Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] User Interface proposals

[Sean McNamara <smcnam gmail com>]

Hi,

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 12:15 AM, Ronan Jouchet <ronan jouchet fr> wrote:
> Hello Rhythmboxers,
>
> I just switched to RB 2.95 and love it, but I was disappointed to see the UI
> remained largely unchanged since 0.x. Then, one line of the NEWS file
> intrigued me: "First steps in redesigning some parts of the UI that sorely
> need it".
>
> Which made me think that now could be a good moment to make a few UI
> proposals, since there seem to be some momentum. I summed up these proposals
> in a wiki page:
> https://live.gnome.org/Rhythmbox/UserInterfaceReworkProposals

For my part, as a user and plugin maintainer, here's my thoughts on
the proposals on that wiki page:

1. Merge Toolbar and Timeline

Err, ok, this one might work if we can add our toolbar buttons for
plugins next to the volume icon that's currently there. Hey, that's
kinda like Chrome! :D

2. Disable Statusbar by default

*sigh* OK Gnome, I get it, you want to dumb down the UI. One more
thing for me to go into options and enable every time I run Rhythmbox
on a new system. This is enough to be slightly annoying, but not so
radical as to make me directly oppose it. Now if you proposed to
remove the status bar completely "because nobody ever uses that
thing", I would basically have to start maintaining my own separate
fork of RB that keeps the status bar; sorry but I use that information
constantly.

3. Remove the Artist/Album headers of the Browser

Seems fine from my point of view. Sounds good.

4. Transform the Menubar into a "global menu

Oh yes, I like this. Already used to this UI paradigm from Chrome.
Please do it! You can go a little further to Chrome by putting the
song title ONCE into the window deco and not repeat it immediately
beneath the default window deco. In other words, override the WM's
window decos like Chrome does. It's not a bad thing. :)

5. Move cover art into timeline

I usually don't look at / care about cover art, so you can do with it
as you please. Better yet, get rid of it entirely. Is there an option
for that? If not, there should be.

6. Use no stars or smaller stars

Indifferent because I do not use this feature at all.

Overall, these changes seem like nice and easy, incremental changes
that can be made without a massive rewrite, and without stepping on
TOO many toes. I have to say that this is one of the better RB UI
change proposals that I've seen, in that it maintains the general look
and feel of what we already have, thus catering heavily to old timers;
and it brings RB's UI into the 2010s by adopting UI memes from Chrome,
which imho I think are fantastic for space saving without reducing
useful functionality or information.

-Sean


>
> I guess some of these proposals were already discussed, and maybe a few of
> them have entries in Bugzilla. That's OK, feel free to edit the page (or
> point me here to the discussion / results of the discussion and I'll update
> it). Of course, if you have other ideas about the interface, just add them
> to the wiki page.
> Once I have some feedback here I'll file the bugs considered relevant into
> Bugzilla.
>
> Finally, as mentioned in the page, I'm trying to implement a few of my
> proposals, but am still very new to both C and the Rhythmbox codebase, so
> please consider this as a humble proposal without any commitment to future
> patches. While my proposals are not working patches, I hope they can help to
> bring Rhythmbox forward :)
>
> Thanks for your attention, and thanks for already making 2.9 rock!
> Good day.
>
> --
> Ronan Jouchet
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