Future UI Discussion

[Teo Mrnjavac]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 3:11 PM, Dan Meltzer
<parallelgrapefruit at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 5:22 AM, Mark Kretschmann <kretschmann at kde.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 5:30 AM, Lee Olson <leetolson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Seeing as the user interface has been a pretty hot topic lately, I decided I
>>> would go ahead and create a mockup which should hopefully resolve some of
>>> the issues stated in the "About Amarok's interface design" thread.
>>>
>>> Please take a look at the attachment (which contains various minor changes,
>>> which are not quite perfect yet) and reply to this thread with ideas /
>>> comments that we can use in the future of Amarok's design. Please keep in
>>> mind that this is a long-term project and will be worked on step-by-step to
>>> achieve something that a majority can agree with.
>>>
>>> Hopefully this mockup will provide as a good visual that we can discuss and
>>> step-by-step, create a nice interface without completing another full
>>> overhaul.
>>
>> Thanks for your mockup. I have to say I much prefer Nuno's original
>> "overlapping" design for the control buttons. It gives Amarok 2 a
>> unique look, almost like a logo. And I don't see major usability
>> issues with it.
>
> There was a commenter on the amarok insider article that took a good
> deal of time to detail the issues with the buttons, as well as other
> artwork related issues... I'll just link it, rather than copying what
> he said. http://amarok.kde.org/en/comment/reply/565/11283
>>
>> Also I prefer the current look of the slider widgets.
>>
>>
>> Again I would like to remind everyone that right now is not the
>> perfect time to dicuss such things. We are very very close to _the_
>> most important Amarok release in years, and we have our hands full
>> with fixing the remaining showstopper bugs. I think we should all
>> focus on that right now.
>
> This is long term discussion, as lee pointed out.  We seem to like to
> change the UI around in amarok by just throwing stuff in there and
> tweaking it, drowning out objectors by saying "but its a work in
> progress!!"  This method allows us to come up with a solution before
> it gets implemented, so that everyone knows where we are going and how
> it's going to get there.  I don't see anything wrong with starting the
> dicussion now, and then not acting on it until after 2.0...
>>

Oh hell yeah finally separated buttons.
How about making them smaller and putting them on top as they were
half a year ago?
Then there would be some room for analyzers in the top left above the
progress bar and some more room for love/ban/buy/whatever buttons in
the top right along with the volume slider.
Like this:
|||   analyzers   |||    OOOO   oooo    volume
================================

Also I need to restate that I think it would look better and be more
consistent with the oxygen style to have white background for the
playlist and the collection.