Better Banshee now playing source: weekly report numero uno

[Alex Launi <alexlauni gnome org>]

This week I spent time getting some basic UI down. I put an action group of buttons into the now playing source to allow changing sources from that ui. I also managed to get the context area to place itself into the contents of the now playing source upon clicking of those buttons. For screenshots, etc. check out this blog post, http://www.lamalex.net/2010/05/this-soc-project-is-dedicated-to-morrissey/

Next week I'd like to refine the behavior of those buttons to make them more dynamic. To be more concrete, I'd like to make it so that things that want to be displayed in the now playing source may put their own button into that list. The context pane will handle context extensions, but for things like visualizations I'd like there to be an easier way to for it to make itself available.

Based on my planning I had planned to spend two weeks doing mockups and such. This is still pretty accurate but I think my mockups will end up being more interaction mockups and flowcharts than pngs of banshee, this mostly due to my limited skill with drawing programs, I'm much faster at implementing the UI in code and then evaluating than I am at drawing the UI.

Cool thing I discovered: Gtk action groups. So flexible! I'll definitely be using these in my other projects. I already know exactly one place where I should be using an action group in another project I'm working on.

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-- Alex Launi