> On Feb. 19, 2011, 7:40 p.m., Leo Franchi wrote: > > So I'm against merging this review request as it is right now. However, I > > don't think I am in any place to reject completely a feature like this > > since I have not been actively developing or improving the current > > situation when it comes to dynamic playlists. That said, I want to explain > > my thoughts and why I think this is a significant regression UI wise to > > what we currently have in Amarok. > > > > First, I want to be clear that I am not talking about the technical quality > > of this RR. We all know there are significant issues with the current > > implementation, and that the UI basically lies to the user about what is > > going on under the hood. Furthermore it has quite a few issues like putting > > many copies of the same song in the playlist if the dynamic biases only > > match a small subset of the users' collection. So all my comments here are > > purely about the UI, none about the code. I know that the code is excellent > > and I am sure that it fixes many bugs that were present. > > > > With the above in mind, I think the UI is significantly less easy to use, > > user friendly, and simply less aesthetically pleasing than the old one: > > > > 1) Overwhelming amount of unclear terminology. The Match Type combobox is a > > good example. In it are a whole bunch of items that a new user (including > > me!) will not really know how to handle. With items such as "Match meta > > tag", "Partition", "Unique", "And", "Or", "Album Play", "Quiz Play", > > "LastFM Similar", the user has lots of foreign terms to choose between with > > *no* way of knowing what they are. This is the only combobox in a large > > grey area---I don't know what the user is expected to do when seeing this. > > It is unclear what the workflow is meant to be---and confronting the user > > with a lot of hard-to-understand options makes it hard for them to navigate > > the UI. > > > > 2) Lack of clarity in what the Match Types do. Say the user opens a new > > playlist, then he selects And from the combobox (not quite knowing what it > > is, but trying it anyway). Then he is presented with 2 Match Type widgets. > > First of all, the label for Match Type here is the same label as in the > > "main" Match Type comobox---what's the different? Then, the user might go > > Or in the "main" Match Type combobox. That adds a third Match Type entry > > widget to the list. Now there are 3---2 of them I got by choosing And, 1 I > > got by choosing Or. What's the relationship between them? Which are And'ed > > and which are Or'ed? There's no way to tell, and I have no idea what this > > set of constraints is going to do. > > > > Then I just selected Not from one of the 3 match type widgets and the > > widget disappeared. Why did it disappear? I just chose "Album Play" at > > random for another one of the match types, and *all* my widgets disappeared > > and the "top level" combobox just changed to Album Play. That's really > > bizarre---I changed 1 subwidget value and all subwidgets disappeared and > > the top-level value changed too? > > > > Then I selected "Unique" from the top-level combobox. Nothing happened. > > There are no widgets. I don't know what i'm looking at or what to do right > > now. > > > > 3) Lack of clarity in what the UI actually means for playlist generating. I > > just added a match type or two and ended up with this: > > http://i.imgur.com/GtDk1.png . It's totally unclear to me what this means. > > What is being Not'ed? What is the Last.FM similar match compared to the U2 > > and 1987 match doing? I'm lost. Then for fun I just added a Partition entry > > (i'm guessing that means to partition the playlist? It doesn't say > > anywhere) and got this: http://i.imgur.com/ZLErF.png . Besides being > > overwhelmed by + and - buttons, I again simply don't know what is going on. > > > > These are just three things that popped out after trying this for a few > > minutes. I haven't really looked at the code or what is going on behind the > > scenes, but I think most users will have a similar experience. I honestly > > don't know how to use it and cannot easily figure it out by playing around > > with it---the more I try stuff, the more confused I get. I just gave my GF > > a 5-min test run and she immediately stopped trying stuff since she said it > > made her feel stupid. She had no idea what to do. > > > > I don't think this is the direction we want to bring Amarok. Exposing the > > internals and catering features to power users who know what they want and > > how to get it is explicitly not our target demographic. That's why I think > > this is a major major regression UI-wise and basically cripples this > > feature for most users. I strongly disagree with merging it as is---but I > > definitely would support merging in an improved UI.
I don't agree with all points here and I would have prefered some proposals for improvement but I see the general concern. I see three alternatives: 1. similar to Amarok 1.4. really dump it down. No fancy combinations. 2. similar to the Automatic playlist generator. On one side show a textual representation and on another side have the settings 3. similar to the way the Playlist layout is defined. Again the detailed settings are hidden but you have a fancier UI and are able to drag stuff around. Or we could just add enough help texts. Currently they are hidden in tooltips (which Sergey and Leonardo haven't noticed) - Ralf ----------------------------------------------------------- This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit: http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/100630/#review1517 ----------------------------------------------------------- On Feb. 11, 2011, 5:19 p.m., Ralf Engels wrote: > > ----------------------------------------------------------- > This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit: > http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/100630/ > ----------------------------------------------------------- > > (Updated Feb. 11, 2011, 5:19 p.m.) > > > Review request for Amarok. > > > Summary > ------- > > This fix (actually not the attached patch but the dynamicplaylist branch) > changes most of the dynamic playlist. > > Main parts are the UI which was seen as confusing by many users and produced > unexpected results. > The global bias is now a "part" bias which allows you to set a part of the > collection matching a criteria. > The custom bias is now part of the bias system. I converted all existing > custom biases to the new interface just to make sure that it's usable. > The fuzzy bias was completely removed. If someone really wants to have a bias > which results in a normal distribution of one numeric value then please feel > free to add it again. For now you can define this kind of bias by defining > something like this "(rating > 1) AND (rating < 4)" > > The branch needs to be merged back to mainline and might have conflicts. > > > This addresses bugs 175163, 175172, 177627, 188360, 188360, 228738, 230773, > 232673, 233859, 260001, 260003, 265191, and, more, probably, and some. > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=175163 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=175172 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177627 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188360 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188360 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=228738 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=230773 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=232673 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=233859 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=260001 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=260003 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265191 > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=and > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=more > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=probably > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=some > > > Diffs > ----- > > ChangeLog 809d5e7 > > Diff: http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/100630/diff > > > Testing > ------- > > Used it for a couple of times and wrote new auto tests. > Tested against bug reports. > > > Thanks, > > Ralf > >
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