I love RB, but I don't think I'm the only one who would like to see the UI undergo some significant changes. It would be great if we could get some discussion going here on the list and then reach a reasonable consensus for goals. I've spent a long time over the past week designing what I believe to be a better UI for Rhythmbox. (I started off with one little thing, and it just snowballed from there until I was making modifications everywhere.) I have searched through bugzilla, and I will provide detailed rationale eventually (I plan to do a series of blog posts, and posts to this list), but I figured it would be fun to get some early feedback. Everybody loves screenshots! Er... mockups. I've included two layout ideas, each with two states: the sidebar and browser both visible, and both hidden. They only differ from each other in the ways the sidebar and browser are toggled. But they both differ from the original Rhythmbox in many ways. I won't be reviewing the sidebar's layout... and what's there now is just filler. I'm mostly messing around with the buttons, main controls, and search... and I'll go over alternatives and details for them later. Currently, I haven't figured out a really good way to deal with the large space to the right of the song info box. Of course, extensions could go here, like "Love Song" in Last.fm or other plugins. Brief overview of the imaginary main controls: - The play button toggles to a Pause button, if the track can be paused. Otherwise (for streaming) it toggles to a Stop button. - Clicking the Forward and Rewind buttons, will skip, as usual. Clicking and holding them, however, will scan at a SANE speed. This is how iTunes works, I'm told. Will have alternative designs later. - Albums in the Album browser should have album art displayed next to them (not in mockups, see here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=77413&action=view) - Search is more like Banshee's. Anyway, comments so far? -Steve
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