3 ms·

Couldn't that be made explicit by having a list index in the first column?

by FabHK 7y ago

Sharlin 7y ago
It could, and I thought of mentioning it, but I haven't seen it in the wild anywhere. Probably it would just add clutter and look confusing when the list is sorted by something else. The triple-click UI seems to be a fairly established way to do it.
- FabHK 7y ago
  It's interesting, I just checked - in iTunes, if you switch a playlist to View As -> Song, then it does display a first column with numbers 1..N. Now, if you sort after some other column (say, Artist), the first column does not get permuted accordingly, but stays 1..N. However, if you click the first column, it brings the playlist in the original order, and if you click again, it brings it in reverse order (while still displaying 1..N). A bit weird, but effective. But then, sort is not stable. For example, if I sort by song name, and then by genre, the songs within a genre are not sorted by song name, but (for some unfathomable reason) by artist. Very annoying. Bad iTunes, bad. (This is on macOS Mojave, haven't dared the jump to Catalina yet.)
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    Just checked and Spotify sorting isn't stable, either. Presumably this is because, as with most apps based on a database of some sort, there may not be a "materialized" in-memory data model that one would sort, but the column to be sorted by is passed to the backing database as a part of a query. The app could, I guess, remember the last few sort-by columns and craft the query accordingly. However, insofar as most people desire the ability to sort by multiple columns, they'd likely also want a more intuitive UI than clicking the columns in the reverse order of priority. A few years ago I participated in developing a datagrid component where you could add columns to the sort order by shift-clicking.
    - FabHK 7y ago
      Very plausible. I'd certainly appreciate the workaround you suggest; and I also agree that the reverse order thing is not intuitive at all. "Add behind" by shift clicking sounds good, but hard to make discoverable...
homonculus1 7y ago
It depends on the context. For a music player, "index occurrence in release album" is thoroughly useless data in every situation other than playing albums in order. So it's more elegant to hide that information and specifically design the sorting features around the use case.

Couldn't that be made explicit by having a list index in the first column?

by FabHK 7y ago

Couldn't that be made explicit by having a list index in the first column?

It could, and I thought of mentioning it, but I haven't seen it in the wild anywhere. Probably it would just add clutter and look confusing when the list is sorted by something else. The triple-click UI seems to be a fairly established way to do it.

FabHK 7y ago
It's interesting, I just checked - in iTunes, if you switch a playlist to View As -> Song, then it does display a first column with numbers 1..N. Now, if you sort after some other column (say, Artist), the first column does not get permuted accordingly, but stays 1..N. However, if you click the first column, it brings the playlist in the original order, and if you click again, it brings it in reverse order (while still displaying 1..N). A bit weird, but effective. But then, sort is not stable. For example, if I sort by song name, and then by genre, the songs within a genre are not sorted by song name, but (for some unfathomable reason) by artist. Very annoying. Bad iTunes, bad. (This is on macOS Mojave, haven't dared the jump to Catalina yet.)
- Sharlin 7y ago
  Just checked and Spotify sorting isn't stable, either. Presumably this is because, as with most apps based on a database of some sort, there may not be a "materialized" in-memory data model that one would sort, but the column to be sorted by is passed to the backing database as a part of a query. The app could, I guess, remember the last few sort-by columns and craft the query accordingly. However, insofar as most people desire the ability to sort by multiple columns, they'd likely also want a more intuitive UI than clicking the columns in the reverse order of priority. A few years ago I participated in developing a datagrid component where you could add columns to the sort order by shift-clicking.
  - FabHK 7y ago
    Very plausible. I'd certainly appreciate the workaround you suggest; and I also agree that the reverse order thing is not intuitive at all. "Add behind" by shift clicking sounds good, but hard to make discoverable...

homonculus1 7y ago

It depends on the context. For a music player, "index occurrence in release album" is thoroughly useless data in every situation other than playing albums in order. So it's more elegant to hide that information and specifically design the sorting features around the use case.