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THE SNOWBALL MANUAL

  INTRODUCTION   FEATURES   ADVANCED
  Getting Started + Application Layout   Connecting to Snowball-Net   Advanced Track Adder operations
  Adding MP3 Tracks   Naming conventions   Worker Tasks
  Making a compilation album for your MP3 player   Swap-Docs
  Ripping a CD
 
 
    Snowball Home

GETTING STARTED

When the application starts for the first time, you will be prompted to set up a new music collection. If the Create New Music Collection window does not appear, open the main-menu (blue button in the top-left) and click "New Music Collection...".

Creating a new music collection

Enter a name for your music collection, and the folder where you will be keeping your track files. The folder can be an existing folder, or a new folder that doesn't exist. It is best to start with a new folder. Pick the hard disk with the most room.

Click OK to continue.


APPLICATION LAYOUT

The Snowball main window

The main window is divided into panels. The area in the centre the screen is the track-tree, where track information is displayed.



At the top of the screen is the index panel. Use the index buttons to switch between lists of artists. If there are no tracks in your colelction, the index buttons will be disabled. If you hold down SHIFT and clicking an index button, more than one index can be selected. If you hold down SHIFT and click the ALL button, the index is reversed.

In the top-left corner of the main window is a large red button, which opens the activity panel.
The blue button next to the red button opens the main menu.

Below the track-tree is the summary panel.



On the left is a a quick-fire button-group for common tasks. In the centre is a summary of the total conettn of your collection. On the right is the Snowball-NET panel. The red and blue boxes show the status of your Snowball-NET connection. The red box represents the server, the blue box represents how many Snowballs you have connected to.

On the right of the main window are the helper panels.

Play Panel A list of tracks played one after the other. Tracks, albums and artists can be added to the Play panel by right clicking, and selecting "Add to Play Panel".
Context Panel If you are working on a particular artist or album, for example, if you are putting together a compilation album, it helps to have that album in view while you move around the track tree. See Making a Compilation for more information.
Clusters Panel    Clusters are a way of grouping tracks, for example, "Classical", "Comedy" or "Lou's Collection". If you want to tidy your comedy albums it is easier if the track-tree is reduced to showing only those album.
Tasks Panel Tasks run in the background examine and changing your music while you do other things. Tasks can be run on the entire music collection, or sub-sets, such as a group of artists. See Tasks for more information.


SHORTCUT KEYS AND THE DOUBLE-PRESS
Shortcut keys provide fast access to the most commonly used features. But in Snowball they are implemented in a different way to other Windows applications. Instead of holding down the CTRL or ALT keys to access a shortcut, double-press the key, like double-clicking a mouse button. For example, double-press C to open the CD ripper. This is shown in the menu as "Cē".

The double-press lets you access the most-used Snowball features using only one hand. If you only need one hand to operate Snowball, you don't have to have the keyboard directly infront of you. You can have the keyboard on the left or right side of your body.

Next: Adding Tracks

Return to the Snowball home page.
Return to the tools page.
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