Hi all,

this is my first post to this forum. I've been an amarok user for many years now and never felt the need to sign up here and participate. However, i think it is time for some constructive criticism to improve amarok 2 and make it the best choice for the use-cases where amarok 1.4 was (and IMHO still is) unbeatable. Although other posts asking for changes or even reviving amarok 1.4 may not have struck the right note, they do have a valid point here that should be discussed properly: Even with all bugs fixed and feature completeness amarok 2 will not be an option if the user interface doesn't cut it!

I predict that with amarok 1.4 being no longer supported it will at most be another year before it becomes unusable/breaks from bitrot. So in order to prevent a loss of former amarok 1.4 users for the community I think it is time to take a closer look at the current situation.
I recognize that amarok 2 has come a long way now and - as has been highlighted by the developers - is now almost on par feature-wise with 1.4. However, great efforts have been taken in amarok 2.2 to imitate the design and retract some of the new design principles of amarok 2. IMHO this is not sufficient for the following reason:
The user interfaces of the old and new amarok aim at different target audience. While amarok 1.4. is the workhorse in managing even huge mp3-collections without losing track, amarok 2 accentuates converged multimedia and internet services.

While I am a heavy user of internet services like lastfm etc. myself and highly welcome new multimedia capabilities, I am at the same time managing a huge collection. Currently, amarok 2 can not achieve both. The lack of usability in managing mp3s and huge playlist sizes is exactly the reason why users of 1.4 refuse to migrate to amarok 2.

In other words: providing an "almost looks like 1.4" playlist is not sufficient. To regain the flexibility and user-friendlyness of 1.4, a simple playlist with clickable and sortable columns is a must-have for amarok2! I don't say that this should be the only way to do it. My proposal would be to introduce this as an extra view, or to introduce an option for old style playlists. I am not familiar with amaroks source code and don't know how much effort such a 1.4. style playlist would be. However, IMHO this is crucial for amarok 2 to be the rousing success it deserves to be.

I hope that this post of mine kicks off a vivid discussion that is not waved aside by the amarok developers. I have talked with many people that have been hooked by amarok 1.4 and now hope for a usability improvement of amarok 2. Don't waste this chance ...


Regards,
Sebastian

It's not a problem that you don't like Amarok 2.x, we can accept this criticism. However, if criticizing, please make sure to try the latest version (2.2.1), because there were a lot of changes between 2.2.0 and 2.2.1 (our development speed is quite rapid currently).

I would like to point out there exist a number of Amarok 1.x clones by now (some googling should suffice) that you could consider using instead. Seeing that you liked 1.4's interface better, these might be more suitable for you.

Hi Mark,

I did not say I didn't like amarok 2 in any word of my post, I love to see all the new possibilities that can be realized with amarok 2! Oh and of course I referred to the 2.2.1 version of amarok with my criticism. However, you did not really respond to the points i raised in my post. In fact, by stating that by now there are several amarok 1.4 clones you actually prove my point that users may be lost for the amarok community because of the interface design. Why not respond to the development of users turning their back on amarok and take suitable actions? Why in the first place give up on old strengths of amarok? I almost spent all day to read through this forum and realized that this issue was brought up several times in different guises.

Basically, all that needs to be done is to allow for an old style playlist widget to make a large group of old amarok users happy.
So let me rephrase my question:
What refrains the amarok developers from responding to the highly requested old-style playlist widget with columns?

Regards,
Sebastian

bazza030 wrote:What refrains the amarok developers from responding to the highly requested old-style playlist widget with columns?

Something like this?



(Wtf, who messed with my ID3 tags? Well, that's what can happen when you use the -git version, I guess. )

bazza030 wrote:Hi Mark,
Basically, all that needs to be done is to allow for an old style playlist widget to make a large group of old amarok users happy.
So let me rephrase my question:
What refrains the amarok developers from responding to the highly requested old-style playlist widget with columns?

Yes, this request comes up now and again. But it is funny how the people who tend to clamor for it with entreaties like "how could you guys not POSSIBLY implement this complex feature that I WANT" are not the ones who actually are involved in amarok. The reason there isn't exact clone of the 1.x interface is because no one has written it. The configurable playlist layout editor in 2.2.x is powerful and flexible enough to satisfy the needs of the person/people who developed it, and so that's how it is what it is.

There was, for a while, a sample excel-like layout in trunk. All it would have taken was for an interested developer to pick it up and make it work. It lingered for over 2 years in trunk before 2.0 was released, with no one touching it. So it was removed. That's how it goes in OSS.

