MetaBrainz Blog

We’ve got a new server release! This is a big one, because it replaces the old release editor with a shiny new one — all based on work done during GSoC 2013 and finally completed now. Besides fixing close to 100 tickets that people have reported in the past, there are some visible changes you may notice:

• Tab switches are much faster, so the UI should feel more responsive overall.
• The “Add Missing Entities” tab has been removed; you can still create a new artist or label from within the release editor from the bottom of any inline search results menu. See our previous blog post on this feature for further information/guidance.
• The UI for editing artist credits now includes buttons to copy and paste entire credits between pages.
• Seeding release data should be less buggy, and the release editor now provides useful error messages if seeded data is incorrectly formatted.

The new release editor is a large overhaul that required many code changes – if you notice any issues with it, or any regressions from the previous release editor, please don’t hesitate to open an issue on our bug tracker, so we can look into it ASAP.

This release also features several fixes/improvements by chirlu and nikki, in addition to the MetaBrainz team. See the full list below!

The git tag for this release is v-2014-02-17.

Bug

• [MBS-2034] – Release editor help/description bubbles break with a resizeable textarea
• [MBS-2124] – UX: Not obvious how to close the "artist credits" dialog in advanced tracklist editor
• [MBS-3501] – Basic track-parser does not filter/ignore track times when importing a CD + tracknames from FreeDB
• [MBS-3524] – 502 Bad Gateway when assigning different recordings to lots of tracks
• [MBS-3649] – Seeding release editor causes an internal server error if you literally pass "mediums.n.format_id"
• [MBS-3796] – Release editor can allow the same artist to be created twice without either having a disambig comment
• [MBS-3824] – Discs are ordered incorrectly on Recordings tab of Release editor
• [MBS-3829] – New track parser only parses one track if medium is minimized
• [MBS-4006] – Track Parser: "Track names start with a number" seems to work backwards
• [MBS-4193] – Add missing entities forgets selections
• [MBS-4194] – Warning about missing edit note before attempting to submit release
• [MBS-4196] – Unknown bug during tracklist edit
• [MBS-4312] – Track parser tries to reorder tracks even for rels with DiscIDs
• [MBS-4329] – Changing release artist after adding tracks doesn’t update track artists
• [MBS-4521] – Recordings tab has non-existent tracks
• [MBS-4549] – Not possible to filter Various Artists by artist credit
• [MBS-4550] – Problems with "Add Missing Entity" and the credits in the Edit Note tab
• [MBS-4559] – "Copy all track changes to associated recordings" check box inconsistent when going back to recordings tab
• [MBS-4571] – Track parser can be opened from collapsed disc, opens empty
• [MBS-4598] – Release editor is showing non-existent tracks for a release
• [MBS-4725] – Up and down arrows on tracklist tab of release editor should be disabled if release had discids
• [MBS-4802] – Creating new artist from release editor shows wrong in preview
• [MBS-4820] – No way to sync recordings with tracklist without making an edit
• [MBS-4848] – Guess case is missing on the add missing entities tab
• [MBS-4851] – When editing a release selecting ‘Infer track durations from associated recordings’ without changing the recording linked to the track has no effect.
• [MBS-4953] – Internal server error while adding new recording in the release editor
• [MBS-5158] – Using the "add missing entities" tab of the RE ends up implicitly creating ACs, rather than not (or explicitly) creating them
• [MBS-5159] – "Add missing entities" tab can only find matches if the artist name is in the same order as the entered text
• [MBS-5296] – 13-track release added from 12-track discID
• [MBS-5334] – Release Editor : "NaN:aN" for empty length
• [MBS-5393] – "Add Missing Entities" doesn’t update when adding a new VA release
• [MBS-5455] – Adding multiple releases simultaneously sometimes shares the session
• [MBS-5516] – Regression: Changing an accent in track title triggers recording confirmation
• [MBS-5569] – Internal server error when seeding the release editor
• [MBS-5571] – Going back to tracklist on releases with DiscIDs is messy
• [MBS-5646] – Clicking "Add a new recording" on the recordings tab of the release editor doesn’t select the radio button
• [MBS-5687] – ISE when trying to go to another "tab" in release editor (at "Edit Note" tab)
• [MBS-5731] – Internal server error if release editor is seeded with indexes starting from 1 not 0
• [MBS-5738] – Internal Server Error – adding recordings to a new release
• [MBS-5801] – ISE when going back to "edit note" after having ‘tabbed’ back to fix an AC
• [MBS-5805] – Internal server error when importing a CD stub
• [MBS-5806] – Internal Server Errors when adding a release
• [MBS-5817] – Track Parser and Collapsed Mediums
• [MBS-5894] – ‘Guess sort name’ in the release editor just copies the artist name
• [MBS-5936] – release editor internal server error on release add
• [MBS-5957] – Internal Server Error
• [MBS-6013] – ISE in release editor caused by corruption in recordings tab data.
• [MBS-6044] – Internal server error when trying to submit a tracklist while adding a new release.
• [MBS-6060] – Internal Server Error when trying to go back from "Edit Note" to "Recordings"
• [MBS-6064] – Internal server error when adding new artist in the release editor with same name/comment as existing artist
• [MBS-6127] – Edit tracklist and add track artist + copy track changes to recordings -> new artist not shown
• [MBS-6654] – tooltip for the current artist is not shown in the release editor
• [MBS-6875] – missing space in new member relationship before list of vocals instruments
• [MBS-6964] – checkboxes for "Also update the recording with track changes" don’t appear immediately
• [MBS-7035] – ISE submitting a new album
• [MBS-7082] – Beta: Release editor error messages not being correctly translated
• [MBS-7100] – Option to view non-official release groups not available when there are no official release groups
• [MBS-7143] – Relationship Editor display error with right-to-left languages
• [MBS-7190] – data corruption: Merging Releases chooses the wrong release date
• [MBS-7191] – Release merge might discard some or all release events
• [MBS-7199] – "historical" after area names is not translable
• [MBS-7204] – Some tools pad track numbers with leading zeroes? (the release editor by default doesn’t)
• [MBS-7206] – Opening a tracklist with a fullwidth space (\u3000) causes the Recording to become unset
• [MBS-7207] – Impossibility to credit artist as "0" (zero)
• [MBS-7209] – WorldCat URLs should not be considered scheme independent
• [MBS-7239] – FixTrackLengths script doesn’t fix some mediums due to requesting unimplemented and meaningless separate_tracklists option to edit medium edits
• [MBS-7244] – Server not responsive to large track edits
• [MBS-7245] – Properly abort the database setup if tar can’t extract the database dumps.

