Main toolbar for 2.2

[Casper van Donderen]

Hi. 

As a netbook user myself I prefer the new toolbar. It is small. Indeed the volume does not really work. But I only change the system volume normally and not Amarok's controls. 

I am in favor of keeping both. It will be too smalll on 15" HD laptops. 

Can we not ship 2 layouts for 2.3 and a dialog on fresh install, like the collection. Make it some sort of 'wizard'?

Casper 
-----Original Message-----
From: Myriam Schweingruber <schweingruber at pharma-traduction.ch>

Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 09:36:37 
To: <amarok-devel at kde.org>
Subject: Re: Main toolbar for 2.2


Hi Nikolaj,

On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 08:41, Nikolaj Hald
Nielsen<nhnfreespirit at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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...

I don't think we should change to the new toolbar, I don't like the
buttons on NG, those look tiny and ugly IMHO, the overlapping buttons
is what I prefer and what distinguishes Amarok. I strongly suggest to
leave icon design to the specialists :) What I see real problems with
on the other hand is the new progress bar, as it is hardly visible and
far too transparent, this is a really usability problem in my opinion.
It is beautiful, but not usable... Also the volume slider doesn't fit
anymore, so of course the old toolbar looks ugly now, but this is
simply due to the new progress slider not matching the volume slider
anymore.

The toolbar NG is barely visible on my screen, and I can't access the
volume without a second click, I don't have a scroll wheel nor a
mouse, so I don't consider this to really be suitable, and it
certainly is not to netbook users who don't have a mouse with a scroll
wheel neither.

So I am not against shipping both toolbars and leave people the
choice, even if I think the buttons on NG destroy the visual beauty,
but we need a solution for that slider problem. As we are in feature
freeze, there is not much choice left: bring back the old slider. We
are supposed to increase usability, and the new slider simply is not,
sorry.


Regards, Myriam.
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