[Muine] A few suggestions

[Lars Weber <lars digiterror net>]

Greetings!

It's nice to see the developments around Muine picking up some speed
again :)  In the last few month of using Muine I collected the following
small list of things that I don't like about it's current interface.  I
never got around to sending them earlier so I send them here all at
once:

        == Keybindings ==

        The use of <Space> as an accelerator for "Play" is pretty
        awkward mostly because <Space> is used in most other
        applications to activate widgets (i.e. buttons) when navigating
        by keyboard.  Maybe <p> should be used instead like in totem.
        
        == Cover Display in Main Window ==
        
        There will likely be many people here who disagree with me on
        this one, but I personally dislike the display of cover-images
        in the main window (whereas I really like them in the album
        selection window).  Not only does it feel like overuse to me,
        but it also gives the main window a "heavier" appearance than
        would be necessary I think.  Additionally, the image makes it
        more difficult to use Muine with a main window in a size both
        space efficient and pleasing to the eye (e.g. close to the
        "golden" 1 to 1.6 ratio).
        
        == Library Button Behaviour ==
        
        It's not only inconsistent but I guess also confusing for new
        users that one of the Buttons in the library dialogs ("Play")
        closes the window whereas the other ("Queue") doesn't.  It would
        seem better to me to either change both buttons to close the
        window (and then also change the "Close" button to "Cancel") or
        to change both not to (and then maybe scrap the "Close" button
        altogether).
        
        == "Play Next" Feature ==
        
        Often I miss a way to easily select a track or an album to be
        played after the currently playing track.  Maybe if the "Close"
        button is removed (as suggested above) it could be replaced by a
        "Play Next" button.
        
        == Cover Fetching Privacy Issue ==
        
        Fetching album covers automatically from Amazon violates the
        privacy of the users by making it possible to acquire a list of
        the albums on their computer.  While this may seem like a minor
        issue, the users privacy shouldn't be taken to lightly I think.
        Therefore (and for lack of a better solution) I'd suggest adding
        a pop-up dialog asking whether covers should be fetched from
        Amazon whenever coverless albums are added to the library.
        
        == Album- and Song-Browsing ==
        
        Perhaps the biggest problem I currently have with Muine is with
        browsing the library.  Because of the search it's quite easy
        with the current interface to add songs or albums to the library
        whenever you know exactly what you want to play beforehand.
        However, personally I more often open the library without a
        clear idea of what I want to play and currently it's pretty
        difficult to get a good overview on what is available on the
        system.  The fact that the entries in the album-dialog are
        primarily sorted by artist and not by title (as I think would be
        more consequent with the current interface) only badly
        substitutes for real browsing.
        
        Of course, browsing would necessarily make the dialogs more
        difficult to understand and this brings up the complicated
        question of where the ideal balance is between functionality and
        ease of use.  Personally I consider basic browse functionality a
        pretty important feature that I'd expect to be a help to quite a
        large percentage of the targeted Muine user base.  Therefore I
        think it justifies a slightly more complicated interface.  The
        following is an example for an interface that I'd say fullfills
        the "slightly" requirement:
        
        http://www.brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/MuineLibAll.png
        
        The Info button is just an idea.  The drop-down in the upper
        left would select the type of items displayed in the list below
        and would contain entries like "By Artist", "By Genre", "By
        Release Year", "By Release Type" and "By Release State" (for
        more info on the last two items see:
        http://musicbrainz.org/popup/attrguide.html).  When text is
        entered into the Search entry the items in the list would change
        to list only the relevant entries:
        
        http://www.brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/MuineLibQuetsch.png
        
        The dialog would look similar for the song-selection.
        
        == Separate Windows for Songs and Albums ==
        
        It feels a little bit strange to have two separate "Add Song"
        and "Add Album" dialogs because you always have to decide
        whether you want to play individual tracks or complete albums
        befor you open either of the two (unless of course you open both
        of them at once).  Often however, you need a list of the
        availiable music before in front of you before you really decide
        what you actually want to play.
        
        The problem with this item is: I havn't come up with a good idea
        yet of how to combine both song- and album-selection into a
        single dialog without the dialog getting too complex.  If
        someone else has a goog solution here that would be nice :)
        
        == Multiple-Enque Bug ==
        
        There's currently a problem when I hit the Queue button in
        either of the two library dialogs: the second time I pressed the
        button it doesn't add the next item even though it get's
        automatically selected before the button is pressed the first
        time.
        
        == Problem with some (bogus?) .ogg files ==
        
        [This is perhaps a GStreamer issue, but I'll mention it anyway.]
        There are a few .ogg files on my system that Muine just skips
        whenever I add them to the playlist.  file reports the following
        for those files:
        
        Ogg data, Vorbis audio, stereo, 44100 Hz, ~0 bps, created by:
        Xiphophorus libVorbis I (1.0 beta 1 or beta 2)
        
Ok, that's it for today.  The list got a little bit longer than
expected :)

As always all the ideas are just suggestions and I won't start an
argument for their inclusion.  But comments are of course welcome!

Regards,
Lars