Amarok 2 Mockup

[Martin Aumueller]

Here is a collection of random thoughts triggered by this mockup that I wanted 
to post already for a long time. But first let me say that I also think that 
it looks great.

However, I still see some problems:
- The distance between the collection and the playlist is quite large. Thus, 
it will take a lot of mouse movement to add songs to the playlist via drag & 
drop.
- I don't use the volume slider (what is software mixing good for) and I also 
don't use the analyzer. Because of 
this, I don't want to waste so much screen space on them. Instead, I'd like 
to see the position slider placed to the right of the player control buttons.
- What is the filter bar at the top right for? Its positioning suggests that 
it is somehow global to the application.
- If the playlist already contains a cover image, the context browser loses 
importance. But it gets a more prominent place.

- How will the other browsers be integrated? As dragging from the collection 
to the other browsers is quite a frequent operation, the other browsers could 
take the place of the context browser. Also, having the context browser 
always visible, even when only managing your iPod (w/o playing any music), 
does not seem perfect to me. What would be the context to show?
- As things are now, Amarok's playlist browser is quite a mess: just every 
music source that does not fit anywhere else, get's dumped there. How could 
that be solved? I'd like to see something that gives equal importance to 
playlists (normal, smart & dynamic playlists), streams (regular & last.fm 
streams), podcasts, shared music (accessed via daap), media devices, the 
local file system and the collection.



On Thu September 14 2006 00:14, Max Howell wrote:
> I was struck by some inspiration of late, so I made a mockup, which is
> somewhat a culmination of mine, and other people's ideas at k3m and things.
>
> May I suggest, view the mockup fullscreen so my colour scheme doesn't
> clash with yours. Kuickshow can do this if you push Enter.
>
> http://methylblue.com/images/amarok_2_mockup.png
>
> In a way I regret the web-2.0-esque toolbar as it detracts from the main
> point, which is the narrow playlist design so that the context browser
> can become central and key.
>
> Personally, I like the web-2.0-esque toolbar as it looks cool and
> differentiates, but tellingly, my gf hated it, so maybe I did it wrong
> or am just delusional.
>
> The playlist contains some single tracks, and also a whole album that is
> "wrapped up". I envisage that you can somehow extract the tracks from it
> if you want to rearrange the order. You would get albums into the
> playlist by dragging and dropping the whole album. My thinking was that
> streams would also be "wrapped up", and last.fm streams would be
> displayed slightly differently too. We needn't have a philosophy that
> everything is a 'track' with Amarok 2.
>
> The context browser is straight from the last.fm player, don't read too
> much into the layout, I haven't mocked that up, all that matters is the
> context browser is now always visible and not a browser.
>
> Anyway, it'd be good to get feedback, and it would be even better if the
>   feedback contained reasoning for your opinion etc. Thanks,
>
> No comments on my music taste please ;)
>
> Max
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