana, Courier New and Georgia. Run-time errors may occur if any of these fonts are not installed.
Header
Panel
The header panel contains the following buttons which directly control iTunes:
/ 
Play/Pause
– plays or pauses the current track (toggles between states).
Next
Track – skips the playing track and starts playing the next track queued.
Start
Visualiser – invokes the currently configured iTunes visualiser in full-screen
mode.
Graphical Equaliser – invokes the
iTunes graphical equaliser. NB. In some instances may appear underneath iTAB.
Note: iTAB does not have a Previous Track button : if you want to go back to replay a played track, use the playlist to replay the desired track by double-clicking on it.
Volume
Control
This may be used to control the volume. Click on the bar to set the level, or click on the icons either side of the bar to mute the volume or set it to full.
Current
Track Info & Timeline
This section displays the artist and track name for the track currently playing it iTunes, a timeline, elapsed time and time remaining. Click on the timeline to change the play position within the track.
View/Group/Order
Selection
This section allows selection of the View, Group-By and Order-By options used within the Browser panel.
Browser
Panel
The browser panel displays the albums according to the currently selected View, Group-By, Order-By, Filter and Paging settings.
Four Album Sizes are currently supported via the main menu [View | Album Size] : Minimal, Small, Medium or Large. This applies to the size of the covers or the spines, according to the current View type. The Minimal setting allows the most possible albums to be displayed on a page, but this setting only displays the cover art on Cover view, and only the artist and album name on Spine view (other textual details are suppressed).
The albums are spread out evenly over the available space in the browser panel. Resizing the panel re-arranges the albums.
The user can select any displayed album by clicking on it : it becomes the currently “Selected” album. The selected album is highlighted:
Now
Playing Panel
The Now Playing panel can display more detailed information for the currently playing Track and Album, or the currently selected Album. See this section for details.
Playlist
Panel
The playlist panel contains the queue of albums and tracks that have been submitted. It can be docked on the left or right hand side. This is described fully later.
Footer
Panel
The footer panel contains messages, the internet connection
status indicator, a progress bar (for certain operations), and the Resize handle. The window can only be
resized via this handle in the bottom right hand corner, or by changing it’s
Window State
The buttons on the top right of the window
control the window state. This follows the standard windows rules: the window
can be maximized, minimized, normalized (subject to manual resizing) or closed.
Full
Screen Jukebox Mode
The first button runs iTAB in Full Screen Jukebox mode. In this mode iTAB takes over entire workspace including the Windows-XP task-bar (press ESC to cancel or use the button again).
Album
Detail Popup
Clicking on an album representation in the Browser or Now Playing panels allows you to access the Album summary and Track details for the album. This pops up under the mouse:
This window is interactive ; i.e. it allows you to queue a single track at a time or change the track ratings (by clicking on them). It also allows you to play or queue the whole album via the play buttons in the header.
If a track name is truncated (ending “...”) it will show the full track name as a Tooltip on hovering the mouse over the truncated name.
If an album spans more than one disk, these are separated via a horizontal line.
If the system detects that you do not have all the tracks for the album in your database (from the Track Count tags for the tracks you do have), it displays (for example) "11 tracks (of 13)". Note that iTAB can help you set the Track Count tags correctly – see this section ; this can also help you score albums more effectively.
Note: when the Now Playing panel is in “Selected Album” mode, this album detail popup only appears for the album displayed in that panel (and not those in the browser panel).
Album Right-Click Context
Menu
Right-clicking on an album in the Browser panel will invoke the following Context menu :
These options are available for Album view, Genre view, and Artist view, except where indicated:
· Play Album Now : clears the playlist and plays the selected album immediately
· Add to Playlist (NEXT) : adds to the playlist immediately after the currently playing track,
· Add to Playlist (END) : adds to the end of the playlist
· Delete Album : Deletes the album from iTAB, deletes the tracks from iTunes AND deletes the actual files! A warning is issued, and if deleted the files are still recoverable from the recycle bin. An option is also provided to keep tracks rated 3-stars and over. Only available from Album view.
· Hide Album : disables (unchecks) tracks in iTunes so that the album is no longer shown in iTAB.
· Choose Album Art : allows the user to select the album art to be used for this album (see section on Album Art).
