playback controls in playlist

[Nikolaj Hald Nielsen]

I guess I had better contribute my 0.176 euro.

The idea for this feature was not purely mine, I was inspired by this
brainstorm entry: http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea62614

Initially I dismissed it as not needed and indeed, as has been pointed
out, redundant as the same info is in the toolbar. This was about the
same time I started working on my suggestion for an alternative
toolbar. One of the main reasons for this was that I really wanted
something smaller. Even on my laptop with its 1280x800 display, the
"old" toolbar feels huge and takes up a lot of vertical space. During
this work, I also started thinking about even smaller screen sizes,
like our eee, and how you could make the toolbar even smaller, only
show it when needed or, best of all, get rid of it altogether.

The inline controls solves this issue nicely I think. It is quite
compact, it appears only when needed, and it appears close to what it
actually controls, namely the currently playing track in the playlist.
Also, when shown it does not take away vertical space from the
browsers or context view in the same way as the top toolbar does. As
for the comment about whether this stuff conceptually belongs in the
playlist, the music players in my last several cell phones have all
worked more or less this way. None of them have fixed play controls,
but buttons, progress bar and in some cases even visualizations show
up inline in the playlist, so for many people it will likely be a
familiar concept. Having this especially makes sense in relations to
the reconfigurable interface. In my opinion you can now make a descent
layout for a very small screen by tapping all the areas together and
using the inline controls instead of a main toolbar. This could be
considered a "poor man's" Amarok mobile. And while I think we can
eventually do _much_ better with a dedicated mobile ui, having this to
show off to interested parties could go a long way towards generating
interesting in a mobile version/companion.

About cluttering up the layout configuration dialog... I think we
first have to change our mindset about this thing a little. In reality
this is not a settings dialog at all, but rather an editor. It has
more in common with the cover manager than the settings dialog. As
such I think we should be careful not to constrain it by the same
minimalist philosophies as we, rightfully so, do the settings dialogs.
Now that said, I am not sure that the playlist layout editor is
optimal or even "good" as it is now. It was initially written as a
settings dialog before I realized that this is not in fact what it is.
So expect improvements in this thing in the future. And for the issue
at hand, it's _one_ checkbox. If you do not use the feature, that is
all you will have to look at, and that only when editing layouts which
is in my opinion not something most users will spend much time doing
once they have set up a few good layouts.

- Nikolaj