[Rhythmbox-devel] Observations from using rhythmbox daily for 3 months.

[James Lewis <james fsck co uk>]

I've been using rhythmbox every day for a few months now, and I had some
observations that might be of interest here.. mainly some simple UI
issues that would make the experience a lot better.

I mainly use it for Podcasts, hence my observations are in that area.. 

1. When showing the list of feeds, there should be a column showing when
the feed was last updated, so that one could sort by the most recently
updated, and/or remove feeds that are stagnant..  It might also be
useful to have a "feed status" icon at the start showing things like
feeds not updated for 3 months, or feeds where the XML has not been
reachable for some period of time etc.

2. When a feed includes a file that Rhythmbox cannot handle, it should
be able to call an external helper... possibly custom configurable, but
certainly use the OS file association,,, many feeds I use are now
including video clips, pdf files and who knows what else in the feed...
it would be very nice for rhythmbox to handle this.

3. Some podcasts have been switching to .m4a files, I'm guessing this is
AAC, it seems that rhythmbox can't handle them.

4. Please, please, please... can we have the same behaviour as other
apps that need to run in the background so that when you push the X in
the top right corner, the application minimises to the tray, and only
closes if specifically requested... I can't count the number of times I
have come to leave an office, and plugged my media player in, only to
discover that I had accidentally closed rhythmbox earlier in the day,
and it has not downloaded any new podcasts.

5. An option to open hidden on the tray would be a lifesaver also, since
when I am logged in, I want the app to be waiting for new podcasts, but
having it load as a full sized window when logging in is a pain.

6. For the podcasts at least, it would be nice to have some way to know
if the file has been played, mabe treat it like an email client and have
a read/unread flag would be nice, could use bold text to show
un-listened, mabe.

7. Have the status bar show download activity... often I've seen that
podcasts on the first page are waiting for one that is not... somtimes
it's hard to find what is actually being downloaded at present.

The app is really great, but I think it can still be made even
better!... 

James