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User Interface

This section describes all areas of the user interface, from menus and toolbars to panes and different views.

The user interface of Helium Music Manager is logically divided into different panes. This is designed to make the process of managing your music collection simple once you have learnt what the different panes represent, even though at first glance it might seem complex.

Sections

Main Menu

The main menu is the area marked in red in the screen below. The main menu gives you access to the most common functions in Helium Music Manager.

Main menu

Navigation Bar

The navigation bar is located just below the main menu, marked in red in the screen below.

The navigation bar gives you quick access to the different views in Helium Music Manager as well as the capability to change the content mode and perform a global search function.

Click one of the icons to navigate to a specific view. The following views are available (from left to right):

Content Modes

To the right of the view icons on the navigation bar there are four icons that enable you to toggle content modes.

The content mode controls how your Library data is presented in different forms such as details, album details, album thumbnails and coverflow.

Click one of the icons to change to a specific content mode. The following content modes are available (from left to right):

Global Search

To the right of the content mode buttons a search control is shown.
This search bar is available from any view.

Enter the search term you would like to search for and press enter to start the search. You can click the magnify glass icon to the left of the edit control to change the contents you want to search for. When the Music Browser is active, the search results are presented in the Music Browser's search page, the other views present their results in the Search View.

Main Toolbar

The main toolbar is located below the navigation bar, marked in red in the image below.

Toolbar

With the buttons on this toolbar you are able to quickly execute several of Helium Music Managers commands. You can customize this toolbar to contain your preferred commands.

Left Sidebar

The Left Sidebar is the area marked in red in the screen below. When navigating between different browsers, the contents of the Left Sidebar are changed according to the selected view.

Left sidebar

The Left Sidebar can be re-sized freely except for three unique cases: when you are in either the Album view, the Artist view or in the Music Explorer and have the browser filter visible (this is located at the top of the Left Sidebar), you can only reduce the width of the sidebar to a pre-determined minimum width. Closing the filter lets you re-size the left sidebar freely without any constraints.

Each left sidebar has its own bottom toolbar, with quick access to common functions.
You can choose to hide/show these toolbars by clicking View > Toolbars > Show Sidebar Toolbars from the main menu.

Content Pane

The content pane is the pane where you find your files, marked in red in the screen below.

Content pane

This pane is populated from several different tasks, when you select an album, when you perform a search and similar functions. The data in the content pane is presented in different ways dependant on the content mode buttons.

When using the Track Details, Album Details and Coverflow content modes, the content pane contains columns at the top (except for the coverflow mode where they are under the coverflow pictures) which can be adapted to your choice - see Change Track Details Columns on how to do this.

You can sort the contents by a specific column by simply clicking the column. You can also define a standard sorting when working with the Track Details and Coverflow content modes with up to three levels of sorting that are applied each time the contents in the Track List are updated - see Track List Sorting on how to do this.

The Database driven views have a unique filter facility which works with the data in the content pane. You can choose to enable the Content Filter from View > Content Filter.

The Content Filter allows you to enter expressions that must be matched to display a track. Tracks that don't match the entered argument will not be visible.

The track list can be viewed in several ways.
Click this link to read more about content modes.

Play Queue

The Play Queue is the pane located just below the Content Pane, marked in red in the screen below.

Play queue

The Play Queue is (as the name implies) the Playlist currently in use.

Helium Music Manager uses the Play Queue Playlist to play all tracks you have added to the Play Queue, from top to bottom.
When a track is being played, it is shown with a bright pink background.

To add items in the Content Pane to the Play Queue, select the tracks you would like to add and click Playlists > Play Queue > Enqueue and Play from the main menu to play them immediately or Enqueue Next, Enqueue Last to add them to the Play Queue and start to play them later.

You can also take advantage of drag 'n' drop to add tracks to the Play Queue from most views in Helium Music Manager. Below there are a few examples listed:

The selected tracks from the Content Pane
An Album Item from the Album view
A Playlist or a Smart Playlist from the Playlist view
External files and folders

Right Sidebar

The Right Sidebar is located to the right of the Content Pane and the Play Queue, marked in red in the screen below.

Right sidebar

The Right Sidebar contains three sub-views (except when you are working in the Music Browser, when only one sub-view is active).
The following sub-views are available

Now Playing
Shows information about the track currently being played.
Summary
Shows information for the track/tracks selected
Quick Tag Editor
Allows quick editing of basic tags for the selected track

The Summary and the Quick Tag Editor are not available when you are working with the Music Browser.

Pictures Pane

The Pictures Pane shows attached pictures for the file selected in the Content Pane, marked in red in the screen below.

Pictures pane

If the files contains pictures attached in the tags, these will be show, otherwise the original album picture will be shown. If the original album picture is unavailable, Helium Music Managers thumbnailed version will be shown.

To show/hide the Pictures Pane, click View > Panes > Pictures from the main menu.

The Pictures Pane can also display the current album image for the file that is currently being played.

When displaying a file with attached pictures you can quickly choose which picture should be displayed from the context menu, if the file contains multiple attached pictures.

The Pictures pane will by default be located below the Left Sidebar, but the panel can be drag and docked to other positions.

The Internal Player

At the bottom of Helium Music Manager you will find the Internal Player, marked in red in the screen below.

Internal player

The Internal Player shows information about the track that is currently playing as well as offering most common replay functions.

Apart from the most common player facilities, it contains functions which let you view available sub-tracks and quickly jump to a specific sub-track.

The player can run in standard mode and player mode. When you are running Helium Music Manager in player mode, only the Internal Player is shown, and then Helium Music Manager acts as a "player" rather than a full-sized music management application.

See Internal Player to learn more about the features it offers.

Tips and Tricks

We suggest that you take time to learn what the different panes do and how they work. This will simplify the rest of your Helium Music Manager usage.
You can quickly hide/show different panes from the rightmost controls on the main toolbar.
You can drag tracks out of the content pane to other applications. This can be useful if you for example would like to burn a few tracks visible in the tracklist with Nero (for example) or add the selected tracks to Winamp's playlist. Drag the selected tracks to the receiving application and drop them.