New experimental toolbar by Thomas Luebking

[Thomas Lübking]

First off: Hi Enrico ;-)

The prev/next strings were probably too close to the buttons, i already set 
them in by 9px here (but did not commit)

--

Centering the strings (i.e. swap their current alinment) has one advance and 
two flaws.

The advance is that (esp. for wide toolbars) you move those items into focus 
(in contrast to the far away positions of the faded text only elements in your 
screenshot)

The flaws are that (on narrow bars) the three strings will sooner converge 
(when the current track string becomes wide) and on the other hands this 
triggers two gaps between the icon buttons and the center elements (on mid and 
wide bars) that cannot be resolved but by growing the slider "out of balance".

The solution could be a more floating alignment, where the prev/next strings 
are aligned towards the center string, but preserve some margin if  possible 
and esp. reach out into the gap - i'll sth. on this.

--

I'd rather not use arrow icons in this way.
First because they clutter the UI, second because in this particular case the 
icons will take the click focus (i.e. users will try to hit them first - even 
unwanted though knowing that the entire area is clickable) and third because 
the prev strin/icon looks a bit alien (compared to the regular "icon besides 
test" toolbuttons)
If the current design needs supporting elements, than there's a more 
fundamental problem that needs to be fixed and not bypassed by adding extras 
;-)

Enrico (and anyone else), did miss the "click-me" factor or the step back/on 
nature?

--

We had the "slide prev/next on track change" idea when i initially presented a 
mock of this bar some time ago, with err... some "objections" on too much eye 
candy animation... so i simply scheduled that amarok-devel at kde.org=P

But in general i still think this is a good idea as it tells the user "what's 
going on" and the temporary animation/sysload should be bearable - so i'm all 
for it.

Cheers,
Thomas

Am Friday 22 January 2010 schrieb Mark Kretschmann:
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Enrico Ros <enrico.qt at email.it> wrote:
> > On Friday 22 January 2010 11:04:26 Mark Kretschmann wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Mark Kretschmann <kretschmann at kde.org>
> >
> > wrote:
> >> > Thomas Luebking has created a new alternative toolbar ("3G") for
> >> > Amarok, which does some rather interesting things. I've just checked
> >> > it out, and I found it surprisingly good. There are some usability
> >> > issues and visual glitches remaining, but I'm sure they could be
> >> > tweaked a bit.
> >> >
> >> > Here is the Merge Request, if you want to check it out (also check the
> >> > comments in there):
> >> >
> >> > http://gitorious.org/amarok/amarok/merge_requests/2259
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > I'm attaching a screenshot of the new toolbar in action.
> >>
> >> Thomas was kind enough to clean up his commits a bit, and I just
> >> tested it here. I could build and run it successfully.
> >
> > I've got a couple of little suggestions too:
> >  * animated slide on next/prev. see, they're aligned, they're begging for
> > that! ;-)
> >  * a little more centering of the next and previous songs, so you don't
> > have to walk mouse-miles in a wide screen
> >  * maybe next/prev btns too ?
> 
> I think that these suggestions from your attached mock-up are very
> good. They could help making this toolbar even better :)
> 
> Thomas, what do you think?
>