About Amarok's interface design

[Teo Mrnjavac]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 10:27 PM, Kevin Funk <krf at gmx.de> wrote:
> Okay, some people already know my opionion on that (sorry markey, to bring it
> up again, forgive me)
> To those who dont: I'm a bit disappointed of Amarok's Interface in its current
> state.
>
> The main point is: The overall look of Amarok doesnt reflect KDE's appearance.
> To be more specific on special issues which (in my eyes) are just "wrong",
> here's a list with some of these.
> (Please keep in mind that i am referring to the normal Oxygen style/colors in
> this whole mail, that is gray window bg, white list bg, blue highlight and so
> on. You know how its supposed to look.)
>
> So here is the list (sorted by importance) and my very own (subjective)
> proposals to fix them:
> * Just too much gray everywhere (tm). All the tabs and the playlist use
> transparent (window bg) background which should be white (list bg). Please
> dont say it looks shit with white bg, have a look at other apps. You dont want
> to have KMail in overall gray, do you?
> * The seekbar content is gray, too and uses some very weird widget style. I'd
> prefer a normal QSlider. I am referring to Dragon Player's implementation e.g.
> - it looks _a lot_ better and saves vertical space if we put seekbar and
> volume bar in one line.
> * The current track applet uses oversized font and oversized icons. Normal
> font size and 16px icons would do it.
> * The tabs on the left ("Internet", "Playlists", "Files", ...) are also
> modded, I'd prefer the normal style what is used by Kate e.g. - i know they
> dont stretch vertically but I dont think thats an issue. Another point: The
> current ones dont have hover animation.
>
> Disclaimer:
> I don't wanna blame anyone. I know some people already invested a lot of work
> to tweak the Amarok UI but I think it could be done much better.
> Further, i cant implement this on my own (lacking coding skills) nor do I have
> the motivation to do so as long there are people who are against these changes
> and are comfortable with the current situation.
>
> If you dont like this, consider this mail as a motivation to improve the UI.
>
> Thanks for your time, these were just my 2 cents
>
> PS: To those who are pissed off by this email (again). It's going to be the
> very last time I even think about the UI if there's no positive feedback.
>
> --Kevin
>
>
Hi
I agree with most of what you said here.
I think "The too much gray everywhere" issue is very serious and
easily solvable by making the backgrounds white, as they were here
http://davidpeitler.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/amarok2.png. Comparing
to this ancient pre-alpha revision I can only see this as a major
regression.
The seekbar could also be shorter and in the same line as the volume
bar as you said, as vertical space is becoming very precious on
today's widescreen displays.
The tabs could use a hover animation but I kinda like them better than
the normal sidebar.
Also pretty much everybody I've shown Amarok to hated the overlapping
buttons, I think that this interface
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Amarok_2_alpha.png,
plus a white background for the playlist, looks much nicer than what
we currently have for RC1. It also has a "unique amarok feel" that's
supposed to be the reason behind the overlapping buttons.
Cheers
Teo