Index Artwork

[simoncn]

MinimServer update 188 has been released. This update provides substantial improvements to index artwork.

1) indexArtwork=folder has been extended to provide images for all index entries. The image shown is based on the name of the index entry. For example, you can create a Composer.jpg file with an image that you want to be shown for the Composer index entry or you can create a 'Show All.jpg' image that you want to be shown for the '>> Show All' index entry.

2) indexArtwork=auto has been extended to provide images for almost all index entries. For example, the index entry for Composer would show an artwork image from the first file found in the selection for Composer and the index entry for Date would show an artwork image from the first file found in the selection for Date. These would usually not be the same image because the Composer selection is sorted in a different order than the Date selection.

3) Because of change 2, the top-level index now contains images for all selections if the indexArtwork option is set to auto or all. This makes MinimServer much more visually attractive, especially with control points that show images as tiles rather than lists.

4) The "letter" index entries provided by the alphaGroup property now show artwork with either indexArtwork=folder (the letter B would show the image B.jpg) or indexArtwork=auto (the letter B would show an image for the first file found within the B selection).

5) The search for indexArtwork=auto in folder view has been extended to search for artwork from folders below the folder shown in the index. This is useful if your library is organised into artist folders with album folders below these. Previously, an artist folder without a folder.jpg file would not show artwork. With indexArtwork=auto, you will now see an image from the first album folder for the artist.

This has required some very significant changes to the implementation of index artwork and it is possible there might be a few cases where the artwork image shown isn't the image that is expected. Please let me know about any such cases.

Performance of the search for artwork should be good, even with a large library. If your control point takes longer to respond to a selection action, this is likely to be caused by the time taken for the control point to load artwork images over the network rather than the time taken for MinimServer to find the images. Please let me know about any cases where browsing responsiveness is significantly worse with the indexArtwork option enabled.