Mac Forum / Applications / Media Player / October 2007

I've noticed a few things about WMP 11 that I think may have been overlooked
or at least have not been posted about here: it would be nice if a developer
heard some of this or someone told me how to crack open WMP 11's sourcecode
and I'll do it myself (mwahaha?)

for starters: the first time I ever used WMP11 it came on a dell machine -
and Im unsure of the circumstances but the WMP took at least 15 seconds to
load each songFile and at the last 20 seconds of each song it skipped
violently trying to pre-load the next file.... so you can understand, this is
my first impression of it: so I decided to look into it.

Now on my own new machine, it seems to run within specifications, and its
kinda nice.

UNFORTUNATELY, its missing some standard UI that was in WMP 10.

For instance, a feature I frequently (frequently) used in 10 was
letter-quicksearchinng (as Ill try to explain) - where you go to your list;
click on one of the sort fields (eg. Track, Artist, Album); it would sort the
field; then by pressing for example "L" the list immediately would jump to
the first song/artist/album that started with the letter 'L'. I miss that.
The new search option is handy enough, but for me it seems a little more
cumbersome than the old method - and theres no reason the two cant coexist
peacefully.
Let it be noted you can do quicksearch by letters in certain views in the
media player; but its glitchy: you can get the first letter in (eg. 'D') but
if you try to then type in B or J you get no response (besides a 'cant do
that' beep from windows) though if you press D again you can scroll through
your D-selections. And half the time if you type in 'L' you almost always end
up in the Library Tree View. Its frustrating.

Also: Crossfading. You wouldnt notice it for every song, but If you use your
crossfade option (perhaps at least on my machine?) the player crossfades in
noticeable increments (sounds like 10% of volume) - the transition between
songs doesnt seem very smooth in that regard.
If it is a player-based issue though I would prefer to see a return to the
smoother transition. I will admit for most song transitions its not very
noticeable/unnoticeable - but on some its blatant and disgusting :)

And remember back in WMP 10, when every other line was light-colored and the
next was dark? that was easy on the eyes...

All in all, not a bad player - I'd still use it versus another (like evil
iTunes or the notsobad Creative Media Player)

Still if theres a way I can actually get WMP 10 for Vista, lemme know :D