Plasmafication Feedback

[Dik Takken]

Hi all,

The latest screenshot of the plasmification of Amarok on the Amarok Blog 
looks impressive. It looks like the artists and plasmoid designers can 
really go loose on Amarok now.

I can imagine the Plasma area becoming some sort of working bench, 
allowing the user to place and arrange all sorts of plasmoids on it. Some 
ideas:

* Volume meters (modern digital, or old-style analog)
* BPM counters
* Ticker displays for Wikipedia info
* Plasmoid showing random phrases from song lyrics
* Equaliser controllers
* Information plasmoid 'Currently Playing' 
* Information plasmoid 'Coming up Next..' 
* Waveform visualizations
* Speed / Pitch control knobs (if backend supports that)

Also, I guess the user should be allowed to place plasmoids on the working 
bench that are unrelated to Amarok, like the wall clock.

Some other remarks / ideas:

* The plasma area in the screenshots does not look very well integrated 
into the rest of Amarok yet. It looks more like an isolated gimmick on 
its own, which makes it visually less obvious that it is in fact tightly 
integrated with Amarok. Yes, I know this is work in progress.. :)

* Can the plasma area integrate into the rest of KDE, theming-wise? If you 
run a KDE desktop with all light colors, a dark-ish Amarok looks a bit out 
of place, maybe.

* Just a wild idea: Will it be possible to disconnect the plasma area into 
a seperate window? Then you can run it full-screen on a second monitor 
(TV-OUT!)

* Another wild idea: If it will ever be possible to add video clips to the 
playlist, then maybe a plasmoid could request the video stream from Amarok 
and display it, if there is any. When combined with the previous wild 
idea, you can produce 'music television'-style video feeds from amarok. 
Nice for parties...

* In case it proves difficult to really make the plasma area become one 
with the rest of Amarok, I think it is important that the plasma area can 
be hidden. Maybe the first-start wizard could allow choice between 
'Classic' look and 'Plasmified'.

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,

Dik