[Banshee-List] Minor Alpha Comments

[Allan Day <allanday fastmail fm>]

Dear all,

As I may have already mentioned, I'm loving the new alpha! That said, 
there are a number of minor things that I'd like to comment on. I'd 
definitely be willing to submit these as enhancement bugs, but I thought 
I'd try and get the opinions of people on this list before I went and 
did anything rash.

I'll sign off here, I think...

Allan


*The notification pop-up*

I initially found the new countdown timer on the notification pop-up 
quite confusing. I totally misunderstood what it is supposed to signify!

The way I read it, the position of the timer next to the 'Play next 
item' button meant: 'The next item will be played once this timer has 
counted down'. Clearly, I wasn't thinking very hard about it, but still, 
that's what I thought.

One thing that could be helpful would be to place the timer next to the 
close X in the top right hand corner - that would suggest that the timer 
relates to the closing of the notification, rather than 'Play next item'.

Though the timer animation looks very nice, I'm not quite sure what 
function it serves. All pop-up notifications of this type are temporary. 
Having the feedback that tells you exactly when it will disappear is 
useful to some extent, but it is also potentially confusing. Because the 
same timer isn't present in other pop-up notifications, you are led to 
believe that this notification is completely different from other 
notifications, when it's not.

I also wonder whether it would be better to rename the 'Play next item' 
button to 'Skip this item'. In the context of a pop-up notification, 
'Play next item' isn't particularly supported by relevant information - 
it doesn't tell you what the next item is. In comparison, it would be 
clear what 'Skip this item' refers to, since the details of 'this item' 
will be displayed in the pop-up itself.


*Window titles*

At the moment, the format of the window title is: '<Title> (<Artist>)'. 
For example: 'Rock You (The Roots)'

To me, brackets doesn't say 'this is the artist'. Hence, to me, they 
aren't particularly meaningful.

One solution would be to go for the format of: '<Title> by <Artist>'. 
For example: 'Rock You by The Roots'. This would have the advantage of 
conforming to the format of the current item information in the main 
window (which goes: <Title> by <Artist> from <Album>). Continuity is good!


*Box borders*

The boxes (I'm sure there's a better word for these, but I don't know 
it!) which make up the main part of Banshee's UI extend right up to the 
left and right edges of the application window. For my tastes, there 
would be a small gap between the window edge and these boxes. That would 
look much nicer (and would be more consistent with the rest of the UI, 
maybe?)!


*Browse by current item details*

When an item is playing, its details are displayed at the top of the 
window in the format <Title> by <Artist> from <Album>. It would be 
really nice if clicking <Title>, <Artist>, or <Album> selected the 
corresponding items. They would become links, more or less.

Just to be clear, it could work something like this:

Click on <Title>: the item would be selected and displayed in the item 
browser
Click on <Artist>: the artist would be selected and displayed in the 
artist browser
Click on <Album>: the album would be selected and displayed in the album 
browser


*Display of currently playing item*

It would be really good to have an easy way to navigate to the current 
item in the browser (in addition to the one outlined above). Clicking on 
the first column in the item browser would be one way to do this.