[Usability] Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox tray icon - again

[Michael Gratton <mike vee net>]

Colin Walters wrote:
> 1) Is this feature total crack or not? 

IMHO not total crack, no.

> 2) If it's not crack, is it a good idea to do this on left click?


Clicking on the icon should display more state than currently 
represented by the icon, and showing the RB window seems to be a good 
way of doing this. I think the main point of the left click is quick 
access, so it seems reasonable here. (+1)

As Douglas McMorris said, it also aids discoverability (+1), but this 
may backfire for a new user. (-1)

So we could would be do display the annoying "You have asked me to do 
this, here's how you undo it" dialog box the first time a user hides the 
window, but this is crack. (-1)

Another way around this would be to display some hiding animation, 
similar to what Metacity does for minimising windows, but this is 
probably outside RB's scope.

So doing the sums, the feature comes out as +0 - I'm pretty ambivalent 
about it. :) I guess it comes down to your personal usage patterns - do 
you change songs alot or not? Perhaps make it a hidden pref, or perhaps 
make the icon a visible pref which defaults to off, and leave the 
left-click functionality there.

Either way, the "Show/Hide Window" menu item should stay.

> 3) Also if it's not crack, shouldn't we have some sort of standard
> terminology for this? 

Probably, yeah. "Hide/Show Window" seems reasonable to me.

Again I agree with Douglas: The status icon really should display some 
actual status. It should display a different icon depending on what the 
current source is (library, radio, audio CD, etc), and use an overlay to 
indicate what it is doing (playing, connecting, burning, etc).

But perhaps that is another argument for another day.

Mike.

--
Mike Gratton <jabber:mjg jabber vee net> <http://web.vee.net/>