[Rhythmbox-devel] Re: [Usability]Music player UI

[Jens Knutson <jensknutson yahoo com>]

[forgot to CC rhythmbox-devel...]

What were the arguments against the design from this screenshot:
http://evolvedoo.sourceforge.net//crackhack.png ?

This particular design has the very strong advantage of not having 2 or
3 lists in the same window, something I think most people will be
intimidated and confused by.  (ie: "Wah?  Which one of these is the
playlist?  Why isn't it playing in the order I want?", etc..) It also
saves space, since the only time you really would want to browse your
collection is when you want to add music to your current playlist.

One thought I had was to create a Nautilus view for RB, so that browsing
your music would be in the same nice browsing interface as your file
manager.  This *seems* natural to me, but maybe I'm hittin' the crack
pipe here, too.  Otherwise, the 'crackhack' browse dialogs were pretty
good, too.

Lars has some interesting ideas, too, but I think the strong focus on
the status icon is a mistake.  From watching average "Joe User" types on
Windows machines (I did tech support for a long time... *ugh*), I
noticed that the Windows 'systray' (read: notification area) was
practically *invisible* to the user, and that they really hated being
forced to interact with the icons in it.

Radio and CD handling still perplex me a bit... I've been thinking about
how to integrate them, and I have to admit to being pretty well stumped
on a *good* way to go about it.  I keep wanting to advocate for the
sidebar method, but apparently that's a Bad Idea(TM), from what I've
overseen on the RB list.

So what are peoples' thoughts on Jorn's 'crackhack' UI?

 - jck


-- 
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all
progress depends on the unreasonable man."

 - George Bernard Shaw