Amarok Layout, now with real Mockup

[Al Twohill]

I dislike the huge area being taken up by the amarok logo. Don't get me
wrong, I think it's a cool logo, but I use amarok for its functionality and
ease of use to play the music that i want to hear (often sifting out of a
large amount of crud that has built its way into my music library).

I feel however that with amarok I'm forced into a single thread of usage,
and in amarok 2 that is coupled with a feeling of claustrophobia, as all the
controls are roughly twice the size of 1.4.7 (trying to fit in the same
space), and that huge wasted space makes it worse. Also, I think that the
media device should be grouped with the playlist area, not the media
library. I usually transfer music from my library to my media device - not
from my playlist. It would be great if this was a one step process. On that
note, maybe the vertical tab bar could be changed to a horizontal tab - it
could even be movable/dockable, like the GIMPs interface - that is brilliant
for letting people lay stuff out how they like.

What I would like to see would be a bit more functional layout, like
Winamp's 'Bento' skin - it seems to fit a lot more in a smaller space -
without feeling claustrophobic.

I'm not too sure how to put this, but my main usage wish, which I have not
found in ANY music player, is the ability to have a large playlist playing,
such as all the music I haven't listened to, and then put that to the side
(with the current track position) and play something else - another
playlist, or even just a song. Afterwhich I just switch back to my main
playlist and Amarok keeps playing from where it left off. Currently to
achieve this I just use two different media players, but its a bit of a
hassle don't you think?

Anyway, that was just a bit of a rant and hopefully some ideas people can
take, or argue against, at will - what do you guys think?

Al

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:04 PM, Bart Cerneels <bart.cerneels at kde.org>
wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 7:52 AM, Reigo Reinmets <reigo.reinmets at hot.ee>
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >  Now, i know lot's of people are going to hate me for doing this,
> >  But i took the single most sexy looking player controls i've seen in my
> life
> >  so far
> >  And added it to the bottom of amaroK.. Now, ofcourse it has to be
> modified
> >  etc.
> >  but the overall layout of the buttons, now-playing text, time etc is
> imho
> >  perfect.
> >
> >  http://www.reinmets.ee/dont.shoot.png
> >
> >  PS: I did modified the M$ layout a bit, moved the time, removed some
> >  buttons, extended the now-playing text.
> >  PS2: I didn't had photoshop nor Gimp nor other stuff installed at the
> >  moment, so used M$ Paint to do this, /me @ work and can't be hasslede
> to
> >  boot to linux atm.
> >
> >  Discuss, but don't shoot me :)
> >
> >  Reigo Reinmets
> >
> PANG!
> Just kidding, I like it very much. Even the background, which should
> be SVG, can be colorified according to the theme settings.
> I think I recognize these controls from an earlier iteration of
> amarok2, but I might be wrong. If so, I have no idea why it was
> replaced with the current controls. The new ones are, although very
> functional, not pretty to look at at all.
>
> Bart
> _______________________________________________
> Amarok mailing list
> Amarok at kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/amarok
>



-- 
The project has begun...
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