Hi lfranchi,
thanks for your interesting reply and for giving a peep behind amaroks development scene. I am quite familiar with the Open Source community, being a user of OSS for almost 10 years now. Of course you are right that developers mainly code for their own purpose. However, in a project of amaroks scale several other mechanisms are usually at work (let it be kudos from happy users, more donations, higher reputation for the developer helping him getting his foot in the door of his employer of choice etc etc.).

All this put aside i see that it is much more fun from the developer perspective to come up with something as complex as the configurable playlist editor in amarok 2.2.1. I also see that there are use-cases where such a view may indeed look nice and work. Referring to the picture that Hans posted, i do know that it is possible to imitate the old playlist behaviour to a certain degree. However, usability and functionality-wise this specific implementation is still a kludge. For example if you want to handle large playlists, sort them easily (yes, clicking the columns is more intuitive), change the width of the columns, edit id3 tags and ratings inline (i know this is implemented for single line view by now, changed values are not saved in my case) and at the same time not lose track of all that information available to the user (here the vertical lines of the excel-style playlist make a huge difference in providing a clear view in combination with readable fonts).
But even if all that functionality could be pressed into the configurable playlist editor, it still would hurt the KISS design principle.

IMHO the optimum solution to all this is an optional view pane that offers an excel-style playlist window. Users of 1.4 would be happy to have the powerful and simple interface back, and users that favor the new configurable playlist window could still select that.

As a final consideration i would like to refer to the design that lingered around in trunk. You told me that no amarok dev was interested in implementing the old design. So let me ask:

If someone would actually implement a view based on this implementation, would it be accepted in amarok 2?

I personally think that you will be millionaires soon if you start a fund-raiser for this

Regards,
Sebastian

bazza030 wrote:
If someone would actually implement a view based on this implementation, would it be accepted in amarok 2?

Not by me, no. I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I'm very strict with usability, and I try to prevent feature creep, which I find unhealthy.

So this would get a "No" from me.


Two links for reference (the first is an article that I wrote myself):

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/113 ... cide..html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep

@bazza030: Did you look at the screenshot supplied by Hans?

bazza030 wrote:Hi lfranchi,
thanks for your interesting reply and for giving a peep behind amaroks development scene. I am quite familiar with the Open Source community, being a user of OSS for almost 10 years now. Of course you are right that developers mainly code for their own purpose. However, in a project of amaroks scale several other mechanisms are usually at work (let it be kudos from happy users, more donations, higher reputation for the developer helping him getting his foot in the door of his employer of choice etc etc.).

All this put aside i see that it is much more fun from the developer perspective to come up with something as complex as the configurable playlist editor in amarok 2.2.1. I also see that there are use-cases where such a view may indeed look nice and work. Referring to the picture that Hans posted, i do know that it is possible to imitate the old playlist behaviour to a certain degree. However, usability and functionality-wise this specific implementation is still a kludge. For example if you want to handle large playlists, sort them easily (yes, clicking the columns is more intuitive), change the width of the columns, edit id3 tags and ratings inline (i know this is implemented for single line view by now, changed values are not saved in my case) and at the same time not lose track of all that information available to the user (here the vertical lines of the excel-style playlist make a huge difference in providing a clear view in combination with readable fonts).
But even if all that functionality could be pressed into the configurable playlist editor, it still would hurt the KISS design principle.

IMHO the optimum solution to all this is an optional view pane that offers an excel-style playlist window. Users of 1.4 would be happy to have the powerful and simple interface back, and users that favor the new configurable playlist window could still select that.


If someone would actually implement a view based on this implementation, would it be accepted in amarok 2?

Personally, I would say no. I still haven't heard a good reason for why it should be included. The playlist config settings allow you to choose how to see your playlist. You can sort by any column. You can do inline editing. Basically the only thing that is visually different is the fact that there are no visual dividers between elements. So maybe someone could come up with a patch for adding vertical dividers (or maybe, they would look really ugly. i don't know).

Maybe there were a large number of users who were angry when the 2.0 playlist couldn't look like 1.x. They sure were vocal. But step by step as we have increased the features of the playlist, the number of these users who are disappointed with the capability of the new playlist has also decreased. In fact, in the last few months I must say there has been much less demanding of 1.x coming back than what we had in the earlier months of this year.

Yes, there will always be users who aren't happy. We can't please everyone. Trying to please the last 2-5% of users will end up in us bolting things onto amarok that never should be put there in the first place.

Another attempt to emulate Amarok 1.4 layout

Hi lfranchi,

lfranchi wrote:Personally, I would say no. I still haven't heard a good reason for why it should be included.

