Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] UI tweeks with mock up

[Martin Jeppesen <d2xdt2 gmail com>]

[Moving the Search Entry below]
> That makes sense; I don't have a problem with it being moved unless it
> created more dead space in the UI, and I think it will unless we remove
> the Show/Hide Browser widget.

Yes, that would somehow need to get moved or replaced before it would work.

> > I don't know why Mozilla choose to have the Search Entry in the bottom
> > of Firefox, but I would assume that it is for a similar reason?
>
> I've heard that it is at the bottom because putting it at the top would
> cause the page to move downward when it appears.

That would make sense =)

> Currently 2/3 of the horizontal space is given to the Hide Browser
> widget and 1/3 to the search entry. I think this is weird because when
> the window if fairly thin (e.g you have a small display) the search box
> is small. The obvious thing to do here is make the entry wider.

Where can you see that? In rb-shell-player.c ? Wasn't the UI once made in Glade?

> It doesn't have anything to do with the queue, and the "inline playlist
> editor" is just something that has been discussed by a small number of
> people on irc. My explanation of it has fairly poor, and no-one knows if
> it would actually work well (because we haven't tried it yet). The point
> I was trying to make is that the Hide/Show widget _might_ become more
> useful in the future, but it might not.

I see. Sounds interesting =)

[tabs]
> My explanation of the "inline playlist editor" was poor, so ignore that
> for the moment. The problem with using tabs is that it doesn't scale to
> a large number of sources well.

You are right. At some point sliding arrows would be needed for more
than 10-12 tabs.

I just like tabs, as they give a possibility to clear screen, and make
an UI that is optimized for the new screen =)

> If you have it set out as your example above, you need something to
> select which playlist or share to use. The two usual ways are a) another
> row of tabs, which is horrible, or b) a mini-sources list, which kind of
> defeats the purpose of removing it.

Yes, more tab rows than one is not suitable. It reminds me of the
notebook widget in Windows. I can't think of anything more confusing
than a widget that changes itself when clicking on it by changing tab
order =(

But your option (b) isn't that far off I think... I would say that the
Sources is mainly a selection menu, so the main player doesn't use it
for its functionality. So it could be left out without hurting the
main player. Some other selection menu would then be needed, e.g. tabs
or something better.

So removing it from the main player and inserting it to playlist
screen do I not see as a design failure.

Depending of how the (inline) playlist (editor) will be, it would
probably be without the Artist and Album windows, so removing windows
(like Sources) can sometime optimize the current UI.

> If instead you have one tab per source, it is really hard to use with
> lots of sources. As an example I currently have 18 sources, so have one
> tab for each wouldn't work too well.

Yes, that would not be a good idea to mix screens and playlists.

> > There doesn't seam to be a bug for moving Repeat and shuffle out of
> > the statusbar. Perhaps it should have a bug of its own?
>
> Bug 316238 adds a toolbar, and moves the play-order widgets to it.
> Bug 163196 was originally about adding more play orders, but is also
> about making more accessible from the UI
> Bug 168331 is about making the play-order be per-source.
>
> I think there was another bug which just said that we should move them,
> but I can't find it at the moment.

So there should be plenty=)

> > But you don't want to burn all your songs when you start Rhythmbox or
> > carrieing out a search doesn't mean you want to burn very thing that
> > have a surden word in the title.
>
> Well no it isn't useful all the time, but it is sometimes useful
> information. I don't know if removing a few characters from the status
> line will make that much of a difference.

It would at least be a polish =)


Martin