Enrico Ros proposing a SoC project for improving the GUI

[Mark Kretschmann]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 1:03 AM, Enrico Ros <enrico.ros at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 17 March 2009 20:33:43 Mark Kretschmann wrote:
>> I assume that you have by now read our discussion about your ideas
>> here on this list. Could you please comment on them, and decide if you
>> would like to make an official SoC proposal?
>>
>> While there still is bit time left until the deadline, it would be
>> better to discuss this earlier, so that we could reach a conclusion
>> about this without hurrying.
>
> Hello Mark, hello All,
>  yes, I've read the discussion and I've been waiting for all the pieces to
> fall in place before committing to the Summer of code.
>
>  About the "still unnamed" Summer of Code project: what I want is to make
> Amarok's interface look prettier and be faster essentially. Easy enough if you
> have a magic wand.
> But instead of proposing my take on the job (top-level qgraphicsview container
> + using OpenGL where available + fx (w/shaders) + qt kinetic - (minus) plasma,
> etc..) I'd like to know what do you guys think about a "let's make the gui
> rock" kind of project. So this is still an "evaluating if and how..." kind of
> mail.
>
> We should decide:
>  - which are the criteria for judging the gui? how the current is rated?
>  - do we feel the need to have "the best gui" we can have?
>  - who should decide how to make it? (coders, designers, usabs, etc..)
>
> My personal opinions:
>  When looking at today's Amarok (and I saw it made lots of progress in the
> last months) I see a big gray area with many different type of gray, different
> icon sizes, and the central area is corrupted [1]. What should itlook like?
> Like the mockups floating around [2], or better: the UI should be like a
> plugin; in this way the current gui could be kept as the default gui
> implementation and new guis could be developed in parallel (even switched at
> runtime).
>  If the SOC happens for me I'd like to experiment with a new gui, like the
> [2]. In this case I'll do a call to anybody wanting to contribute to make such
> a thing, collect all the ideas, do the design in team and implement as much as
> I can to have nearly the same functionality as the default gui.
>
> I'm open to all the kind of suggestions expecially criticism, since it helps
> to shape my SOC proposal better ;-)
>
> Enrico
>
>
> [1]  http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/9933/amaroklayouting1.png  - I know this
> may be a small window, but users make no discounts, this looks broken.
>
> [2] http://www.kde-
> look.org/content/show.php/A+Media+Player+for+KDE4?content=94472

Well, from me this gets a thumbs up. I like your willingness to be
flexible with the actual implementation details (even if this is
unusual for a SoC project, but who gives a shit?), and I know that you
are the right person to do it.

Plus, I believe that we do really need an expert for polishing up our
GUI. While I don't find the current GUI extremely bad, it certainly
could be greatly improved. And especially for a media player the looks
are very important (as opposed to office software or so).

About the actual wording of the "official" proposal, I don't really
care much about it. Just write it in such a way that it explains the
intentions (the usual stuff), and don't make it too wordy. Your
proposal is special anyway in so far that you are not a typical SoC
student (inexperienced), but rather an expert.

-- 
Mark Kretschmann
Amarok Developer
www.kde.org - amarok.kde.org