Main toolbar for 2.2

[Nikolaj Hald Nielsen]

As you have likely noticed, we currently have 2 available main
toolbars, the old one with the big overlapping buttons and a new
slimmer one. We also have a new style of progress slider which is
currently being used in both toolbars.

My intention was never to have 2 toolbars in the final release, but
allowing us to choose between them was just a convenient way of
testing and implementing the new one without rendering Amarok useless
in the process. With this in mind I think it is time we choose how the
toolbar should look for 2.2.0.

First though, I'll just write a few lines about my motivations for
creating a new one. First of all, I think the old toolbar is _huge_.
It is very tall and especially on smaller screens, it takes up a very
large portion of the available vertical space. Also, it has large
empty areas that really makes it look unfinished in my opinion. And
then there are the big overlapping buttons. While I initially thought
these were cool and a nice way to differentiate ourselves, they have
since grown to annoy me. While I would really like to have some unique
and cool looking buttons, I just don't think the overlapping ones look
nice at all. (I did much of the implementation work on these buttons,
based on mockups by Nuno, but even that does not make me like them any
more at this time).

The new slider style is a way of making the progress slider a bit less
"heavy" as the old one is, in my opinion, very massive and draws a lot
of focus. Granted, a progress slider should be easily readable, and
some people have expressed concerns about the new one. I have tried to
make it more easily readable, but I don't know if that is enough to
alleviate those concerns. Also, there have been concerns about how
well it fits with the rest of style of Amarok. Personally I think it
fits quite well and that the old style actually stics out more, but
this is jsut my highly subjective opinion.

In any case, these are the options I see for choosing hat to ship with 2.2.0:


1) Ship the old toolbar with the old slider style. All is as it were,
except for a few features that I added to the progress slider that are
independent of rendering mode.

2) Ship the old toolbar with the new slider style. If we choose this
one, I think we should paint the volume slider in this style as well
(perhaps with a different color for the part left of the knob) as it
looks pretty disjoint currently.

3) New slim toolbar with new slider.

4) New slim toolbar with the old slider style.

5) Allow users to choose (like currently), and figure out some
combination of which toolbar uses which slider (example, old toolbar
uses old slider, new toolbar uses new slider). The main issue with
this approach is that we would really need to rename the new toolbar
from Main "Toolbar NG" to something like "Main Toolbar - Slim", but we
are currently in string freeze...

One general issue that I still need to look at with the new slider
style is how bookmarks are painted, as the current svg's used for
making bookmarks in the current track does not look good with the new
slider.

Personally, I prefer option 3), with option 4) as my second choices.
Let me hear what you guys think!

- Nikolaj