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

[David Mansfield <rb dm cobite com>]

> 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

I disgree.  What is different is that 'now playing' is explicit.  If you 
were playing from a playlist, you wouldn't describe it as 'a similar 
problem' if you came back from lunch and clicked play and it continued 
where it left off.  You would *expect* it.  This is what 'now playing' 
gives you.  It makes playing from the library more consistent with the 
other play modes.  There is no hidden state.  Everything is explicit.

> 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.  

This is what the suggested 'play now' would do.  Either double-click would 
do 'play now' by default, or 'play now' would be on a context menu (or 
both ;-)

> If they press pause and then play, it is unclear whether
> rhythmbox should resume playing the last song or play the new song.

It is clear with the concept of 'now playing' that play/pause always 
operate on the special playlist.  No ambiguity or confusion.

> 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.  

Again, 'now playing' fixes this problem too.  What was I listening too?  
It's right there.  In order.

David

-- 
/==============================\
| David Mansfield              |
| rb@dm.cobite.com             |
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