Improvement

• [MBS-908] – Parser cannot handle commonly used punctuation other than period for tracknumber
• [MBS-1684] – Release editor doesn’t properly handle when you made no changes
• [MBS-2104] – Make it easier to possible to copy multiple artist credits when editing a release
• [MBS-2159] – Artist credit "toggle" should be consistent
• [MBS-3279] – Recordings search during add release should favor recordings from same release group
• [MBS-3781] – No way to conveniently change all track artists and credits on a release
• [MBS-4186] – It is impossible to ‘Guess Sort Name’ alone, add pre-defined sort name types
• [MBS-4253] – Clicking an entity in Add missing entities should open it in a new tab
• [MBS-4296] – Implement "Change all identical credits" on the RE
• [MBS-4331] – Release editor > Recording search on Recordings tab should use track info for searching : track artist and track length
• [MBS-4456] – Make the track parser keep the artists unless told not to
• [MBS-4540] – Don’t replace track authors with "various"
• [MBS-4726] – Up and down arrows on tracklist tab of release editor should be first column of table
• [MBS-5530] – Ask for confirmation when closing the release editor window
• [MBS-5662] – Focus the track parser when clicking the track parser button
• [MBS-5792] – Fix the Release Editor superticket
• [MBS-5899] – Normalize archive.org HTTPS URLs
• [MBS-6026] – Make Recent Additions show *all* recent additions, not only approved ones
• [MBS-6247] – Support redirect_uri in POST data when seeding
• [MBS-6255] – Refactor templates in release editor
• [MBS-6473] – release editor / recordings tab : display and focus recording search name input field (HUGE TIME GAIN)
• [MBS-6580] – link to artist mbids in 2nd column in edit release/recordings
• [MBS-6595] – Show flags for countries
• [MBS-6922] – Display table with information when merging labels
• [MBS-7145] – release editor : after inline finding of the searched label, grey help popup is not moved and updated to label row
• [MBS-7168] – Simplify browse pages
• [MBS-7233] – Change sidebar label: OCReMix → OC ReMix

Task

• [MBS-3658] – Check whether the release editor handles multiple values for track names correctly
• [MBS-6820] – Document how to set up replication

Sub-task

• [MBS-5532] – Long translated strings mess up the release editor

Another release for you! This time it’s fairly small, due to assorted work on longer-term projects, as well as a meeting including the main team in Chicago. Thanks to nikki for a lot of i18n fixes, and chirlu for the new reorder cover art UI, adding to the MetaBrainz team’s work!

The biggest user-facing change is that cover art can now be reordered by drag-and-drop. Thanks to chirlu for that patch!

The git tag for this release is v-2014-02-03.