· Push Album Art : forces artwork to be saved in mp3 folders or files (see section on Album Art). Only available from Album view.
· Tag Album : Tag this album (see Album Tagging)
Main
Menu
The main menu offers various high-level options for controlling iTAB:
These options are explained elsewhere in this document.
Browse
Views
iTAB offers two main views : Cover view and Spine view. How many it displays on a “page” depends upon the chosen paging scheme.
Cover View
This view shows the album artwork:
When the paging scheme supports scrolling pages, the page of album covers scrolls vertically. Below each cover iTAB displays the artist name and the album name. Below these it displays an indication of the average star rating, and the value used in the current ordering scheme.
An album without cover artwork is displayed with a default cover representation; a picture of a blank CD with the name of the artist and album overlayed, eg:
(the text colour and CD “tint” colour will vary depending upon the artist name)
Clicking on a cover will display the album detail popup, allowing access to the individual tracks.
A play icon is also shown for each album. This may be configured via the preferences to either play now or enqueue to the end of the playlist. Further play options are available via the album’s right-click context menu.
Spine View
This view shows “stacks” of CD spines, as though they are stacked in piles on a shelf or table:
When the paging scheme supports scrolling pages, a page of album spines scrolls horizontally. Clicking on a spine invokes the album detail popup to access the individual tracks, right-clicking on a spine invokes the context menu for the album play options.
Spine colours are generated by iTAB, but it ensures that the same colour scheme is always used for the same artist. Compilation albums always have white spines. The average star rating (for rated tracks) is shown on the left hand side (in the way as Cover view), the value used in the current ordering scheme is shown on the right.
Average
Star Ratings
These require a short explanation. For albums which have one or more rated tracks, this provides a visual summary of the average rating and the highest rating (of tracks within the album), on both cover and spine view. NB. This is subtly different to the score mechanism used in album ordering (which applies a default score for unrated tracks).
The average score for rated tracks is calculated and then rounded to the nearest half-star. Unrated tracks are ignored in this calculation. This average score is then displayed with a colour strength based on the proportion of rated tracks to unrated tracks – those which appear vivid are fully rated, those which appear almost transparent may have only one or two tracks rated out of 10 or more – it’s an indication of the strength or confidence of the average rating. To the right of the star output there may appear a number of additional grey dots – these indicate the highest individual rating for any track within the album. Examples:
Fully rated album, average 3 stars,
maximum 4 stars
Approx ¾ of the tracks are rated, average
3.5 stars, maximum 5 stars
Approx ¼ of the tracks are rated,
average 2.5 stars, maximum 3 stars (no room for a grey dot because of the
half-star but there must be at least one 3-star track to achieve an average of
more than 2)
Browse
Groups
By
Album
This is the default mode. Studio and compilation albums are collated (as already described) and displayed in the Browse panel.
By
Artist
or By Genre
iTAB can alternatively group by Artist or Genre: in these modes it will collate Best-Of-Artist or Best-Of-Genre compilations, using the ratings you have provided for the tracks:
or
The collation depends upon the qualification settings defined in the Preferences:
These best-of compilations will randomize the track listing when the whole “album” is played and submitted to the playlist.
NB. Artwork is not automatically fetched for Genres, but you may still attach your own artwork.
Browse
Order
The user can set the browse order for albums within the Browser panel. The value used in the ordering is shown at the bottom right of the album display (on both cover and spine views) within the browser panel. The selection also affects the short-cuts that are displayed at the bottom of the browser panel (short-cuts not used are not displayed).
By Score
Albums are ordered by Score, those rated highest are shown first. This uses a scoring system based on the average star-score per track, while weighting the average score slightly lower for albums with a small number of tracks. It assumes a 2¼* rating for unrated tracks within rated albums, and a 2* rating for missing tracks (those that aren't in your iTunes database, which it detects from your Track Count tags). Albums completely unrated are given an average score of 0.
The short-cuts provided are:
Perfect | Excellent | Very Good | Good | Average | Poor | Unrated | <All>
Latest
Albums are ordered by the date they were added to iTunes, so it shows the most recent additions first.
