Thursday, September 20, 2007

iTunes - Thoughts on Usability

'Have been trying to play around with my not-so-old ipod, and my efforts with syncing it with iTunes and configuring the ID3 tags of the songs have given way to the following list

1. Why can't I use the trackball to scroll within the iTunes playlist.

2. While selecting multiple songs for deletion, using the keyboard alone, is there a way I can unselect songs . Normally I would select multiple songs using the "Shift + Down" key combination .

For example, say, I selected the songs 6,7,8 and 9 using the intuitive key combination mentioned above, and then realised I did not intend to select the song 9, I would typically use the "Shift + Up" arrow key to unselect it. However, doing this only results in song no. 5 getting selected as well.
This is utterly frustrating. Whatever clever workaround iTunes has to unselect songs, which I might not be aware of , I would think it highly counter-intuitive.

3. Anyhoo, once the songs that I wanted to delete have been deleted , I use the "Down" arrow key to traverse further down the list, right ?.... wrong !! it takes me back to the very first song in the list, instead of the song after the last one to be deleted.

And since the friggin' trackball doesn't work anyway, I have to drag my mouse pointer all the way to the dull grey scroll bar to actually come back to the song I was at.
The other alternative is that I can just have a paperweight put on the "Down" arrow key, go cook my breakfast, and come back just in time, to arrive at the point where I was hijacked.

4. Finally, it would be nice to have a plugin, that could configure the ID3 tags of the songs
, by itself off the net, which could provide seamless integration.


An update here :)