RFE: Collections grouping and Navigating behaviour

[DarkStar1977 82]

Hi Emby Team.

Today when a collection has only one media type (EJ. Movies), is presented in a "multi-line" view:

This view is clear, and in most cases is capable to show an entire collection item type in a single screen.

When the collection has multiple types of media (EJ. Movies and Shows), the collection is presented showing one line per item type:

This forces the user to scroll to the right to navigate the collection, something that feels unnatural and it's not practical, specially if the collection has more than 20 items.

I would like to be able to:

1st.- Have "multi-line" on multi-type collections

2nd.- Be able to click the media type (Movies, TVShows, etc) and see a screen that only shows this type of media for this collection, similar to what's done in music with artists when you click on albums:

.  >>>>>>>>   

Additionally, and I know probably this is the most tricky thing, some media, specially videogames but not only videogames, does not have always the same type of picture size and now it's presented making all of them same size and adding a semi-transparent square for the ones that are smaller:

I understand that it's complex to present different size items on the same row but maybe if instead of presenting a semi-transparent square:

If the square is fully-transparent, will solve the issue, this will be desirable to be applied to all type of media, because some Music CD covers are not CD Size:

.                   

And Videogames, where usually japanese editions are the oposite boxing than rest of the world editions:

.     .   

Japanese                                        Europe                                                                                 USA

Finally, would be good that you can order every type of media in collections by it's own criteria.

Meanwhile in Movies and TVShows has a lot of sense doing it by release date, other media that's usually not matched with any metadata provider (Videogames, books, comics), and has sense that other ordering a part of release date can be considered inside collections like:

- Console System for Videogames
- Author for Books and Comics

Thanks in advance.

Edited October 25, 2024 by DarkStar1977

[user24 214]

On 10/25/2024 at 5:22 PM, DarkStar1977 said:

1st.- Have "multi-line" on multi-type collections

2nd.- Be able to click the media type (Movies, TVShows, etc) and see a screen that only shows this type of media for this collection, similar to what's done in music with artists when you click on albums:

These are very good and interesting suggestions...

Anyone that has gone to the effort of creating a reasonably large custom Collection and then used "Group By" to separate the different items into vertical sections could possibly become frustrated with horizontal scrolling beyond more than (say?) 20 items. It's a very similar situation with "Appears On" for music.

I can imagine the 2nd idea of navigating through to a more detailed page working really well (like Albums) and being consistent with the current Emby UI. (Also likely no negative impact for smaller collections, where the lower-level detail pages/views may not be needed.) Perhaps could also be applied across the UI in other relevant places?

The 1st idea could also be good, but may still involve a lot of vertical scrolling for large Collections, to show everything. Being able to expand and collapse the vertical sections would be brilliant, but I'm not sure if there is any Emby UI precedent elsewhere that could be implemented for this??? Maybe someone else knows? 

(Just thinking...) If the 2nd idea was implemented would the 1st idea be required as well? "Group by None" would still show all items in a grid view.

Anyway, a great post and something that Emby could ideally consider!

[DarkStar1977 82]

On 10/25/2024 at 8:52 AM, DarkStar1977 said:

Meanwhile in Movies and TVShows has a lot of sense doing it by release date, other media that's usually not matched with any metadata provider (Videogames, books, comics), and has sense that other ordering a part of release date can be considered inside collections like:

- Console System for Videogames

For Videogames will be amazing if multi-line per system will be implemented, something like this: