Here's a proof-of-concept with some different content in the context browser - an idea of the sort of things that can be done.

http://www.realotw.org/gallery/albums/u ... oncept.png

(hat tip teknomunk!)

This definetly looks way better, dangle_wtf, but there's one thing that come's to my mind by looking at it:

On the left bar, I have some tabs for my music collection, for playlists, the filebrowser or my media device. Usually I do not need these things that frequently when listening to music, as I don't change my playlist every 5 minutes. Hence this space is of absolutely no value most of the time, while turning it off makes the new context browser even wider. We are now going for 5 columns?

The good old days: I find it interesting to see what other albums I have availabe of any given artist, or what songs are suggested via last.fm at a given time, especially when playing random playlists over my whole music collection. With the context browser on the left side, this is a perfect match: I can have a huge playlist area which is even wide enough to show ratings, song durations or production years. The space of the left bar is now used in a meaningful way, showing dynamic and interesting information, most of the time without the need to scroll down. It eveen looks good if there are just a few information to display - what way will the multi column adjust if there are no "similar artists", no recomenndations, no tags?

My point is: The old interface gives a clear and nice two-sides-layout, being able to show everything important at a glance. The new solutions needs user interaction most of the times, be it scrolling down things or resizing areas to better fit a new context. The look of a multi column layout would depend very much on how much information there is available to display, which can change from song to song. You just don't get the same amount of useful information without new costs.

Until now, I don't get a real advantage for users of a wider resolution, although there's something behind the new ideas: I like the new "tabs on top", but miss the opportunity to hide the playlist completely using them (I know I can "snatch" it away). I like the possibilty to take a "full screen" look at the context browser, which might look good with many information available and another style sheet, but I wouldn't get rid of the old and clear way just for that.

Things are really progessing, and you guys are making a great job. I'm really tempted to see what the next  stable release of Amarok will look like, and it's great that you keep on trying things and dare to experiment with different solutions. Please don't take my criticism as a flamebait or something like that, it's just that I'm a bit afraid of loosing the most perfect user experience I ever had with any audio player I tried, no matter which operating system I was on. Maybe I'll be the one  who is positively surprised in the end by something I couldn't think of now... So for now: Thank you, whatever way you'll go on.

joker wrote:The new placement for Context browser is a mistake !!!!! please go back to the previous version ! or let the users have a posiblity to switch the layout.
I want wide playlist and automatically Context Browser is wide and it looks ugly ! Second thing: I want to have long playlist and long Context browser (to see other artist albums). now it's impossible!

What are opinions of other amarok's users??

I agree to this, but if we can switch back to the old lyaout i am satisfied

Count me in as another one voting for the old layout...
If a wider contextbrowser is needed, eg. for viewing wikipedia, you could still drag it wider to temporarily take away space from the playlist. With the new layout everything looks just crowded and plain ugly. Maybe a little bit of css-work could make it look nicer, but still the playlist-area would be damn small. Having such a wide space for the lyrics is ridiculous, too.
The amount of negative comments (blog/bug tracking/forum) should at least lead to the possibility to switch back to the old layout.
Other than for the new layout, amarok is the best player around. So please please please, don't make it worse by messing with the ui in that way.

I think the new placement will do us all good.

Right now it looks kinda  weird but that's mainly cause the Themes have not been updated to display the content in a more suitable way.
I hacked something together based on Fnis kde-look.org. Try it out, send me feedback, I think as soon as a few talented people start working on the css we'll see some really awesome stuff.

A slightly different thing: Does anyone know whether I can somehow save the HTML or XML or whatever of the Context Browser? That would make working on CSSes way easier! Thanks in advance, gotta watch the football game now

  I totally agree with the FACT that the new placement for Context browser is a mistake. An ugly mistake. No one can  convince me that it will be more usable and pretty with ANY css.....
  I have seen a lot of changes in different apps when beta released, but this one is really creepy.
  Though i like Amarok as one of the best players (and of course I appreciate highly all the work the team is doing)... I think I will not stand the "new" change of the look and feel. Please at least give an option to the users to change this mess to the old look....
  And put a BIG NOTICE on the homepage and the download page for all the users to know what they will be up to!

It looks much better on your screen dangle_wtf, and if you want to stick to the new layout ( I hope not you schould make it default.

the second thing is that if possibility of switch the layout is not an option mabye you schould make a poll on the forum and let the users decide

the last thing is that, yes - I can make full screen context browser, but I can't hide it and have full screen playlist (or mabye I don't know how to do it).

dangle_wtf wrote:Here's a proof-of-concept with some different content in the context browser - an idea of the sort of things that can be done.

http://www.realotw.org/gallery/albums/u ... oncept.png

and 1.4.1-beta2 should be relased with that sort of change. New style with old-css is mistake, but new style with modified css + last.fm suppert would by great!

FYI: Latest SVN reverted the old style.

The current layout would only be nice, if I there were a concept, where to open which tab. It's definetly a bad idea to open lyrics in a big wide window, because lyrics are most times not that wide. So the lyrics shoul stay vertical. last.fm and wikipedia might be a good idea. But only if you use them.

I think amarok should stay a music programm. If I want to use a browser, I open firefox. Show wiki infos, ok! Show related songs and send last.fm my favorite music, ok! Surfing through the net on last.fm, wiki, amazon etc., why? A horse with ten feet will not run faster. There are more important things, that amarok needs than a big browser window.

And it may be a good idea next time to make it possible to switch back easily, when changing the whole interface. I had to downgrade to 1.4.0 and I think, there are a lot of people, that don't use the svn version. I have to wait for 1.4.1beta2 and that's bad because I liked the new script menu.

I am also not a fan of the new GUI, but was also surprised how mean some of the reactions were...
Anyway, IMO it is a good thing that the devs still experiment on the GUI, as I also thought for some time now that it deserved further changes.
The good thing about the GUI change is that it was recognized that the playlist doesn't need to take the full height, as it doesn't make much sense to me having visible the song that comes at place fifty from the current one. On the other hand I always felt that the playlist could need as much width as possible while leaving enough space to context and other views. Of course one could hide the tabs at the left, but its obvious that's not a good choice...
So my suggestion would be to make a playlist that shows the information for a single song in a more compact way by grouping it one below the other instead of  placing it in a single column, like other players already do.

Bye, Val.

I commented on this in a different thread already before seeing this one so I'll be brief here. I realise I'm in the minority, but I do actually like the new layout.

hum. i havent tried the new beta, but from the looks, i like the original way much better.  still, if we had the option of either way, it would make everyone happy.  i think that 2 things amarok has to improve on: visualizations need to be better intergrated and used.  where the new tabs have moved to, put an option to turn on visuals, and put them there when not in full screen.  the next thing amarok needs to fix is playing and ripping from an audio cd.........but besides those little changes i'd make, amarok is the best
cottonwood

If I knew any C++ the thing dangle_wtf outline would not be hard to build. But with the vertical layout the possibilities are kinda limited (or it turns to a scrolling madness).
I've been using the beta for quite a while now and the new layout grows on me more every day. I don't think reverting was a good idea.

er... that wasn't just a mockup...

teknomunk modified the source - each of those sections is a script that can be enabled or disabled, so that only the info you want is shown. All the standard sections are there too.