[Rhythmbox-devel] My Suggestions for Rhythmbox, pt2

[Andrei Thorp <garoth gmail com>]

Hey, some more suggestions...

It's very true that it's a powerful, fast music player (3 seconds to 
start? Nearly unbelievable for such a powerful program.) that does 
exactly what it's supposed to. I also agree that it's very important 
that your player should fit in with your desktop rather than having to 
treat it individually, like I do with Firefox. I also wish that amaroK 
was GTK, because then it would be the best thing possible. Also, yes, 
amaroK is cluttered, but stuff like the lyrics grabber and the wikipedia 
article grabber really makes it feel like amaroK can do everything that 
you want it to when it comes to music.

But can you disagree that nice, functional stuff like the cover art 
manager that amaroK has doesn't make it better? When a song comes on in 
a randomized playlist, and amaroK pops-up a window for that song, I can 
tell what band it it immediately from the image, and not only that, but 
the image also makes the window look better.

Another slightly flashy thing, but again something I prefer is that when 
you que a song, a little rounded off graphic appears by the song, rather 
than moving that song to what feels like a different playlist.

Another thing that fits into flashyness, is amaroK's cross-fading. 
Whenever the song changes, it fades out and another fades in. This is 
extremely cool, I think. Even when the program (amaroK) closes, the song 
fades out.

The reason that I bring up these issues is that I love Gnome over KDE, 
and think that Rhythmbox is the best thing that Gnome's got just now for 
a music player. I would, following this logic, much prefer to use a 
Gnome app over a KDE app (amaroK is the only reason that I have those 
KDE libraries installed, now that Gnome has GnomeBaker which is as good 
as K3B).

Again, there is no one that I want to offend in the OSS community. I 
just want to be heard when it comes to my ideas, because if I'm one 
person that thinks this way, what's the chance that there aren't a bunch 
more?

Note: I'm not suggesting that you defy the gnome HIG (I don't quite know 
the Gnome HIG that well...), and I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't 
fit into Gnome, or that you should look like amaroK. I'm suggesting that 
you should keep the usability of Rhythmbox (which is really, really high 
- good work), but at the same time give it style and a sexy look. Think 
about F-Spot, or Beagle, or Thunderbird, or OpenOffice. All those 
programs are very usable, very powerful, and at the same time stylish in 
the sense that they do deviate from the standard Gnome pieces a bit, but 
have a cool look to them. F-Spot has the nice pictures (well... that's 
an unfair comparison, I guess) but the pictures do this little zoom 
thing that helps with the usability but also looks cool. Beagle (the new 
one) when you start it, it has a bunch of nice colours right away (like 
with the green arrows and the white background, rather than the plain 
one of Gnome, and the search bar has a little magnifying lens that looks 
nice and makes it obvious what that bar does, even for illiterate 
people. Thunderbird has very nice, large, colourful icons for 
everything, which is why I prefer it, even over Evolution. OpenOffice, 
maybe isn't a great example, but it does use Gnome looking stuff while 
in a Gnome environment, who can argue that it's an attractive program? 
(I don't want to assault your program, but I kind of have to here to 
make a point) Rhythmbox is pretty plain when it runs. The images are 
mostly black/grey/very dim colours, and it's missing the kind of 
polished feel of some programs that do put in the little magnifying 
glass in the search bar. Personally, I also think that being unique in 
some ways is a very good thing.

Of course, these are just suggestions that I've given. Maybe a few more 
colourful graphics here and there wouldn't hurt, eh? Make Rhythmbox 
stand out more in the crowd. A little bit of style? A nicer icon for the 
notification applet by RedHat? (I see why you picked the one that you 
did, but I think that it could show that the thing is a music player, 
but also look very good while at it.)

But it's easier for me to do this critiquing than it is for the 
developers. I'm not as attached to the program as you are, so I can see 
it from a third-person view. If you can do that as well, maybe you will 
be able to make the program the best thing out there, and the most used. 
If you disregard my opinions, that's not a problem either. I'll just use 
SongBird or amaroK for the time being, until something better comes out. 
But I beg that you do keep my suggestions somewhere in the back of your 
minds a possibility for some things that you could maybe do. If you care 
to try this: compare your app with a similar one, like banshee or amaroK 
or SongBird or iTunes or WMP, and see what's better and what's worse, 
then make yourself the best.

Visualizations at least?

Keep up the great work, though. I really do think that Rhythmbox is a 
great program and it's fantastic that you people are working on 
something like this in the devoted 
get-back-to-your-e-mail-the-day-after-you-sent-it way.

-Andrei Thorp