Media player shuffle inconsistency [answered]
asked 2014-08-07 13:18:30 +0300
Media player currently has 2 shuffle options. One of them is available as a cover action only, when the player is idle. It randomizes the song list a priori and then plays them one after another. This way a user can see what song will be next, and even re-randomize them by using the bottom pulley menu and using the shuffle button twice.
However, this option is not available for any other kind of playback than All Songs. What is more, if you do go to All Songs and then "Shuffle All", it'll not work this way. Instead, it'll show the song list in the original order and then jump through it randomly on each song change. There is no way of using the "randomize" method for artists/albums, or in any other way that stopping the music, minimizing the app and using the cover action.
Personally, I consider the randomize mode to be vastly superior to any other shuffling scheme and I wouldn't mind if the other was totally gone, but it seems to me like 2 separate methods are implemented and the UI is just confused about which method to use where, and is using neither really well as a result. It would be nice if there was either a clear separation between the two (for instance, the bottom pulley shuffle is always shuffle, but the option from the top pulley is always randomize), or if there was a configuration option in settings->apps->media that allows the user to choose the preffered shuffling method, while having either as a default, but implemented consistently everywhere, not semi-randomly in different parts of the player.
