icons...

[Nikolaj Hald Nielsen]

> a) I want someone in charge to read and confirm the following "disclaimer" -
> nothing legal, i just want to ensure you really read this.

I am not in charge, but consider it read.

> b) I _strongly_ suggest to call for a high council session or whatever you do,
> figure whether you're really willing to change things and if not:
> GATHER THE GUTS TO SAY: "NO!
> We thought it would be interesting, but actually we cannot go without sticking
> to some conventions" and
> use A CLEAN CONVENTIONAL SOLUTION then, i.e. "for god sake put those damn
> buttons back where they belong" :-P
> (Seriously: you can still have a good traditional setup and e.g. use the now
> available extra track info as tooltips)

I really like the idea of showing next and previous tracks, but the
issue is still that all the solutions I have seen so far are
completely undiscoverable. even with the watermark like arrow
thingies.


> c) I maybe should have pointed out this far more, but:
> Whenever you dare to change things, you'll encounter a buch of guys bashing
> your for this - and if just because they don't like changes at all.
> In case you're not willing to stand this (what is totally ok, btw) don't try
> on "revolution"

Oh, trust us, we know all about this one. After the Plasma guys, I
expert team Amarok have taken the most flames so far. This discussion
has very little to do with outside pressure and has been mainly
internal to the development crew.

> 1) Bringing anything _between_ the tracklabels (i.e. not visually part of the
> glyphs or the background) naturally breaks any sliding, thus transitional
> animations and dragging probably needs to be discarded.

For the 2.3 release, I personally really don't care much about the
"dragging" at all. It would definitely be a nice thing to have,
especially on tablets and such, but it is not a high priority for me
compared to having an easy way to let users know how to skip tracks.
So if dragging have to go for 2.3, then so be it. This will buy us
time to figure out something that works in all cases for 2.3.1.

> 2) The attached icons were designed for an entirely different look and scale
> and may feel alien in the current design or are too complex for the target
> size.

This is a valid point, and I expect that you are right. These icons
will look bad in the small sizes that we need.


> 3) !!! The key usability problem with an icon decoration is neither that the
> icons are redundant nor have to be clickable, BUT that they will unpreventably
> attract the mousepointer - as you usually point a click the (weak!)
> triangles/+/- in treeviews instead just (double)click the entire row (or do
> you?)

This is likely also true, but IMO it still beats having users not
click _at all_ because they simply are not aware that next/prev are
clickable at all. As for you attached screenshot, I like it visually,
but it still does not make it very clear that these items are
clickable.

> I hope that you understand that I'm not stressing this to just push my mind as
> I could just branch and get myself whatever I want anyway. (And actually I
> allready started an entirely different model, 4th gen ;-)

Heh, based on how different 3g was, I cannot wait to see this.

- Nikolaj