Bug

• [MBS-7074] – Regression: Inline search from an entity page finds the same entity
• [MBS-7095] – ISRC/ISWC bubble shows [removed] when adding a recording/work
• [MBS-7115] – Collections page only shows the first 25 collections.
• [MBS-7154] – Attach CD TOC : some”show tracklist” buttons don’t work
• [MBS-7169] – Internal server error loading non-existent relationship type page
• [MBS-7174] – Artist level Vimeo links are matched to the wrong relationship type
• [MBS-7175] – “Add Release” doesn’t seem to check the data in Label field in any way, says any text in label field is valid, gives no error
• [MBS-7177] – Selecting a rel then another in the relationship editor causes a weird mixup
• [MBS-7197] – Releases ISE when release groups are merged

Improvement

• [MBS-4374] – Use drag’n drop for re-ordering cover arts
• [MBS-5869] – “New Image Goes Here” wrap-around
• [MBS-7194] – Compile templates to files, and cache template compilation for a longer period

Sub-task

• [MBS-5146] – Translation of “Quick Links” on http://i18n.mbsandbox.org/user/[username]/edits/open overlaps the text next to it if too long.
• [MBS-5232] – Guess case modes and their descriptions untranslatable
• [MBS-5418] – Display of AE elections a bit broken when translated strings are longer than in English

Hello again! This week’s release comes to you thanks to reosarevok, ocharles, chirlu, JesseW, and a few patches from the MetaBrainz team (though they’re mostly working on larger projects at present!).

As far as changes, we have a variety of fixes/improvements to URL cleanups, and a few fixes for the statistics pages and the new image viewer. Upon entering edits, the header will now provide a link to the edit (or an edit search, for several). And, of course, some assorted bugfixes.

Since it just happened earlier today, though it’s not technically part of the release, note that there’s also a few more packaging types and cover art types that have just been added.

Full list of fixes follows, as always. The tag for this week’s release is v-2014-01-20

Bug

• [MBS-6265] – Sorting language statistics by the total amount the first time does not change anything except for the arrow
• [MBS-6266] – The scripts table on languages/scripts statistics is missing sorting indicators
• [MBS-6747] – Indexed search returns Release Labels out of order / strangely sorted
• [MBS-6804] – URL cleanup doesn’t catch/clean iTunes URLs containing $
• [MBS-6937] – URI relationship for VGMdb should accept .com TLD
• [MBS-6959] – The entry for Serbia and Montenegro in the countries stats repeats the disambiguation comment in the artists column
• [MBS-7129] – Regression: direct database search for areas doesn’t show area codes
• [MBS-7139] – Regression: Sorting is gone from statistics tables
• [MBS-7148] – span.name-variation shouldn’t include (trailing) join phrase
• [MBS-7151] – The “previous” button in the image viewer doesn’t work
• [MBS-7155] – Edit medium edits don’t indicate release artist
• [MBS-7157] – Cover art preview popup stretches the image
• [MBS-7158] – Clicking outside the artwork popup should close it
• [MBS-7182] – Beta: ISE while showing an edit history

Improvement

• [MBS-3346] – Display edit number (preferrably as link) directly after edit
• [MBS-6597] – Better cleaning for Soundtrack Collector URLs
• [MBS-6652] – More Twitter URL clean up for mobile URLs, @username and trailing slashes
• [MBS-6653] – Remove trailing slashes from Facebook URLs
• [MBS-6678] – Clean up wikipedia links without any language code in them
• [MBS-7152] – Show average rating in the /ratings page of entities
• [MBS-7156] – Remove need to redirect in link to CoC on account/register

Sub-task

• [MBS-7127] – Show containing areas in area search results (direct search)

Another two weeks and it’s time for the first release of the new year, a bit late in the day (it’s still the right day, at least in my time zone!) due to some database server issues we were having.

Most of this release is bug fixes, but there’s a new viewer for images, replacing thickbox which is very old and unmaintained, and edits now include color coding based on whether they are additions, removals, merges, etc. Thanks to nikki for the userscript the edit coloring is based on, and thanks to nikki, intgr, chirlu, reosarevok, and mineo for a variety of fixes supplementing the work of the MetaBrainz team this release.

The git tag for this release is v-2014-01-06.

