Re: [Banshee-List] Mockup for Banshee 2.0 toolbar.

[IBBoard <ibboard gmail com>]

On 09/12/10 20:00, Matt Sturgeon wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-12-09 at 19:27 +0100, Tanuva wrote: 
>> Am 09.12.2010 17:20, schrieb zekopeko:
>>> On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 8:22 AM, Matt Sturgeon <mttza1 gmail com
>>> <mailto:mttza1 gmail com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Hi,
>>>
>>>     I today spent a considerable part of the night creating this mockup
>>>     of how i think the banshee toolbar should look. You should find it
>>>     both attached and embedded as html.
>>>
>>>     I also included my GIMP xcf file (fully layered, with intuitive
>>>     layer-names) if anyone wants to have a play around.
>>>
>>>     MOST of the fundamental changes should be simple and at
>>>     widget-toolkit level, however the overlapping
>>>     progress-slider-drag-button (which id like to only be shown when the
>>>     progress-bar is hovered over) may be more difficult to implement. If
>>>     anything is too difficult to implement by 2.0, or goes against the
>>>     vision of banshee's future, please email me and well discuss it :)
>>>
>>>     Changes:
>>>     * Moved the Repeat mode chooser to the main toolbar, thus removing
>>>     the need for a status bar, and saving space.
>>>     * Moved the progress tool to the bottom-edge of the toolbar, the
>>>     drag-button should be a kinda 'autohide', only appearing when the
>>>     mouse hovers over the progress-bar.
>>>     * the timestamp/progress-clock is moved to a position under the
>>>     playback controls, since the progress-bar is no longer in the main
>>>     section of the toolbar, this is more intuitive, and a better option
>>>     than placing it inline, or deprecating it.
>>>     * Since the statusbar is removed, the main section of the window has
>>>     around 30/40 pixals more space, for the sake of moving one button
>>>     (plus any extention buttons) to the toolbar.
>>>     * To prevent bugs caused by the missing statusbar, items that would
>>>     otherwize be drawn there should be drawn on the right of the
>>>     toolbar. (the same place the Simplify, or Visualizations buttons
>>>     appear).
>>>
>>>     Original screenshot taken on Ubuntu Desktop 11.04 Alpha 1, with
>>>     banshee 1.9.0.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>     banshee-list mailing list
>>>     banshee-list gnome org <mailto:banshee-list gnome org>
>>>     http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/banshee-list  (unsubscribe here)
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't like it. The toolbar feels cramped and the position of the
>>> progress bar is completely wrong IMO.
>>
>> Same here - the progress bar directly at the bottom of the toolbar is 
>> too low and compressed with the text. Getting the slider to appear might 
>> be quite difficult. Additionally, it would appear everytime the cursor 
>> slides over the progress bar which seems annoying to me.
>>
>> One idea struck me thinking about the low progress bar though: What 
>> about having the progress bar cover the whole top bar in some 
>> transparent way? Having it behind all the buttons would look nice, but 
>> also make seeking hard since some areas are covered by buttons. Maybe 
>> something similar?
>>
>> Marcel
>> _______________________________________________
>> banshee-list mailing list
>> banshee-list gnome org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/banshee-list  (unsubscribe here)
> 
> Yes,
> I had anticipated the toolbar being extremely low (right on the edge of
> the toolbar) may be impractical, a simple solution is to increase the
> size slightly of the toolbar, and drop the idea of an auto hiding
> drag-button. The progress-bar/drag-button would appear more within, but
> still below the main toolbar, this could be accomplished with simple
> table-ing within the GTK of banshee. in fact, I believe that the only
> hard coding related to this would be getting extensions designed for the
> statusbar onto the toolbar, and removing the new resize feature (sorry
> developers).
> 
> Attached is an updated mockup.
> 

Personally, I'm still not sure about it, even with the second mock-up
(which is better, IMO). For short songs on wide screens then the
progress bar will be jumping by huge chunks at a time (or moving at a
crazy speed). Similarly, skipping back 30s or 1m is going to require a
lot of movement in a click-and-drag, which doesn't seem ideal.

The idea of getting rid of the status bar is good in theory, but I'm not
sure about it in practice. Where would I see my track count and play
time for a playlist? You said that some things would move up next to
Simplify and Fullscreen, but you're quickly going to run out of space
there, especially if people are using it on a Netbook or don't have it
maximised.

Moving "repeat" up to the top makes some sense, but I'd rather have the
important buttons (play/pause and skip) on the left for a Fitt's
Law-style ease of access.

Thanks for putting in the time to make a mock-up, but I'd rather have
Banshee how it is for now, even if some things are probably sub-optimal
in real HCI terms.