I named several good reasons for an excel-style playlist in my previous post. Let me recapitulate:
* column tabs are more intuitive to sort and well known by all users
* visual dividers provide a cleaner look and better overview
* resizing columns is much more intuitive
* the meaning of a column (artist, title etc.) is available at a glance
* the whole view is much clearer and structured plus more titles fitted in the list

Now in response to Mark:

markey wrote: I'm very strict with usability,

Please note that all the items I listed above are clear usability issues and not result of missing functionality. I agree that introducing an option for another playlist view can only be a compromise to marry both proposals ...

markey wrote: and I try to prevent feature creep, which I find unhealthy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep

Well, IMHO the definition of feature creep fits perfectly to the configurable playlist editor
Not only is this editor suffering from overengineering, it also violates the KISS design principle as stated previously.

I would be very interested in the difference in lines of code written for the playlist parts of 1.4.10 and 2.2.1 and would not be surprised if amarok2 has by far more LOC.

lfranchi wrote:But step by step as we have increased the features of the playlist, the number of these users who are disappointed with the capability of the new playlist has also decreased.

Yep, I agree that the playlist is on par with 1.4. feature-wise. But I do criticize the usability of the playlist.

lfranchi wrote:In fact, in the last few months I must say there has been much less demanding of 1.x coming back than what we had in the earlier months of this year.

Well, the decline of the demand for 1.4 coming back can be ascribed to several reasons and IMHO requires a more differentiated examination:

users demanded 1.4 to come back since amarok 2
* was not on par with 1.4 feature-wise
* was pestered with bugs
* had user interface design issues

Now I think that the first 2 issues are not a big problem anymore, amarok 2 has made huge progress since 2.0 was released and consequently less people asked to get 1.4 back.
For the user-interface issues the amarok devs responded to criticism by making the UI more configurable and allow users to hide most of the design decisions taken in amarok 2 (i.e. hide/move the context view, the configurable playlist). Similarly this development led to a decline in clamors for 1.4. However, this does not imply that users are happy now with the UI. IMHO many users gave up demanding for 1.4-style playlist and started looking for alternatives.

lfranchi wrote:Yes, there will always be users who aren't happy. We can't please everyone. Trying to please the last 2-5% of users will end up in us bolting things onto amarok that never should be put there in the first place.

If you put up a poll that evaluates this issue and indeed shows that a tiny minority is of my opinion I will shut up forever ...

Regards,
Sebastian

Hi everyone,

first, thanks Sebastian, you nailed it.

I´m using amarok for 7 years now, but I cannot acquire a taste for amarok2.

Please bring back a playlist which is a playlist not a playground.

I love OSS and believe me I know that I don´t have the right to call for something.
All the years I told my friends: "Hey look what a great software and its for free and opensource. Unbelieveable, right?"
And now I am going crazy with the userinterface of amarok2.
This is why I have to switch to exaile and on OSX I have to switch to iTunes.
I never thought that iTunes will be an alternative to amarok for me.
And as you can see, iTunes has a playlist in excel form.

Short, maybe I´m one of 2-5% of users, but I´m a user and a big promoter for amarok.

bye,

Denis

bazza030 wrote:If you put up a poll that evaluates this issue and indeed shows that a tiny minority is of my opinion I will shut up forever ...

Design-by-committee does not work with software.
It has been tried, it failed bitterly. Better believe me, I've been in the business for a while


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

User-centric design is what works.
http://johnnyholland.org/2009/01/17/book-review-mental-models/

Try this experiment and you will make better, more successful software that delights community. Put a brand new user in front of the Playlist feature. Ask them to accomplish some tasks such as:

1) Add some tracks and albums to the playlist.
2) Edit some labels on tracks and albmums.
3) Manage some tracks such as delete them from the system completely.
4) Save a playlist, makes some changes, and edit it again.
5) Resize the columns in the playlist so you can read the data in full.
etc.

Better yet, before the experiment, ask some users what tasks they typically try to accomplish when managing playlists. Come up with your own list of tasks that you want to optimize the design for.

Ask the user to talk out load as they try to accomplish these tasks.

Observe how the user struggles. You will learn and have better judgment about design considerations.

Designing for yourself is hogwash and arrogant.

OK, let's stop that, it started with something constructive, now it starts to turn into pointless bikeshedding.
devehf, if you are not happy, make your own application, pay somebody to do it, or contribute (real contributions, not bikeshedding), what you do now is totally useless, sorry.
For the last time, that is not how FOSS development works, never did, and never will.