Bug

• [MBS-6177] – FreeDB import does not find album if trackcount is given
• [MBS-6915] – Uploading multiple images in IE10 does not work as expected
• [MBS-6968] – Some unused URLs (linked to areas and places) are not being deleted, as well as some links.
• [MBS-7044] – Place aliases aren’t sorted by date
• [MBS-7046] – Artist overview pages for artists with only VA release groups lists both VA release groups AND standalone recordings
• [MBS-7061] – The tracklistings are gone in the release view.
• [MBS-7072] – regression: Alphabetical sort is now case-sensitive
• [MBS-7073] – Standalone recordings in overview feature lacks video column
• [MBS-7084] – beta: work merge fails to load work info
• [MBS-7085] – “Couldn’t determine primary code for area $mbid. Perhaps codes aren’t loaded?” warning triggered several times a second
• [MBS-7086] – JSON webservice does not include video attribute for release’s recordings
• [MBS-7088] – Empty track times don’t show correctly in the relationship editor
• [MBS-7092] – Some entries are missing in reports of subscribed entities
• [MBS-7102] – There are superfluous characters in root/artist/index.tt
• [MBS-7106] – Beta: CAA upload bar no longer getting filled
• [MBS-7109] – Recording merge not loading info
• [MBS-7117] – Place and area prefixes missing from annotation short links

Improvement

• [MBS-1989] – Make identifying add/remove/edit/merge edits easier
• [MBS-4495] – Thickbox ignores native key modifiers for image links
• [MBS-5905] – Allow middle-click of cover art to open in a new tab (as browser standard) instead of lightbox
• [MBS-5973] – Add release group cover art statistics
• [MBS-6057] – Links in the cover art lightbox are not easily discoverable
• [MBS-7081] – Beta: disambiguation comments on inline search are barely readable
• [MBS-7089] – Update Discogs URL cleanup
• [MBS-7098] – Disallow Discogs image URLs as image/logo relationships
• [MBS-7114] – Add a JavaScript string interpolator based on the perl one

Task

• [MBS-7103] – Update jQuery UI to 1.10.3; include Sortable component

Another two weeks and once again, a nice pile of fixed bugs! Thanks to uk/chirlu and reosarevok for fixing a few bugs along with the MetaBrainz team.

Some bits that might interest you:

• It’s now possible to get an add-entity dialog right from the inline search fields. This should make it much easier to add relationships, especially, as well as creating new artists and labels where needed in the release editor. This also ends up improving the already-existing dialog for creating works in the relationship editor, to include the full functionality of the add work page. We’re hoping to get a fuller blog post on this feature up in the coming days.
• The artist overview now filters out many release groups by default, for a less cluttered view that should more reliably include only the main discography of bigger artists, rather than including a lot of bootlegs, concert recordings, and other releases that aren’t always useful to see. Of course, there’s still a button to see all release groups.
• Perhaps less obvious than other changes, but a lot of colors and some other minor styles have changed slightly on the site, as part of a reorganization of our CSS files.

… and, of course, the usual crop of bugs and small improvements. There’s a full list below. The tag for this release is v-2013-12-23.

Bug

• [MBS-5876] – Internal server error requesting a non-existent collection via the webservice
• [MBS-6547] – Relationship editor popups go out of the screen if titles are too long
• [MBS-6556] – Pressing enter doesn’t submit create work dialog in relationship editor
• [MBS-6572] – label/edit_form claims /Label_Comment is a guideline
• [MBS-6772] – regression : can’t reorder more than one cover art in the same edit
• [MBS-6867] – Incorrect help text ‘You must select an existing release group. If you wish to move this release, use the “change release group” action from the sidebar.’
• [MBS-6928] – Creating release via CD TOC is broken (for Various Artists releases)
• [MBS-6977] – Relationship editor regression: track artists no longer displayed
• [MBS-6990] – beta : clicking in a release opens a recording in a new window
• [MBS-7025] – Labels not being shown in merge releases edits
• [MBS-7057] – Internal server error when attempting to do merges with different entities simultaneously
• [MBS-7058] – /relationship-editor endpoint ISEs if you don’t include “ended” fields
• [MBS-7061] – The tracklistings are gone in the release view.
• [MBS-7069] – beta: Buttons wrongly positioned on edit note tab of release editor
• [MBS-7077] – beta: sizing issues with dialogs/autocompletes in relationship editor

Improvement

• [MBS-1467] – Allow new artists to be created directly from the “Relate to…” search box
• [MBS-3420] – Allow creating new release groups when editing existing releases via the release editor
• [MBS-5313] – Add official (default) and unofficial displays for Overview
• [MBS-5446] – The work creation widget should have a “Guess Case” part
• [MBS-5515] – Allow adding artists in the relationship editor
• [MBS-6428] – Move to LESS for more structure in the stylesheets
• [MBS-6437] – button :active state only fires for <a> elements
• [MBS-6583] – Make cache prefix names for types more obvious
• [MBS-6879] – Add reports of entities with deprecated relationships
• [MBS-6926] – Remove %E2%80%8E from the end of URLs
• [MBS-7052] – Set cover art page says “No releases have cover art” when it’s not true
• [MBS-7066] – Load area codes in initial load, instead of separately.
• [MBS-7067] – Use rel=nofollow on external links.

New Feature

• [MBS-5442] – The work creation widget should allow to create a work with an ISWC

Task

• [MBS-7055] – Fix the spelling of eligble_for_cleanup