Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox Elementary

[Calvin Walton <calvin walton gmail com>]

On Thu, 2010-09-23 at 09:56 +1200, John Stowers wrote:
> I expect some of you might have seen this by now, but the elementary
> folks have started their own Rhythmbox fork [1]. It might be useful for
> some inspiration.

Hmm. There are some interesting ideas in there, but I think they've gone
just a little too far :)

This does, however, solve one of the things I dislike about the
Rhythmbox interface - by default, the toolbar and info bar at the top
use a *lot* of vertical space. On a typical widescreen monitor, most of
it is an empty expanse! There is no reason to have a 1280-pixel wide
seek bar unless you regularly seek through 24h long media files... (I
sometimes turn it off to get the ~16px back.)

That said, they've removed just a touch too much; By moving everything
to the toolbar, there's no room for things like the shuffle/repeat
controls, the browser mode switch (which I usually turn off, again for
vertical space), or buttons added by plugins.

In addition, completely removing the menu bar on top of those other
changes? Along with the toolbar button removals, they've left... well,
not very much functionality at all. There are better solutions for that
- e.g. the 'mac style menubar' gtk patch can save space by moving the
menu bar into the panel. Unless a general solution to the menubar issue
is found, it should stay.

I'm sure there's some sort of compromise that can be done :)

-- 
Calvin Walton <calvin walton gmail com>