Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox Tray Icon Usability & Minor Changes

["Andrew Conkling" <andrew conkling gmail com>]

On 2/4/07, Karsten Schmiedecke <Karsten Schmiedecke gmx de> wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-02-04 at 15:06 -0300, tomás pollak wrote:
> > First of all, the Tray Icon Functionality. Have you ever seen the tray
> > icon in Banshee? It's awesome. Not only does it show the current
> > playing song + the album icon in a tooltip by hovering over, but it
> > also allows you to change songs just by using the scrollwheel over the
> > icon (the best feature EVER). Last but not least, it uses the original
> > Banshee icon and not some generic "music" icon as it happens with
> > Rhythmbox.
>
> hm, I don't know what you're doing wrong, but mine's been doing the
> tooltip for quite a while now. Just tried to make a screenshot, but the
> tooltip would disappear for the split-second I pressed the key... The
> scrollwheel on the icon for me changes RB volume, which is quite useful
> if you want to turn down RB while on the phone (skype) or something.
> Granted, the icon is kindof oldish, that's been discussed here sometime
> last summer, but nothing ever really came of it. Go design something and
> post it... :)

gnome-screenshot -d=10, then get the tooltip to pop up.

Banshee's is "nicer" in that it shows you the album art for the
currently playing song, but that means it's no longer a GTK+ tooltip.
I've wanted to port my work on Pygmy's (now Sonata's) tooltip over to
RB and Banshee so they'd look right but still be slick and cool:
http://sonata.berlios.de/images/sonata7.png

> > - What about upgrading the iconset in Rhythmbox? It looks kinda
> > "oldish" with the ones it currently has. Even the official Rhythmbox
> > icon seems a bit outdated compared to the other ones in the menu!
>
> RB icons come from your Metacity theme so they blend in with your GNOME
> desktop, or at least all other GNOME programs. If you're using RB in a
> non-GNOME environment, someone on this list will probably be happy to
> provide you with information on how to change your metacity theme
> outside GNOME...

Replace "metacity" with "GTK+"?
If so, then the icons included with RB could be considered "oldish", I
guess, in relation to the Tango icons. That being the stereo system
icon for the app, and the music note icon for the systray. I suppose
the source list icons too....

> > - Is it really necessary to have an "All - Albums - Artists - Titles"
> > selector in the searchbox? When most people search for something in
> > their music program, they actually know what they're looking for (i.e.
> > "lets listen to the Abbey Road by The Beatles"), so there's really no
> > need to put an extra filter since I know that by adding more letters
> > or words, I can keep on reducing the number of results. Besides, I
> > believe they tend to mess things a little in the GUI. Without them,
> > Rhythmbox would probably look better!
>
> Imagine you're searching for all variations (eg, cover versions) of "let
> it be" in your library. If you can't limit the search mask to "Title",
> for me, an entire album comes up as match: swITchfoot's BEautiful
> LETdown, to be exact, I've capitalised the letters that made it a match.
> Maybe having a "match exact phrase feature could cut that, but it was
> just a random example...

Good point.

UI-wise, I have wondered why this takes up so much room; a GTK+ list
box would be better IMO, but then again I never use this.)