The main issue is the position of the buttons and the menubar. With amarok 1.1.1 the menubar issue was solved. Thanks

The position of the toolbar buttons is still inappropriate. While most applications out there place their toolbar buttons at the top of the application below the menubar amarok places them at the bottom above the statusbar. Newcomers may feel pretty uncomfortable with the fact that the application doesn't behave the way they expect it to do. It's agreed that sticking to a basic consistent layout helps users a lot to feel at home quickly. Imagine a playlist with a single album containing ten tracks. The tracks are shown at the upper end of the window, while the toolbar buttons are at the bottom of the window. This results in unnecessary extra mouse movement.

Suggestion: Unless there's a justified reason to keep the current position, place the toolbar at the top below the menubar.

Another thing is the arrangement of the playlist buttons, i.e. "Add Media", "Save Playlist", "Clear", "Shuffle", "Undo" and "Redo". They are placed below the sidebar elements. Users could easily confuse the "add media"-button and connect it with the collection, since it's far nearer to the collection sidebar than to the playlist window. "Save Playlist" is the only hint that the actions are actually performed on the playlist.

Suggestion: Place the buttons that are only valid to the playlist at the top of the playlist.

The use of gimmicks, especially blinking, is the next issue I want to discuss. I think the blinking play icon in the system tray very distracting. Icons in the system tray should notify the user of specific events that imply further actions such as incoming mail or icq messages. The blinking play icon doesn't show a state change the user has to be informed of. It just shows that music is playing. Especially in combination with other status icons the fact that some icon is constantly blinking is distracting. It draws attraction to a region of the screen that shouldn't be paid attention to without a justified reason.

Suggestion: Remove the blinking play icon in the system tray and use a static one instead.

The same applies to the blinking track highlighting: It's diverting, but doesn't provide extra functionality. The playing track is clearly distinguishable without it. The gradient of the highlighted playing track makes it hard to read the tags of the track.

Suggestion: Remove the blinking track highlighting. Remove the gradient of the playing track highlighting. Use a single color and -to distinguish between playing and manually marked tracks- bold text to mark the playing track.

The slider showing the progress of the playing track is located in a highly uncommon place - the statusbar. The idea of grouping elements that just show the status of events in one place is justified. But the inclusion of the progressbar to this group misses the point that the slider still can and will be manipulated by users. Users looking for that function will search the toolbar, because they are used to look there and because other buttons to manipulate the current playing status -like play, pause, stop, next, ...- are located there, too.

Suggestion: Place the progressbar next to the previous, play, pause, stop, next buttons. Users expect it there.

The blinking tray icon is something that can be turned off. It certainly should be off by default if it isn't. And I agree about the blinking current song, there's that reptilian desire to look at anything moving so its kind of annoying sometimes.

As far as the placement for the buttons... I rather like it. People aren't newcomers to amarok for very long, I don't think amarok's UI has to be totally oriented to whats easiest to understand at first glance (at least, not the primary playlist window). Not that amaroK is perfect or something.

dont listen to him developers!! we love amarok. love it. i appreicate that you have some suggestions kiki but thats what mkes amarok special, its unique style. we dont want just another plain looking audio app. the other kde ones are fine, but i installed juk the other day - its great but its just plain boring to use.
besides amarok is really easy to use!
roll on with the gimmicks

I\'d just like to add my voice to the hordes asking for the throbbing current track bar to be removed or made optional. It\'s the one feature of amaroK that I can\'t get used to, let alone come to like.

how about making it possible to move the toolbars (for example like konqueror)?
Or is there some reason that this hasnt been done?

Thanks for a great player btw

Moveable toolbars are really pretty bad for usablity. Like I\'m sure there are hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Word\'s worldwide with the toolbar in some unwanted position (like hovering over the document).