playback controls in playlist

[Orville Bennett]

Nikolaj Hald Nielsen wrote:
> 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.
I didn't even know we had these. Just checked out the blog post and pic 
linked in the brainstorm thread and I think it's "flippin' awesome!"
Like I said, I haven't actually seen how this works yet, and chances are 
markey's right about the UI being complicated, but that's no reason to 
remove the feature.
Fix the UI implementation I say. You can experiment with a toggle button 
in the playlist section. Coming up with an icon might be tricky though.
How about play,pause,next and previous mini icons arranged in a square.
;-)

>
> - Nikolaj
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