The Up Next panel of Aloof provides a view into your iTunes music play queue, often referred as “Up Next”. Containing both recently played and upcoming songs, the Up Next panel a continuous view of song playback activity and delivers a simple method to manage your music playback. What to replay that amazing song that just played, or delete a hideous scheduled to play next – the Up Next panel is where these actions are easily done.
Up Next Layout
Up next presents a list of songs ordered and grouped along a time line – items already played appear at the top of the list, then the current playing song followed by songs scheduled to play next. This order is outlined in the following diagram.
|
[image_frame title=”The Up Next Panel” alt=”The Up Next Panel”]http://acceleratingvector.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/al_upnext.png[/image_frame]
|
Upcoming songs are contained in two groups – those added to the Up Next group, and those scheduled to play from the the current music source (Playlist, Genius or Library). The Up Next group is only shown if a song was specifically added by using the Add to Up Next or Play Next options in Aloof or iTunes.
Managing Songs
Aloof provides the ability manage the songs listed in the Up Next list through the use of a context menu or a remove button that appears when the cursor is over a song.
|
[image_frame title=”The Up Next Song Menu” alt=”The Up Next Song Menu”]http://acceleratingvector.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/al_upnext_songmenu.png[/image_frame]
|
Right-clicking on a song displays a context menu that contains the following options:
[fancy_list style=”arrow_list”]
- Remove – removes the song from the list
- Play Next – schedule the song to play next
- Add to Up Next – add the song to the end of the Up Next list
- Start Genius – start iTunes Genius on using the selected song
- Create Genius Playlist – create a Genius playlist using the selected song
[/fancy_list]
In addition to this menu, each song will show a remove button next to its name, allowing rapid removal from the list.
It should be noted that the Remove option is not available for the currently playing song.
Managing Groups
Following the structure provided by iTunes, the Up Next list is broken into groups to provide a simple organization methodology for the play queue. For each group Aloof provides the ability to manage group contents either through a context menu, or buttons that appear when when the mouse is over the group title.
|
[image_frame title=”TThe Up Next Groups” alt=”The Up Next Groups”]http://acceleratingvector.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/al_upnext_group.png[/image_frame]
|
And the context menu items for Groups:
|
[image_frame title=”TThe Up Next Groups” alt=”The Up Next Groups”]http://acceleratingvector.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/al_upnext_groupmenu.png[/image_frame]
|
The Refresh Genius functionality is only available if iTunes is currently providing songs using its Genius capabilities. Also group management functionality is unavailable for the Current Song group.