[Rhythmbox-devel] rb and a11y

[Luca Ferretti <elle uca infinito it>]

This is just a little report about a personal and stupid test.

--
Bias


        Open Rhythmbox, open Theme and Font tools. Open gnome-cd-player
        and put somewhere in panel volume control applet.
        
        Play a song in Rhythmbox from library showing the browser
--
HighContrast


        Select HighContrast[Inverse] in theme list. Take a look to
        v.c.applet and cd-player. They are using right icons for
        buttons. Rhythmbox don't. [1]
        Note that Rating stars don't fit the theme colors!!!
        
--
LargePrint


        Select Large print in theme list and apply the suggested font.
        Troubles:
             1. rating stars: strange noise (try to move mouse over
                there) 
             2. "from xx by yy" labes don't use all available space 
             3. icons [1] :-( 
             4. playing indicator in song list is smaller then text 
--
HighContrastLargePrint


        Open theme details dialog in Theme tool and select
        HighContrastLargePrint[Inverse] in controls list
        Troubles: 
                see above + stars color
                
--
Key navigation


        Now revert to your favorite theme, font and font size. 
        
        Note the strange spacing between artist and album name in player
        area.
        
        Give focus to source list, press down arrow and select a
        playlist.
        Press F2 (as in nautilus) to rename list: don't work.
        Press Shift+F10 to open playlist popup menu: don't work.
        
        Press Tab twice: focus is now in Album list in browser. Now
        press Tab again. The focus seems blocked. 
        
        Give focus to next button. Now press Tab. Time slider has now
        focus: Artist and Album links in player are was 'jumped'[2].
        
--
Conclusions and Proposal

        [1] can be fixed switching to a full gnome-icon-theme support
        (use g-i-t/*x*/stock/media/ icons). Note that gnome-cd-player
        and volume-control applet don't use icons from gnome-icon-theme.
        But this change will force users to install gnome-icon-theme
        from cvs :-(
        
        [2] can be fixed switching to GnomeHRef widget. There is already
        a bug opened about it.
        
        However, 'cause rb's code minimizes proprietary widget, the apps
        tends to be well behaved. Great job, developers :-)
        
        For stars and current playing indicator problems there are a
        couple of solution: add a11y to their code or use a simple char.
        If you open gucharmap and scroll the list you can find some
        stars  (U+22C6 STAR OPERATOR, U+2605 BLACK STAR, U+2606 WHITE
        STAR) and music (U+2669 QUARTER NOTE, U+266A EIGHTH NOTE, U+266B
        BEAMED EIGHTH NOTES) and other cool chars (U+263A WHITE SMILING
        FACE, U+263B BLACK SMILING FACE). (To zoom the char in gucharmap
        right-click on it)
        
        The trouble for this 'hack' is that you depend on chosen font.
        And I don't know if it's good. On my system, in example, seems
        that all those chars come from Arial font.