Re: [Banshee-List] The Shuffle/Repeat UI

["Scott Peterson" <lunchtimemama gmail com>]

Repeat Idea

Assumption the First:
The spatial locality of UI elements influences their usability.

Assumption Two:
Users view/edit full track metadata infrequently as compared to other
activities in Banshee (play/pause/next/change rating/change
shuffle/change repeat/&c.).

Assumption Three:
Infrequent tasks should not have a permanent presence in the UI.

Assumption Four:
Context-sensitive activities are better suited to context menus than
they are to buttons.

Observation:
The metadata button in the lower-right of the window is
context-sensitive. Its behavior is to "view/edit the metadata of
selected tracks" where "selected tracks" is context-sensitive. It is
disabled when no tracks are selected.

Conclusion the First:
If a user wants to edit track metadata, the best UI for doing so is in
the track's context menu. It is near to the track(s) being edited
(assumption 1), it is out of the way when users don't want to edit
metadata (assumptions 2&3), and its context-sensitivity matches that
of the task it performs (assumption 3, observation 1).

Conclusion Two:
The track metadata button in the lower-right should be removed from
the Nereid UI. The context menu is the best UI for editing track
metadata (conclusion 1) and track metadata can also be accessed from
the Edit menu. Three interface elements for the same action is too
many and the button is the weakest of the three.

Assumption the Last:
Settings with more than two options should normally be presented in as
radio items in menus, and as comboboxes when outside of menus.

Conclusion Three:
The repeat UI should appear as a combobox in the main Nereid window
(outside of menus) (assumption 5). The combobox should have both an
icon and text for clarity (personal opinion).

Conclusion the Last:
A repeat combobox (conclusion 3) should replace (conclusion 2) the
metadata button in the lower-right of the main window. In this
position, it is near to the end of the list (assumption 1) which
correlates to its well-known function of influencing the playback
behavior once the end of the list is reached. This is obviously not a
literal UI - the last visible row is not necessarily the end of the
list of songs, and the Repeat Song behavior has not correlation to the
end of the song list. Rather, it is a loose metaphor; joining the
visual termination of the list with the repeat-setting's famous
ability to loop playback when the end of the song list is reached.