Amarok Blog

One of the key pieces still missing from Amarok 2 has long been a usable playlist browser.

So last weekend, as my girlfriend was busy studying for an exam anyway ( how come I always seem to get so much code done when she has exams? ) I decided to do something really simple that would fulfill my own immediate use cases, and still be flexible enough for expanding on later.

We had previously discussed that we wanted Amarok 2 to keep its own playlist in the database, as this would allow us to easily tailor the way we store them to our needs. Of course, it should also be possible to import and export playlists from files. So after 2 days of intense hacking, and a little cleanup over the last week or so, we now have a simple playlist browser that supports arbitrary grouping through virtual "folders" that can be created and organized, using drag and drop, anyway the user likes.

So here is the obligatory screenshot:



Below the main playlist area to the right, there are now two "save" buttons, a save and an export ( I need to find a better icon for one of them ). The export button does what the save button previously did, it saves the playlist to an external file, while the save button now adds the playlist to the playlist browser and starts a rename operation so the user can quickly give it a sane name.

In time, this playlist browser will be expanded to show playlists from media devices and potentially many other places, but for now, it works great despite being very simple.