[Rhythmbox-devel] Another UI design

[Seth Hadley <sethh unt edu>]

ANOTHER UI DESIGN (a completely new UI theory)
-----------------
Getting rid of the Source Bar WITH OUT getting rid of the Source :)
-------
Its fun wasting time
-------


I am putting everything aside for this.  The simple truth, is that I
like the way how things are done with Rhythmbox as of today. I have been
using it several months before the branch of net-rhythmbox, and have
never looked back... but well, if a UI is going to be re-designed, I
would like to make a few pointers as to...

WHERE RHYTHMBOX FAILS!

Yes, it does.  It is suppose to be a Music Player, not an mp3 player and
it fails in one area where all Music Players fail (To my knowledge)...
there inability to mix and match songs from ANY source.

It should not matter if the music is on your Computer Hard Drive,
CD/DVD-drive, Ipod, external HD, or even online.

It also should not matter in which order those sources are being played.
For example, a music player should be able to handle a playlist or a
random queue from:

song 1 from a Cdrom
song 2 from and Ipod
song 3 from a radio station for 10 minutes, or a url.
song 4 from your hard drive
and so on...


Rhythmbox, as this discussion has mainly been talking about,
could/should implement something along the lines of iTunes Party
Shuffle.


Below follows 1 possible path Rhythmbox could take.



BASICS OF ITUNES PARTY SHUFFLE (for those who don't know)
---------------------------

itunes-screenshot
http://www.apple.com/itunes/playlists.html


the following is auto generated. 

song 1   <-|
song 2     |--- 5 previous songs already played
...        |
song 5   <-|
song 6  <----- now playing this song
song7    <-|
song8      |
...        |---15 random songs to play in queue.
song22   <-|

There are always 5 songs that have been played *auto removed*
There are always 15 songs that are in queue    *auto queued*

5 and 15 can be set/changed in the Rhythmbox preference dialog, I find
it a waste of space to have it like itunes.



MAKING IT BETTER (calling it DJ mode)
----------------



-------------------------------------------------
[*] is a button which enables/disables DJ MODE
-------------------------------------------------

When enabled, the old playlist is saved and replaced with a new playlist
that is created automatically by Rhythmbox of 15 random songs from the
sources you have selected... if you select "ALL", then the random songs
could come from any of the recognized media, or you could limit it to
your Ipod, Computer, CD/DVD, ext...

You should be able to append songs to the list to your liking by
inserting from the browser after the selected item.

We SHOULD append/add because then we don't have to be limited to 15
songs. But once the playlist runs down to 15 again, Rhythmbox should
take over again at random inserts.

When you add a song, it could be inserted after the selected location in
the DJ list, rather than the end.

shuffle set in-sensitive while in DJ MODE. (probably not repeat)


When DJ MODE is de-selected, then the random song list is removed, and
the old saved permanent playlist is shown again. there are two ways it
could be taken. 

1) the same way how Rhythmbox does it now, with the exception of source
is in the Browser (no "Title", queue album).

2) Like DJ-Mode, with Browser->"Title" but not auto-queue.



MOCKUPS
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Mockup1 http://members.aol.com/dav1dz28/mockup/mock1.jpg
(Its my only FTP account, and my only music on this computer, forgive
me).

This mockup would have 3 browsers listed in the preferences, you can
have as many or as few as you want. You could make it really simple with
just 1, and still navigate.


  Menu _ox
|---------------------------|
|<||>[*]    Song    =====[x]|
|---------------------------|
|Hide  |src|gen|art|  search|
|---------------------------|
| Source  Genre   Artist    |
|--------|-------|----------|
|ALL     |ALL    |ALL       |
|Library |       |          |
|IPod    |       |          |
|Radio   |       |          |
|CD-Play |       |          |
|Extrn HD|       |          |
|---------------------------|
| <i>song1-5</i>            | <- finished playing italicized
| *song 6*                  | <- playing song
| song 7-22                 | <- random queued for next
|---------------------------|




----------------------------------------------------

As you can see from the mockup, I included the "Open" dialog commonly
used in Gnome 2.6.  I think it works quite well to keep everything
simple.

http://members.aol.com/dav1dz28/mockup/open-dialog.jpg

I have two other mockups on how you might want to traverse.

Mockup2 <- Simple (2 for browser preferences)
http://members.aol.com/dav1dz28/mockup/mock2.jpg

Mockup3 <- Complex. (5 for browser preferences)
http://members.aol.com/dav1dz28/mockup/mock3.jpg

You could have the 1->5+ browser views defined in the preferences such
that the choice is up to the user (somewhat like it is now). This will
make it extremely simple, or compact to ones liking.


With the more complex view, the program would have to be
squashed/minimized as you get further in.

Just make sure you can drag/drop/add genre, albums, artists also.


EXTRA CONSIDERATIONS
-------------------

Remove the Hide Browser, its already in the "View" menu only. This could
make it look a lot better.

The Source can still have countless Playlists, but they should be always
at the bottom and in italics (like played DJ MODE songs), and Rhythmbox 
recognize them as only a subset of the real source (don't duplicate
music).

Before Genre in the browser, we could have playlists/IPOD/CD-Play as the
first option. We could even have a pre-defined 10 minutes of a Radio
stations.

to burn songs we would have to right click and select burn. a separate 
application (like the ripping app Sound Juicer).

5 old songs & 15 queued songs should be a set value inside preferences
that we can change to our liking.

Autorating could be affected by what we manually remove/included from DJ
play.

I hope one day we can get a better small display.



PERSONALLY
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I am not crazing about changing the ui, but this does bring out a few of
the problems of rhythmbox as of today.

I said it before and I will again, RB UI is awesome as is, little needs
to be changed from the "first impression" standpoint. I hope to see a
lot changed in the details and extensions of RB (cdburn, mp3 taging,
cdplay, complex search, Ipod, small display, there is a lot.)

Keep the source please :) I like my Music Player versatile.

I would be glad to help out with the coding, I have spend 2 weeks
learning about gnome programing and the seahorse program source. and
about 1 week on Rhythmbox. (not a whole lot).

Seth (apwbd on IRC)