Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Feature-Request: Advanced Filters, Playlist,Advanced Id3 Ver.2 Support

[Andy Hanton <andyhanton comcast net>]

On Sun, 2004-01-18 at 00:00, Colin Walters wrote:
> Ok, I started to look at implementing this, and actually getting into
> the code made me think about the ramifications a bit more, and I came to
> the conclusion that having hidden state in this way would have some
> confusing UI side effects.  Take this scenario.
> 
> 1) User selects an artist and an album.
> 2) User hits the Play button at the top, and playback starts.
> 3) User starts browsing away somewhere else in their library.
> 4) User decides to go out to lunch for a bit, and hits Pause.
> 5) User comes back from lunch, and has forgotten that they were playing
> music before.
> 6) User single-clicks on a song that's currently displayed.
> 7) User hits the Play button at the top.
> 8) Their pre-lunch song starts playing, *not* the song they had
> selected.

> So to solve this problem, you would have to use double-click to start
> playback.  Or we would have to have a separate Stop button (in addition
> to play/pause), in order to explicitly stop playing from the "hidden"
> playlist, and to make the Play button use the current list.  I can't say
> I much like either of those ideas...

I hadn't thought about that kind of situation.  I agree that having a
pause button and a stop button wouldn't make much sense because a new
user wouldn't understand how pause was different than stop.  I think
that this problem can be solved without adding a stop button.  

The 'now playing' list idea has a similar problem with the pause
button.  If the user navigates the library after pressing play, pausing
and pressing play will not resume from the point where they paused.  To
resume after pressing pause, the user would have to switch to the 'now
playing' source.  I don't think that exposing the 'now playing' list
makes anything simpler.   I think that this problem is inherent in
allowing the user to navigate the library while playing without
providing separate pause and play buttons.  

Whenever the current song is not selected, both the pause and the play
buttons need to be available.   Currently if a user selects a new song
while some other song is playing, there is no button or menu item to
play it.  If they press pause and then play, it is unclear whether
rhythmbox should resume playing the last song or play the new song.  I
think that neither choice is correct because the user could want to do
either.  If we had separate play and pause buttons, the user could press
the pause button again to resume or press play to play the new song.  

If there was a separate toggle button for pause, I think that it would
be clear that pressing it again would resume playing the song that was
playing before.  People should be used to toggle buttons for pause
because tape decks with analog controls always use toggle buttons for
pause.  If the user can't remember what they were playing, the artist,
album, and title are at the top of the window right next to the controls
and the song has a marker next to it in the library.  If they can't find
the marker, they can use the Jump to Playing Song feature.  

Even if there weren't practical reasons for having separate controls for
pause and play, the HIG discourages using a single menu item for
multiple functions.  It suggests disabling functions that can't be
performed at the moment instead of switching the label.  I believe that
the same logic applies to buttons as well.  I think that was the
justification for not adding a magic import/burn button like the one in
iTunes.  

Does this make sense?  Were there any other issues you thought of?

-- 
Andy Hanton <andyhanton@comcast.net>