Setup new browse menus

Overview

In this example configuration we are are going to add a couple of new ways to browse your music in SqueezeCenter(formerly SlimServer). We will add the following ways to browse your music:

• Browse by decades (Similar to the existing browse by year but it browses decades instead)
• Browse by bitrates (Browse music by the compression bit rate of the music files)
• Browse by ratings (Browse music by track ratings)
• Browse new artists (Similar to the New Music menu but it shows artists on top level instead of albums)

We want to new menu structure to look like this:

Browse
    Albums
    Artists
    Bitrates
    Decades
    Genres
    Music Folder
    New Artists
    New Music
    Playlists
    Ratings
    Years

Installation

Install the following plugins:

• Custom Browse plugin
• TrackStat plugin (Required for the Ratings menu)

Note!

If you are using SlimServer 6.5, see the old version of this guide

Removing Custom Browse from the Browse menu

By default Custom Browse plugin will add itself as a sub menu below the main Browse menu, in this setup we don't want that since we only are going to add a couple of now menus as a compliment to the existing menus.

1. Goto SqueezeCenter Settings in the web interface
2. Goto the Plugins section
3. Select Custom Browse settings
4. Find the Menu position option and change it to Extras.
5. Click Apply to save the changes

Creating new menus

It's now time to create the new menus, the Ratings, Decades and New Artists menus is available by default with Custom Browse while the Bitrates menu must be created. To create the Bitrates menu you do as follows

1. Goto SqueezeCenter Settings in the web interface
2. Goto the Plugins section
3. Select Custom Browse settings
4. Select the Settings section called Manage menus
5. Select Create new menu
6. Select Bitrates as menu type
7. We can leave the default values as they are for now, so just click Next on the page asking for menu paramters
8. Click Next to store the new menu

Move menus into main Browse menu

By default menus created with Custom Browse will only be available within the Custom Browse sub menu. To move them as a sub menu directly below the main Browse menu you do as follows.

1. Goto SqueezeCenter Settings in the web interface
2. Goto the Plugins section
3. Select Custom Browse settings
4. Select the Settings section called Enabled menus
5. In the Show in browse and home menu column mark the following and then click Apply to save the changes
   1. Bitrates
   2. Decades
   3. New Artists
   4. Ratings

You may need to restart SqueezeCenter to get every change to take effect but after that the new menus should now be available and you can use them in the same way as the standard browse methods.