[Rhythmbox-devel] Post 0.9.4 UI stuff

["James \"Doc\" Livingston" <doclivingston gmail com>]

G'day everyone,

With 0.9.4 out the door, it's time to start thinking what we should do
for 0.9.5. I'm sure there will be threads for various features, but this
one if for UI stuff. We have a few patches sitting in bugzilla that
needs some opinions, and one thing that needs some planning before we
start.


Choosing play orders
--------------------

Rhythmbox currently has two toggling options which let you choose a
total of four play orders. We know this isn't great because it would be
good to let people choose from more player orders, and it isn't obvious
what some choices mean (shuffle vs shuffle+repeat).

Bug 163196[0] has a patch that turns the shuffle and repeat items under
the Control menu into a submenu, with all the play orders. Also
(potentially more controversially) it changed the toolbar items in the
same way, piccy at [1].

What do people think of this? Since it has to do something anyway, and a
lot of people will probably try pressing it, I think we should make the
toolbar button pop up a dialog with a list of all the play orders and
good (a sentence or two) descriptions of them all.



Add to Playlist menu item
-------------------------

Currently adding tracks to a playlist either requires using
drag-and-drop, or Edit->Copy and then edit->Paste. Some people have
expressed a desire to have a easier (non-dnd) way to do that.

Bug 323364[2] has a patch that adds a "Add to Playlist" submenu to the
Edit menu and the context menu of the track list. It is dynamically
filled with all the static playlists, and a "Create new playlist..."
item, piccy at [3].

Would this be useful, or pointless?


Of playlist track columns
-------------------------

Currently static playlists replace the normal track number column, with
their own, which lists the order of tracks. Bug 329986[4] has a patch
which returns the normal track number column, and makes the special
column more obvious.

Is this a good idea? Does the patch make the special column too
different? Piccy at [5].



[0] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=163196
[1]http://static.flickr.com/54/129395987_02ed5fddea_o_d.png
[2] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=323364
[3] http://static.flickr.com/44/129390471_4408694841_o_d.png
[4] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=329986
[5] http://static.flickr.com/54/129409153_046a903794_o_d.png


As usual, feel free to comment about any other UI-related stuff too.


Cheers,

James "Doc" Livingston
-- 
There's no 'I' in 'team'.
But then there's no 'I' in 'useless smug colleague', either.
And there's four in 'platitude-quoting idiot'.
Go figure.