The short-cuts provided are:
New Today | New This Week | New This Month | New This Year | New Last Year | Older | <All>
By
Artist
Albums are ordered by Artist Name. Albums from the same Artist are ordered by Year, then by Album Name. Multi-artist compilations are put at the end of the list and are ordered by Album Name only.
The short-cuts provided are:
# | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | @ | <All>
where # is artists starting with numeric or other non-alpha characters, and @ is for multi-artist compilations
By
Album
Albums are ordered by Album Name.
The short-cuts provided are:
# | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | <All>
where # is albums starting with numeric or other non-alpha characters
By
Year
Albums are ordered by production Year.
The short-cuts provided are:
2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2000s | 1990s | 1980s | 1970s | 1960s | 1950s | ... (etc) ... | ?
The last 3 years will be shown separately and before that will group by decade. ? is for those albums which don’t have a year recorded.
NB. Order by Album Year / Group by Artist combination not allowed.
By
#Plays
Albums are ordered by the average number of Plays per track (this is only evaluated on parsing the library).
Shortcuts are grouped by integer.
By
#Tracks
Albums are ordered by the number of Tracks within the album. This is sometimes useful on the Best-Of-Artist or Genre views, to find which artist or genre you have most high rated tracks from.
Shortcuts are
30+ | 20+ | 15+ | 10+ | 7+ | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1
Tagging
Albums
This feature allows albums to be tagged and untagged via the right-click context menu. You might want to tag albums for a number of reasons: your favourites (when you don’t rate them), albums to be reviewed, albums to be shared, etc. The special filter mechanism can be used to show tagged albums only. Tagged albums are shown with a large yellow star (top left) in album cover view:
Tagging is persisted between sessions; each user of the PC can have their own separate tag list.
Under the File menu, there is also an option to generate an iTunes playlist from the tagged album selection. This playlist will be named “iTunes Tagged Albums”. This is useful to push all tagged albums within a single playlist to an iPod (by marking the playlist to be synchronised with the iPod).
Filtering
The filter mechanism allows you to filter out specific albums from the entire library. You can enter search text and apply the filter by hitting TAB or RETURN:
The entered text must match part of the artist name, album name or genre in order for the album to qualify for display (this is not case sensitive). You may invoke a deeper Track search by putting quotes around your search text:
This will show all albums which contain one or more tracks which include the text (again, case-insensitive).
The filter can be cancelled by pressing the 
icon on the right-hand side of the textbox.
Certain filter presets are also available, which can be
shown by clicking on the 
icon (which is shown when the filter text is
empty):
These are explained in the following subsections:
Special
Presets
The following special presets are available:
Albums with Covers: This only shows albums which have artwork in iTAB.
Albums without Covers: This only shows albums which do NOT have artwork in iTAB.
Tagged Albums: This only shows albums which have been Tagged.
Possible Compilations: This allows you to view additional possible compilation albums that are NOT currently recognised by default. It recognises these by collating tracks with the same album name but from different artists, that are NOT marked with the compilation flag : On viewing these you can force the compilation flag to be set (via an option on the right-click menu) so that the selected album is picked up automatically by iTAB from then on.
Rating
Presets
The rating presets * to ***** are used to filter out albums which are rated on or above the specified number of stars per track.
Genre Presets
The genre presets can be used to filter out albums which contain one or more tracks marked with the specified genre. Genre text can also be typed into the filter textbox.
Playlist Presets
The playlist presets are pre-populated with the named playlists from iTunes. Selecting such a playlist filters out the albums that are contained within that playlist (it still applies the album qualification checks).
Filter
By Year/Decade
You can also filter by year or decade : just enter a year as filter text (eg. 2005, 1996) or a decade (eg. 1990s, 2000s). This allows you to find (for example) your top 10 albums of any year or decade by applying such a filter and then ordering by Score.
Paging
Schemes
Several different paging schemes are available.
A scrolling page is a page of albums that cannot all be displayed at once within the browser panel, so contains a scroll-bar. Several such pages may be needed to show all albums and so page navigation may also be needed to flip between the pages.
The preferences provide the following paging scheme options:
The following Paging Schemes are selected via the combo-box:
Non-Scrolling Pages (Size to Fit) – this option ensures that scroll-bars are not displayed on each page. It displays as many albums as it can on a page, and the page navigation buttons (or the mouse-wheel) is used to navigate between pages.
