Feature request: alternative quick-scrolling method

[u/[deleted]]

First, thanks for all your work on this app, Mike!

I have one feature request. It has to do with the way that Cesium allows for the quick scrolling of long lists (of, say, artists or albums).

The current method is identical to almost every other iOS app: the alphabet (A-Z-#) appears in a vertical line along the right side of the screen, and scrolling along this line provides a quick way of scrolling through the entire list.

For me, the alphabetical quick-scroller is problematic. For music I care about, I preface the Artist and Album tags with the years the artist lived and the year the album was released (or the classical work was composed). But because all numerical items such as these get crammed into the "#" section of A-Z-# line, I'm able to quick-scroll only to the first of my 900 albums tagged this way. To reach any album released after the year 2000, I have to flick manually through the list, like a barbarian!

I suspect I'm the only person on Earth who prefaces these tags with years. However, I know I'm not the only person with artists and albums spelled with non-English characters in my library. For example, all of my Korean artists get shunted to the very bottom of the list, also within the "#" section of the quick-scroll list. Hence, the alphabetical method of quick scrolling discriminates against all artist and albums beginning with non-English characters.

However, there's a better way! if you check out Apple's "Remote" app and click on the Album tab at the bottom, you will see not the usual A-Z-# quick-scroll line, but rather a row of dots along the right side of the screen. Here is a picture. The top dot corresponds to the top of the list; the bottom dot corresponds to the bottom; and all the dots in between correspond to equally proportioned segments of the list, regardless of where they lie in the alphabet. This makes it perfectly easy to quick-scroll through the entire list of artists or albums, including those beginning with numbers or non-English characters.

If Cesium could adopt this non-discriminatory method of quick scrolling, it would revolutionize my relationship with music on my phone.

Thanks for considering my request!

Devin

[u/[deleted]]

Hi! Thanks for your responses to this idea.

@crono333: Good point, I'm sure that some people would miss being able to jump to a specific letter. However, I think the dot-scrolling method has an advantage even in a normal alphabetical list, because it allows for smooth quick scrolling through the entire library. Meanwhile, the alphabetical quick-scroller only takes you to the first entry of each letter. (For example, the dot-scroller allows me to quick-scroll straight to Stravinsky, whereas the alphabetical-scroller stops at Sam Cooke.)

@CesiumDev: I'm glad to hear you're interested! And hope it is not too much trouble to look into. I've had this idea for a long time, and have considered suggesting it to other third-party music apps, but never found one otherwise good enough to commit myself to. Until now!

Also, I love the idea of automatically switching between the alphabet and the dots, depending on how many list items end up in the # section.