[Feedback] Thoughts on simplifying things

[Rich]

On 2007.08.23. 10:32, phinnvr6 at gmail.com wrote:
> Justin sent a message using the contact form at
> http://amarok.kde.org/en/contact.
> 
> Amarok is an amazing player and one of the best all around music programs
> out there for any operating system.
> 
> I am writing because I wanted to give constructive feedback on the major
> design flaws that I've seen. And others I know that have used it have
> acknowledged.  Mainly new users.
> 
> 1) The KDE tabs on the left are somewhat annoying and confusing but I know
> that may change with KDE4

i have only seen some screenshots, but they didn't seem to be changing 
that much.
what exactly is the problem with those ?

> 2) When I made a new Collection and I want to just play that collection I
> can't. I first have to load them (somehow) into a new playlist and play
> them from there.  However there is no 1 click way to do this. The only way
> I have seen is to goto Playlist and there is an automatic "playall" tab
> down there.  So I right click and click "Load" however this NEVER seems to
> work. It loads the entire playlist on the right pain but then when I click
> on a song I get some error like "Local file does not exist."

that seems to a weird error - should not happen. if you could join us at 
forums or irc (#amarok on freenode), we could try to find out why is 
amarok doing that.

> This whole design just makes no sense. My girlfriend using it always just
> seems to go back to the decade old XMMS I have installed and just uses
> that. I really can't blame her, its so simple and easy to use but so damn
> outdated.

hmm. going for the bad analogies prize, she wouldn't ditch computer for 
abacus :)

amarok is not intended to be a clone of xmms. it's approach differs 
somewhat, and i can understand how grasping it might not be a trivial task.
but doing that can be highly rewarding.

first, creating a collection is a task you do one (or very rarely). from 
there, you have different concepts available, including smart and 
dynamic playlists (yay !). simply dumping all tracks in the playlist 
means missing a lot of goodies.

to hook you on amarok, maybe it is worth going through 
http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Dynamic_Playlist_Walkthrough. try to use 
these things for a week or so - most people discover a whole new world 
after the (as you already mentioned) outdated players :)

> Anyway so as it turns out to solve this problem if I click "Smart
> Playlists" then goto "All Collection" that collection now plays.  All this
> crap is kind of confusing and all of it should be simplified for the big
> 2.0 release (KDE4?).
> 
> So there you have it, a couple interface complaints to an otherwise great
> player.
> 
> Thanks!
-- 
  Rich