Future UI Discussion

[Kevin Funk]

Hey,

I have to say I dont like that mockup aswell as the first one. It's still more 
gray than anything else... More issues:
* Why do we have alternating row colors in lists aswell as separators? Why do 
we want to reimplement the wheel? Its Qt/KDE's task to style the lists
* The "advanced" button seems to be skinned. Why? See above.
* Buttons in the context view are too big.

To conclude my statement from the former "About Amarok's interface design" 
thread:
We have far too many self styled widgets that look crappy and dont fit in the 
global KDE theme. In my opinion we should get rid off them and replace them 
with proper KDE widgets. Sorry for those who put effort into the current ones.

I like the position of the current playing track, though. I'm going to create 
a mockup of what I (yes, me) think Amarok should look like in a few days. 
As I know we are struggling with the 2.0 release, see that as a background 
discussion.

Kevin

Monday 24 November 2008, Lee Olson:
> Attached is another mockup with some new additions.
>
> - Lee
>
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 2:07 PM, Teo Mrnjavac <teo.mrnjavac at gmail.com>wrote:
> > 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.
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Amarok-devel at kde.org
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