Le mardi 13 février 2007 à 12:01 +0100, Matthias Saou a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> I've been testing the latest SVN code, and most GUI bugs I had been
> seeing since last week seem to be gone. The only ugly one I still see
> is that the blue background for the name of music files is sometimes
> too big to the left, as if the file name started with lots of spaces.
>
> But this isn't what I wanted to write about, I wanted to share some
> ideas about the UI, and more precisely the music part for now :
>
> - When entering a folder with a few music files, the 3rd is always
> selected. Why? It makes no sense to me, apart maybe from having the row
> of files be prettier since there are some to the left. I'd prefer to
> have the "play" button of the left selected by default.
>
This is related to the zoom effect applied to menu items. It just looks
better when a new menu level appears like this... In terms of usability
I agree it doesn't make much sense.
> - When pressing enter on a folder with a few music files, I haven't
> been able to figure which file is played first. Not the first
> alphabetically it seems, nor even always the same (press enter a
> few times on the same directly, different files play).
>
When you hit "play all" in a folder the player will walk on the file
hierarchy (left-most) and play files. Folders (alpha-num sorted) come
first, followed by files (alpha-num sorted too). Example:
/Dionysos/
/album1/
01 - track1.mp3
02 - track2.mp3
/album2/
01 - track1.mp3
will play tracks of album1 followed by tracks of album2
> - Once you've started playing a file, there is no easy
> "navigation" (previous and next). You apparently need to choose the
> next file and play that one, as I haven't figured how to skip to the
> next. After hiding the dock, pressing "enter" shows the top info and the
> bottom "flat" controls, but you can only change the playback speed (is
> that even useful!?) or skip by chunks of 10s... no prev/next.
> And once you've moved through your music folders, the is no way to find
> again the currently playing track _visually_, you must remember it
> yourself... maybe here some kind of "glow" or visual indicator of the
> currently playing file would be nice, as well as on all the directories
> leading to it.
>
Current skin have many (many!) ergonomy issues. Christophe designed some
nice mockups to solve thoses problems, we just need to implement them. I
really believe we should focus on that for next release, I'm as
concerned as you, using Elisa at home is often painful (navigating in
large menus, going next track, menu levels not dynamic enough,...).
UI is a critical part of Elisa because if a user doesn't find it usable
he will most likely not use it and let go. You're not the first user to
"complain" and you won't be the last until we actually fix those issues.
> - Shuffle : Either the only playback implemented, or not there yet, I
> don't know (again, some visual indicator of the currently playing song
> would have helped me figure out what order Elisa chooses to play
> files), but I'd definitely like to have a choice of the playback type,
> possibly set in the options, between at least :
> - "Simple play" : Start with the first folder, first file then move
> forward alphabetically
> - "Random play" : Randomly play songs from the selected folder and its
> sub-folders
> - "Random album" : Randomly pick a (sub-)folder which contains no other
> sub-folders and play all of its files, then pick another folder etc.
> ...maybe others.
>
Currently only "simple play" is implemented. Playing modes are quite
easy to add as plugins, the interface is quite simple. Just file a new
ticket and I'm sure we'll find time at some point to implement these
playing modes :)
Philippe
