About Amarok's interface design

[Big O]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 10:32 PM, Dan Meltzer
<parallelgrapefruit at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 9:07 PM, Teo Mrnjavac <teo.mrnjavac at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> We've yet to find an interface that everyone likes.  Every time it
> gets changed there are issues.  Every time it gets changed it turns
> into a two month project of tweaking and polishing before it stagnates
> and objections pop up.  I think that we need to address this, yet
> again, but I don't think that we can do this in the time frame before
> 2.0.  We've played with so much fire by now that there would be a
> large risk of getting burned.

I for one, would just like to say I complained about the overlapping
buttons way before two months.

>
> I'm not, however, sure of how we will be able to address this.  We've
> had a number of different artists work on the interface at different
> times, and completely discarded their work more than once.  Artists
> don't grow on tree's and I think we are running out of choices.
Just release and keep it as is until someone does something most people like.
Mockups are cheap and if an artist/anyone else thinks they can do
better it should be easy to show an alternative design.

>>>
>>> --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
I disagree with your statement that the white background looks better
than the current gradients.

>> 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.
I do not concur.

>> 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.
I concur!
>> 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
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Amarok-devel at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/amarok-devel
>>
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