Hi all, yesterday, I came on IRC and one of you (christophe I think) give me this link : https://code.fluendo.com/elisa/trac/wiki/design_study . I have some suggestions about that.
1 - Browsing mode : If I understand correctly, there will be 3 differents ways to browse medias : list mode, grid mode and classical mode. I found that 3 ways to browse in one UI is not very clear, for normal people. So I think that only classical or list mod could be fine. The grid mode could be an item in the Music or Video Menu : Music - Browse by folders - Browse by artists - Browse by albums - Browse by Covers <-- Grid Mode Add button in UI that is used only with remote control is too much, I think. The choice between classical/list mode must be a Theme/Skin property, and is fixed for one Theme. 2 - Action Part : I think that when you use a media center, you take 99% of your time to play medias. So I think that action part take a too big place in your UI. The use of Popup diplaying action on media when pressing "info" button could be better IMHO. In case of touchscreen UI, it could be a "more" button ont UI that display fullscreen popup menu. With this method it's better to select actions with hands than a tiny action bar. You could go to the album beginning with the letter C , could be done like when we type text message on mobile phone. Key 2 for letter a/b/c, 3 for d/e/f .... I think that this method is known by many people and is very intuitive. If your goal is to search for media, I don't think the right place is there, but could be add directly in the Music Menu. 3 - Back button : Have to be here only in touchscreen mode, not when using remote control. 4 - Now Playing : I don't think that the text Now plyaing near album cover, is necessary. If this informations is only and always present here, normal people understant that it's the album they heard. An often they know what they are playing :) But I think that Album name / title name and maybe artist name could be added here and the state (if paused) I have tried to be objective in this litle review. I develop a media center by myself, with EFL and gstreamer, but I don't have the time to continue so I would like to give you what I have learned with my previous devs specially on the UI side. I think that elisa have a very good backend but his UI ... could be better. I don't have to be prentious, or said that all your work is bad, it's just that many time i don't have the right words in english, as you can see I speak english like a Spanish cow :P Thanks for you work, Nico
