[Fwd: Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Yet another user interface proposal]

[Marco Pesenti Gritti <mpgritti oltrelinux com>]

I guess this was supposed to be on the list

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• From: Luca Ferretti <elle uca libero it>
• To: Marco Pesenti Gritti <mpgritti oltrelinux com>
• Subject: Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Yet another user interface proposal
• Date: 02 Feb 2003 17:29:09 +0100

Il dom, 2003-02-02 alle 12:41, Marco Pesenti Gritti ha scritto: 
> It think Jorn redesign has some serious issues (read Luca mail if you
> wonder which). Still I think he did some nice improvements. 
Right. For example: this is a player, buttons are better (much better)
then toolbar 

> My proposal
> is just a try to merge these back in the old ui, to find an acceptable
> compromise for 1.0. We have some really nice pieces of code, it's a pity
> we are unable to put them together in an acceptable interface.
> Yeah, acceptable, we can make it rock for 2.0.
> 
True. We (=all GNOME users) need a music player. 

> 
> SIDEBAR
> 
> The sidebar acts like a source selector and no more like a view
> switcher. No more menu merging, the only piece of ui that could change a
> bit when changing source are filters.
> This is mostly a code change, since the views was pretty consistent (or
> was planned to be), but I think it will have positive effects in the
> future, forcing us to not evolve in one of these terrible all in one,
> viewed applications.
> 
"The UNIX philosophy is to design small tools that do one thing, and do
it well." ;-) 


> SOURCES
> 
> Sources are Radio, Cd, Library and a single Playlist item.
> 

I spend last week searching for a decent, reusable-for-all-sources
design.

The real trouble is: each source need a different approach, not only in
coding, but in visual appearance and user interaction too!

I feel separate windows (with different and dedicated widgets) better.

> Playlists are loaded/saved like in the new design or ihmo better we
> could use the filemanager to deal with it. The first thing that come to
> my mind is two menuitems "New playlist" and "Playlists...". The first
> one would ask for a name and would automatically save it when necessary.
> The second would just open a nautilus playlist folder. (Ok Ok, I can
> very well be on crack here, but I bet Daveb likes it ;))
> 

Yeah. Playlists and music library are too much different. It's hard find
a simple interface to manage each in a common and simple way :-(

But, probably, a simple dialog with 2 lists ("available playlists" and
"songs in this playlist") is enough :-)

> We have a "Add to playlist" menuitem, and dnd on the sidebar icon will
> add them. First added item could be automatically playing (if something
> other is not already playing), next added items will be queued.
> 
> We probably need some sort of feedback about which source is playing.
> 
> PLAYER
> 
> We may replace the toolbar with the new player control. I think I have
> not seen negative comments about that. The list would have to be removed
> though, to avoid the complexity everyone is pointing out.
> 

Absolutely yes!

Something like

|pr| |pl| |ne|   <b><big>Current song</big></b>    |sh| |re|
|ev| |ay| |xt|   -----[]------------------------   |uf| |pt|

| | 
| | are buttons/togglebuttons

uummmmm see glade attachment.


BTW: all music players (iTunes, wmp8, xmms) have a "player area"
(controls + current status) and a "list area" (available songs to play)
We can start from here, placing widgets related to list in list area.

> We could even have a songs queue list showed by a disclosure triangle or
> something. It's nice to run rb with just the player showed, if you can
> see the songs queue.
> 
> Anyway just brain storming. Well, this is being a real pain, once we
> find a solution I hope we will have the best media player user interface
> out there :)
> 

:-)

But a decent/good/rock interface came from a well planned feature list
and interaction behavior: what used can do on startup? Play immediately
or make a playlist then play? an so on...


-- 
Think bigger

			My uncle

base.tar.gz

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