Main toolbar for 2.2

[Mark Kretschmann]

On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen
<nhnfreespirit at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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!

I'm a bit late in the game, but for the record, I prefer option 1) currently.

I welcome the work that went into ToolbarNG, and I do think it has
some merit. However, I don't think it's ready for prime time yet.
Making it really good is damn hard, I realized that when I asked for
opinions from the Plasma devs at Tokamak 3. They had a number of ideas
(I should elaborate on those in a future mail), but the general
feedback was that ToolbarNG is not ready. E.g. the play buttons don't
look very nice there currently, and the volume widget has issues.

My plan was to create a third version before 2.2 final, but after the
Tokamak session it became obvious that this will take more time, plus
input from usability and artwork folks. Hence, I would prefer to stick
with the old toolbar for now, although I completely agree that it's
got many issues.

-- 
Mark Kretschmann
Amarok Developer
www.kde.org - amarok.kde.org