Re: [Muine] Some UI comments

[Lars Weber <lars brokenbits de>]

Jorn Baayen <jorn nl linux org> wrote:
> This is very subjective, but to my mind a toolbar is something has to do
> with documents, manipulating them, viewing in some kind of way, etc. Not
> something that has as much .. direct functionality as the playback
> buttons. [...]

My own view (also subjective of course :-)) is rather that every button
with global effects should be placed on the toolbar and that only buttons
which are related to specific ui-elements should be placed in the main ui.

FWIW, I once did a mockup while thinking about the Rhythmbox ui in which I
placed the buttons on the toolbar:

  http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/rb-player.png

This is even more subjective but personally I feel that the player window
appears cleaner/more standard with the buttons on a toolbar.

Anyway, if you disagree I can live with that...

> Actually I think visualization is something that belongs in a separate
> app.. [...]

Fine with me!

> I think... adding much more info to the albums treeview would be very
> cluttered. [...]

Definitely!  And I strongly prefer the current minimalist approach to
anything that's not at least nearly as clean.  However, I wonder whether
the following wouldn't qualify as "nearly as clean":

,-----------//
| ####### *Bedtime For Democracy*
| ####### Dead Kennedys (1986)
| #######
| #######
|-----------------------
| ####### *Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables*
| ####### Dead Kennedys (1980)
| #######
| #######
|-----------------------
| ####### *Live & Alive*
| ####### Dead Kennedys
| ####### /Bootleg/
| #######
|-----------------------
| ####### *Mutiny On The Bay*
`-----------//

Legend: *bold* /italic/

The above seems pretty unobtrusive to me, and I'd personally find the
additional information pretty useful.  In the case of the "Live & Alive"
album there is no Year information available but the release is recognized
as a bootleg and is therefore marked as such.

> This is exactly how it worked and works. :) But, the confusing thing is,
> a row with a different background colour attracts much more attention
> than a tiny speaker icon. How I solved this is by selecting the playing
> row whenever the window is de-iconified, its visibility changed, 'next
> song' or a button like that clicked. So, this way, the playing song is
> selected most of the time. But you can still use the selection to
> select, it all works very naturally ..

Ok.

As I said my personal expectation was that it wouldn't be confusing, but
if people who actually used the app say that it was confusing it seems my
expectation was wrong and therefore the above might actually be a good
solution.

> > I actually have some additional thoughts regarding the previous discussion
> > of groups, etc. [...]

Those comments will still have to wait a little ... my brain is currently
recovering from a little misuse yesterday and therefore not in a good
shape for thinking :-)

Regards,
Lars