• Registered: 2008-03-31
  • Posts: 3

Topic: make use of the keyboard.

hi, i'm new to the mac world, just got this macbook 4 days ago, and i'm lovin it. i always strongly believed that music players should be simple and straight forward. what's up with iTunes being smart and "organizing" my music? I just organize my music into folders.. how hard can that be? tongue

anyway, i used Cog and i'm lovin it too.. now before i get carried away and tell you my whole life story.. i have a hopefully simple suggestion.
i would like it if i can use my keyboard to control playback. i use winamp (2.8, not the 'smart' one), and i used audacious on linux and i like how i can press x to play, c to pause, v to advance to the next track.. and best of all arrow keys to advance/rewind through the track. i haven't seen much in the Cog's help menu, i don't know if there are keystrokes for these tasks, if there are, can someone tell me what the keystrokes are? if there isn't, well, i just wanted to suggest including them..

thanks!

EDIT: ok, i looked through the forums and at 0.08 changes and it seems they either already exist or under development, but why use wierd key combination? apple+shift+left/right is too much.. when the Cog's window is active the left and right keys are not assigned to anything anyways, why not just use them?
same goes for play, pause, next, previous.

Last edited by darkmatter (2008-03-31 23:30:13)

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  • Registered: 2007-07-08
  • Posts: 573

Re: make use of the keyboard.

  • Registered: 2008-03-31
  • Posts: 3

Re: make use of the keyboard.

thanks for the very informative reply
and oh wow!! i never thought of using the Media Keys on my MacBook.. i feel kinda stupid.. tongue

i was using 0.07 when i wrote the post but i just upgraded to 0.08 from the preferences window.. btw, why are they called nightly? because you have to install them at night? ... big_smile j/k


as for the keyboard usage
i agree with the "well-designed application" approach, but still, isn't it possible to code the menus to show the left arrow for Seek Backward.. i just think because Cog is so simple, dealing with should be simple too. one keystroke for playback control actions. that's my opinion

and i'm too lazy... too lazy to press "Shift" before "Right" to seek forward tongue

  • Registered: 2007-07-08
  • Posts: 790

Re: make use of the keyboard.

They are updated every night. Around 3am eastern time, I have a script that grabs the latest code, builds it, and uploads it. It's basically the bleeding edge, so you should expect brokenness and unstableness, but you should still feel free to report any unreported bugs if you find them.

Basically, I don't like the idea of just having left/right arrows seek because you use the up/down arrows already to go through the playlist, and it's easy to accidentally hit left/right. If it were to seek, this would be a bit of an annoyance. The additional modifiers are added for even "bigger" changes. Basically, changing a track is a "bigger" event than a seek, and changing the album is an even "bigger" event than changing a track.

  • Registered: 2007-07-13
  • Posts: 94

Re: make use of the keyboard.

new macbooks have media keys? yikes :jealous:

can you configure cog's keyboard shortcuts with system preferences?

  • Registered: 2007-07-08
  • Posts: 790

Re: make use of the keyboard.

Actually, yes, you should be able to do that. I didn't even think about that. Much props to hippy dave!

  • Registered: 2008-03-31
  • Posts: 3

Re: make use of the keyboard.

i didn't know if i should create a new thread but i had another idea.
when i exit out of Cog and restart it, it starts playing the first song in the playlist, if i have a long playlist (which i do) it would be more convenient if it starts playing the last song before it was shut down..
what do you think?

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Re: make use of the keyboard.