Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] User Interface proposals

[Sean McNamara <smcnam gmail com>]

Hi,

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Ronan Jouchet <ronan jouchet fr> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 2:43 AM, Sean McNamara <smcnam gmail com> wrote:
>> 2. Disable Statusbar by default
>>
>> *sigh* OK Gnome, I get it, you want to dumb down the UI. One more
>> thing for me to go into options and enable every time I run Rhythmbox
>> on a new system. This is enough to be slightly annoying, but not so
>> radical as to make me directly oppose it. Now if you proposed to
>> remove the status bar completely "because nobody ever uses that
>> thing", I would basically have to start maintaining my own separate
>> fork of RB that keeps the status bar; sorry but I use that information
>> constantly.
>
> That interests me. Could you detail the use cases involving looking at
> the status bar? There might be ways to get rid of the status bar while
> still preserving this information available.

Use cases for this:
1. Need to know size of library before I attempt to transfer songs to
an mp3 player (or mobile device with limited space), so I can figure
out if I need to recompress songs to a lower bitrate or remove songs
entirely, etc
2. Number of songs is a useful metric for me as a DJ because it helps
me communicate with other DJs how diverse my collection is. Sure I
could write a shell script to gather the same info, but _why_ should I
have to when this excellent functionality is already there?

I don't *use* that information for these purposes all that often
(probably about monthly), BUT I do actually look at and think about
the metrics shown in the status bar all the time -- almost every time
I start RB. "Oh, huh, my collection grew... oh yeah I added two new
albums last week". And whenever someone asks me how big my collection
is, I usually have a number memorized that's quite close to the actual
number I have, so I can spit it out without even having to check RB.
:)

It's basically a kind of ancillary background information that you
want to keep an eye on. I would compare it to a feature of an e-mail
client that tells you what percentage of your inbox space quota you've
used. No, I don't want it to be in 24 pt font in the center of the
screen with no way to make it go away; but yes I would like to see it
displayed somewhere on the screen so that I can easily access it to
keep track of it.

If the debate comes up to remove the status bar entirely because it
would allow us to eliminate the option for the status bar, then I'd
say at least move it to a GSettings key, please. As I said, if the
code is removed entirely, I'd either have to write a plugin to
re-implement it (hey, not a terrible idea), or else maintain a private
fork of Rhythmbox, which I'd really rather not do.

On the other hand, if you remove the status bar but maintain the
information that is displayed in it somewhere else in the Rhythmbox
UI, that's fine with me. I guess I should clarify my viewpoint: I
don't care that the information *is in the status bar*; I care that it
is easily accessible *somewhere within Rhythmbox*. If you want to
remove the status bar but maintain the information (in the same
textual format it's in now) elsewhere, I'd almost agree with that
without even looking at the new location where you're going to place
it. I've come to rely on Rhythmbox for this information, and I'd
really like to see a shift in GNOME, away from the philosophy of
flat-out culling features for the sake of simplicity, and toward
cleverly obscuring or hiding the least-used features so that power
users accustomed to complexity (*raises hand*) can still use rich
feature sets, while non-power-users won't be overwhelmed by the
default behavior.

Thanks,

-Sean

>
>> 4. Transform the Menubar into a "global menu
>>
>> Oh yes, I like this. Already used to this UI paradigm from Chrome.
>> Please do it! You can go a little further to Chrome by putting the
>> song title ONCE into the window deco and not repeat it immediately
>> beneath the default window deco. In other words, override the WM's
>> window decos like Chrome does. It's not a bad thing. :)
>
> Good point about not repeating the song name between deco and seekbar,
> I'll add it to the wiki.
> Regarding overriding WM's decorations, that's something I personally
> strongly dislike. It breaks consistency and looks like a heavy
> maintenance burden. Chrome does it to save additional screen estate,
> fine for them but I wouldn't go for it in the case of Rhythmbox.
>
>> Overall, these changes seem like nice and easy, incremental changes
>> that can be made without a massive rewrite, and without stepping on
>> TOO many toes. I have to say that this is one of the better RB UI
>> change proposals that I've seen, in that it maintains the general look
>> and feel of what we already have, thus catering heavily to old timers;
>> and it brings RB's UI into the 2010s by adopting UI memes from Chrome,
>> which imho I think are fantastic for space saving without reducing
>> useful functionality or information.
>
> Couldn't rephrase it better :)
> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> Ronan