Main toolbar for 2.2

[Leo Franchi]

On 7 Sep 2009, at 03:36, Myriam Schweingruber wrote:

> 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.


Just like we should let the artists do artwork, we should let  
usability people do usability. We can debate about our personal  
feelings about the slider, but none of us is a usability expert.


so my two cents:

I like option 3.


leo

---
Leo Franchi				(650) 704 3680
Tufts University 2010

lfranchi at kde.org
leonardo.franchi at tufts.edu