Re: [Banshee-List] Minor Alpha Comments

[Allan Day <allanday fastmail fm>]

> > *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!
> >     
>
> We have no control over this, unfortunately. This timer is a part of the
> notification bubble theme provided by your distribution (which I'm going
> to guess is Ubuntu, since they're the only distro I know shipping this
> timer theme).
>
> It's a horrendous idea to provide something like this at the
> distribution level, and your feedback underlines why. You'll have to
> raise this issue with your distribution as those bubbles show up based
> on messages we send over DBus - we don't actually control the UI. We
> have a nicer theme in openSUSE, without confusing timers :)
>
>   
> > 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'.
> >     
>
> Again, we don't control the UI of the bubbles - just the content in
> them.
>   
Cool, I'll take this up with the Ubuntu people.
> > *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?)!
> >     
>
> It's not a good idea to introduce padding around a UI like Banshee's for
> usability reasons. For instance, in maximized mode, the window manager
> can remove its border to allow the contents of the window to exactly
> line up with the edge of the screen. This makes hitting the scroll bar a
> lot easier with the mouse - the user can just shove the cursor all the
> way to the right of the window and know that they can star dragging the
> bar. If there were padding in our UI, the user would have to carefully
> observe the exact location of the cursor before dragging the bar.
>
> If you don't like the lack of padding, try another window manager theme
> that introduces a border in un-maximized mode.
>   
I hadn't considered the functional impact of adding padding. What you 
say makes sense for the right hand side, where there's a scroll bar. I'm 
sure I'm not aware of all factors, but if it's possible, it would be 
nice to see some more padding on the left hand side. I just think it 
would look better.

> > 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.
> >     
>
> This is planned, but probably not until after 1.0.
>   
Super!
>   
> > 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.
> >     
>
> This is also planned, and should be in before the final 1.0.
Even better!

Thanks,

Allan