Rythmbox menu [was Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Toolbars]

[Luca Ferretti <elle uca libero it>]

Il giorno mer, 07/12/2005 alle 10.07 -0500, William Jon McCann ha
scritto: 
> Hi Luca,
> 
> Luca Ferretti wrote:
> [snip]
> > So, the toolbar should be something like
> > 
> >         Prev Play Pause Next (GtkToolItem) [Shuffle] [Repeat] Volume[v]
> > 
> > The GtkToolItem, expanded, keep playback controls related to current
> > song (prev, play, pause next) and controls related to all songs
> > (shuffle, repeat, volume) separated.
> 
> I suspect you may be right.  There was some discussion of this for totem 
> too:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162949

Interesting. I hope rb and totem will use a coherent UI. I'll try to
build a glade mockup for totem using toolbars.

> > Attached here is a glade file showing this stuff as well as a new menu
> > layout and a mini-window I've in mind to propose. But I'll describe
> > those stuff in another thread, maybe tomorrow.
> 
> The glade mockups look quite nice.  Very simple and clean.  They will 
> handle large font sizes very well.

Did you tried using different themes? Maybe a11y ones?

> Where might source specific actions go in this scheme?  For instance, 
> where might we put an eject action for CD sources, or Burn for playlist 
> sources?

In menus or in toolbar? My suggestion is better avoid placing source
specific items in toolbar (there should be a lot of comments about it in
this mailing-list archive, . As well avoid to as use a bottom toolbar to
additional action as in iTunes.

Of course we can add a toolbar editor for smart people like Linus :-)

I haven't yet listed all needed command to place in menus, and I like to
explore before the iTunes UI (under Windows), so the layout in glade
file is only a work in progress, but:

      * I think Music menu should provide only entries to add a new
        source (see New Source -> New *) and to put stuff in library. 
      * as first menu, we should place in Music menu the Close item.
        This should quit the application, not hide it in notification
        area. All GNOME applications quit themself using File->Close (or
        File->Exit): Rhythmbox too. About Close vs Exit, this is not yet
        defined in HIG, but because RB is a single app window, I think
        close is good. 
      * in Music menu there is also a Properties menu item. This should
        act just like the Information menu item (Ctrl+I under Win) for
        iTunes, opening a dialog showing info about the currently
        selected item (the current song, the current podcast episode,
        the current automatic playlist, the library). Of course the
        content of the dialog will depend on selected item, allowing
        users to view and/or edit details. 
      * similar behavior for Edit->Remove menu entry. This will remove
        the current selected item from Rhythmbox. IMHO we should show a
        warning alert to confirm the removal. If the selected item is a
        song in library, then the alert could be 

        ===================================================================
        <big><b>Really remove the song from your library?</b><big>
        
        If you choose to remove the selected song, you will no longer
        able to listen it in Rhythmbox. The related music file will not
        deleted, so you can add it back later. To remove the music file
        from disk, choose "Remove from Disk" button
        
                          [Remove From Disk] [Cancel] [Remove From
        Library]
        ===================================================================
        
      * BTW IMHO is not useful show the alert removing songs from a
        (simple) playlist, while the alert is useful when removing a
        playlist. 
      * The View menu. Here we could place a "Visible Columns..." item
        to select showed columns in music list (see Nautilus list view),
        a menu entry to minimize (mini-window) Rhythmbox, and a menu
        entry to hide in notification area. 
      * The Controls menu. Here play, pause, next, restart, stop, next,
        prev, shuffle, play and, eject. In other words: all actions
        available on real world device :-)
      * The Action menu (or maybe Special). This is the only way I found
        to "pack" commands related to each music source :-( Something
        like
        
        |Actions|
         ============================
        | Queue Selected Songs       |
        |----------------------------|
        | Save Playlist as...        |
        | Load Playlist from Disk... |
        |----------------------------|
        | Burn Playlist to CD/DVD... |
        |----------------------------|
        | Download Podcast Episode   |
         ============================
        
        How many "special" command are available in Rhythmbox? Can we
        remove some command? For example the "Rename" action in popup
        menu for playlist could be placed only in popup menu. If you
        want to change playlist name using menus, you can choose
        Music->Properties and edit the name in Properties dialog. This
        will save us to add a Action->Rename Playlist.. menu item.
      * Of course users should be able to perform "direct manipulation"
        such as d'n'd a playlist to the empty CD icon on desktop to burn
        it, or d'n'd a podcast link from
        Epiphany/Firefox/Konqueror/Evolution/... 
      * More info will come. Stay tuned