Re: [Banshee-List] Is the Playback menu item really necessary?

[William Witt <william witt-family net>]

I'm sure there are accessibility reasons to keep the menu, it must certainly be easier for a screen reader to read a text menu than buttons on the UI.  Speaking specifically on two of the items, however:

- I use 'Jump to Playing Song' quite frequently to get back to current song after scrolling through the playlist

- 'Stop When Finished' is essential when using Banshee to coordinate music during performances (church services, children's musicals, etc.) 

Will

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:29 AM, Nikita Kiryanov <skiryano t2 technion ac il> wrote:

I've been looking at the contents of the menu items, and as in many other players the Playback menu seems to be kinda useless. Of the items that appear in it:
Play/Pause:                No one is going to use this when there are buttons in the main UI
Stop When Finished
Next:                          No one is going to use this when there are buttons in the main UI
Previous:                    No one is going to use this when there are buttons in the main UI
Seek To...:                  No one is going to use this when there are buttons in the main UI
Jump to Playing Song: This doesn't seem useful to me since it only works when you are viewing the current track selection in the browser or when the music is played via the play queue. In other words, when you pretty much know how to get to the song anyway.
Restart Song:              No one is going to use this when there are buttons in the main UI
Repeat:                       No one is going to use this when there are buttons in the main UI
Shuffle
Subtitle

Stop When Finished has no other UI element aside from its entry in the menus, but I'm not so sure that this is a feature that people use. Seems to assume very premeditated listening habits, which I don't think fits with how most people listen to music, but I admit that I have no real data on this aside from my intuition on this.
Shuffle and Subtitle also don't have another UI element aside from their entries in the Playback menu item (well, not in the main music view anyway), but they can be easily fit at the bottom next to Repeat. Musique places both Suffle and repeat in the bottom and it looks pretty good there.

The only argument I can see being made in favor of keeping the Playback menu item is that it makes it easier to remember playback related keyboard shortcuts, but I'm not sure that this in itself is a good reason to keep something. The shortcuts will be learned with or without its help, but the menu item will remain long after it is needed for that.

The benefit in removing the Playback item: simpler look, and bringing some functionality to the foreground.

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