Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Jukebox playlist

["jorge o. castro" <jorge whiprush org>]

Colin Walters wrote:

> So I'd been thinking recently about supporting this.  Here's a start,
> just to get discussion going:
>
> http://web.rhythmbox.org/uidesign/

I've been doing lots of thinking about this interface proposal today and 
I have some feedback, IMHO of course:

The search box is needed, this feature is just too good to ignore. When 
I first saw your mockup the first thing that crept into my head was "ok, 
search box is gone, I guess that means find-as-you-type searching in the 
library, COOL!" Then as I thought about it more, I think that having the 
search box up front and where it is now is important for discoverability.

Then I looked at the artist and album columns, it seems that they're 
fixed in the mockup and not collapsable like they currently are. Then I 
thought to myself, "When I want to listen to Rush, do I scroll all the 
way down on my artist list, or do I just type 'Ru' in the search box and 
let rhythmbox prune my playlist for me in two keystrokes? I find that 
wether I am search by artist or title, I tend to use the search box, and 
that I rarely use the > Browse functionality in rhythmbox, so I think 
that for me, those two top areas would be a waste of space.

I also happen to use iTunes on my one Windows box. One thing I have 
noticed is that the "Party Shuffle" feature is great. This is a DJ like 
feature that works like this, A "Party Shuffle" thinger is in the source 
thing on the left, so it looks like a playlist with a different icon, in 
there iTunes picks 10 random songs. When you hit play it plays the first 
one. From there you can reorder the list, remove ones you don't like 
(iTunes then adds another random songs so there's always 10 on the 
list). As songs are finished the song is grayed out, and the last 5 are 
always listed, grayed out above the current song. There are options on 
the bottom for using a specific playlist for the source and for changing 
10 songs to 25 or whatever.

I have found recently that 90% of the time I'm in iTunes I'm using this 
feature now. Why? It's _really_ nice to see what's coming ahead and 
reorder them, add new ones, etc. etc.

Luckily for rhythmbox, Apple kind of botched the UI for Party Shuffle 
IMO. The idea is good but the implementation is kind of "meh". First 
off, they have a check box for "Play higher rated songs more often". I 
think this is solved with the autorating/random thinger rb is already 
doing, so you don't even need a UI there. I think where they botched the 
UI is that in order to edit the upcoming queue, you need to click on the 
master library, find your song, then drag it into Party Shuffle. Then 
you have to click /back/ on Party Shuffle and put the song where you 
want it in the queue. So, when switching back and forth I lose the 
context of my playlist.

This guy I know uses Zinf for this very reason. Both the library AND the 
queue are visible at all times. This allows you to assign /context/ to 
your queue. You see your queue as you build it, and you can edit it 
while browsing for music. So as your browsing you can say "Ok, I've got 
some Pearl Jam in my queue, I think some Soundgarden will work next, 
then I can move to some metal." Maybe by the time I get around to adding 
some Queensryche I find a slower song that would fit perfectly inbetween 
Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. The point I'm trying to make is that when 
people are queueing up music that you're interactively making choices 
based on what you've selected already. You're looking at your queue and 
telling yourself "this will be my soundtrack for the evening", so my 
existing choices influence my future choices, which is why the queue 
list must be visible when I'm looking for new music.

Muine is pretty good at this, the whole UI seems to be based on queuing 
up music, but to me rhythmbox's strength is the playlist functionality. 
By now I've got my entire listening habits mapped out in playlists, in 
fact, I'm not even sure everything I've said up to this point is even a 
valid use case for listening to queued up music. ;)

After some discussion with some friends on IRC, it really depends on how 
you listen to music. Do you like to queue or to browse? I think that 
each program caters to each spectrum of listening. For me, I've found 
that Muine is good when I want to listen to whole albums in a certain 
order, and I admit, most of that is because the album art thing is so 
cool. I'm still in rhythmbox 90% of the time.

I agree with Ben that this makes rb very muine-like. Sure, Muine is new 
and shiny, and it's trendy to dig the new Mono apps, but is it a good 
idea to go in this direction if Muine is already there? I think the idea 
of "Jukebox" in the existing playlist area with double-click adding 
songs to this queue would be a good idea to try out in the meantime.

I think that thinking about the UI is a good idea, but I think it's a 
good thing that rhythmbox is familiar to itunes users. There's nothing 
wrong with being inspired by iTunes, it's certainly easier to get people 
to enjoy the program given it's popularity in Windows and near-worship 
on OSX. The thing I dig about rhythmbox is that it takes on existing, 
familiar interfaces and improves them.

My 2 longwinded cents,

-jorge