Scrolling Pages (Medium) – virtual page is 5 times larger than the visible space in the browser panel.
Scrolling Pages (Large) - virtual page is 10 times larger than the visible space in the browser panel.
Show All Albums on One Scrolling Page – this is not recommended if you have hundreds of albums and a low-spec PC.
Auto (default) – shows a single scrolling page if 100 filtered albums or less, otherwise forces a paged view (with non-scrolling pages)
The Shortcut option defines what to do when the user clicks on a Shortcut Link at the bottom of the Browser panel. See the section on Shortcuts for details.
The MouseWheel option defines how to navigate between pages when the user uses a mouse wheel (while the mouse cursor is within the confines of the album paged panel) : this setting only affects schemes with non-scrolling pages (for scrolling pages the mouse wheel scrolls each page):
· Move 1 Page Per MouseWheel Click – as the mousewheel is scrolled, the page number is incremented on every click of the wheel – while it is being scrolled the browser panel title reflects where the target page is : navigation is only actioned when the mousewheel-scroll stops.
· Move 1 Page Per Group of MouseWheel Clicks – the page is incremented (forward or back) one page per mousewheel scroll gesture.
Page Header
and Footer
A header section in the browser panel shows the current position within the pages, and also includes the page navigation buttons. At the bottom of the browser panel is series of page and shortcut links:
(albums)
NB. The visual representation depends upon the chosen “theme”.
See the following sections for details of page and shortcut links.
Page
Numbers
At the bottom left of the browser panel, a shortcut link is shown for specific pages:
Not all pages are always shown, only the first 3, the last 3, and the 3 around the current page (which is displayed as a label rather than an underlined link).
Shortcuts
Shortcut links are shown at the bottom right of the browser panel and offer a way of navigating directly to a set of albums within the collection, as driven by the ordering scheme.
The preferences section on paging schemes determines how these shortcut links are used:
· Single Scrolling Page Per Shortcut Link : this means that clicking on a shortcut link will show the albums pointed to by that shortcut in a single scrolling page. The paging buttons then navigate between shortcut pages. For example, when ordering by artist name, clicking on the shortcut link “A” will show a single scrolling page containing all albums by artists starting with the letter “A”. The Next Page button takes the user to the “B” page, and so on. Selecting the shortcut link “<All>” reverts the user to the default paging view.
· Shortcut Link Navigates Within Paging Scheme : this means that clicking on a shortcut link will navigate the user to the first album that qualifies under that shortcut within the default paging scheme. For example, when ordering by album name, clicking on the shortcut link “Q” will navigate the user to the first album starting with the letter “Q”, and will select it as the current album. If the default paging scheme involves scrolling pages (single pages which can be scrolled with a scroll-bar), the page will be scrolled to make the selected album visible.
Artwork
iTAB caches artwork locally under it’s program folder for quick retrieval. Artwork can be retrieved into iTAB in various ways, as defined in the following subsections:
Embedded
Artwork
Firstly, artwork embedded within the song files will be automatically detected by iTAB and cached. It will only do this for studio albums, not best of artist/genre compilations. If found in the song files will not try to auto-fetch from Amazon (if this is turned on).
Fetching
All Artwork from Amazon
From the Preferences screen, you can direct iTAB to automatically fetch artwork on all albums with missing artwork. This requires an internet connection:
Upon hitting the Fetch Missing Artwork Now button, control is returned to the main window and the program enters a loop, searching Amazon’s web service for all albums without artwork. The footer panel shows the progress:
Amazon’s web service has a 1 request per second rule, which is observed by this loop, so the whole process may take some time, depending on how many albums are missing artwork. The user can continue using iTAB while the loop is active, though please note that general responsiveness may suffer. The loop can be aborted via the ESCape key.
A further preference determines whether to get the highest quality artwork possible from Amazon.
Fetch
Automatically on New Albums
Depending upon a Preference (see above), iTAB can detect new albums and automatically fetch artwork from Amazon’s web service unattended. This requires an internet connection. While it is fetching artwork, it is initially displayed as follows:
(and
when found) 
This may happen in parallel for several albums.
Fetch Manually For One Album
Album art can also be set manually one album at a time. The right-click context menu provides different mechanisms for selecting album art: