I am still busy gutting the context browser.  I had the standard sections (at least for the tracks) moved to scripts. sebr had expressed concern about the amount of time that the scripts take to run, and after a while, I agreed.  So I have moved the sections that were in Amarok back into the code and threaded them.

New screenshot:
[img=http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/7315/snapshot61zt.th.png]

By the way, I enjoy having the context browser above/insead of the playlist, and even though it has been reverted, I am using an older svn version to keep it that way.

Better and better! Looks like you've solved the size problem

Is that a custom context browser theme as well?

It is more of a modified theme. It is newdanna with the background and border styling for .box removed.

Now if I can just get it stable... I hate debugging race conditions.

Thank god teknomunk is here !
BTW, great job for the theme/artist/lyric display.

I quite liked the on-top context browser, and find it sad that it was trashed so fast, just because people couldn't get that the content of the browser could be rearranged in the different themes.

I just dislike the huge playlist on the old interface, i don't need to see the 50+ tracks i've got in my playlist. Only 10 or so should be enough especially when it's playing.
On the other hand, not seeing all the major columns in the playlist can be a pain (title-album-artist-rating-lenght-year), and that is often the case with the context browser on the left.

So please revert back to the on-top context browser... but with a matching theme which will make things look much more consistent

According last commit-digest  http://commit-digest.org/issues/2006-06-25/:

Mark Kretschmann committed changes in /trunk/extragear/multimedia/amarok/src:
   Revert back to old GUI layout, to prevent further street riots and civil war. Context layout is still multi column, but I supose that can be fixed easily.

I downloaded the last svn version of Amarok and really it has the old GUI style.
Thanks.

jihaire wrote:I quite liked the on-top context browser, and find it sad that it was trashed so fast, just because people couldn't get that the content of the browser could be rearranged in the different themes.

I still hate it, because I want the playlist to occupy the whole vertical space. I usually have the "All Collection" playlist loaded, and don't give much of a damn about dynamic playlists (I never understood what so great about them).

Anyway, as long as the next interface redesign is flexible enough to allow the end user to customize it (ie. IDEAI!!!), I'll be happy. This "cramming a major UI redesign into people's throats" business in 1.4.0-beta1 was simply not nice.

PlasticZombie wrote:This "cramming a major UI redesign into people's throats" business in 1.4.0-beta1 was simply not nice.

and amarok.kde.org said

The most visible result of the meeting is a major improvement to the user interface: the "current" sidebar tab has been moved to the top of the playlist. This is also one of the major reasons why we do a beta release for 1.4.1, we want you to try the new layout, report problems, bugs and how do you like it. All this feedback will justify whether we remove it for the Fast Forward series, and delay it until 2.0, or to leave it and make it as awesome as possible.

so WTF are U talking about???



Ps. This layout from 1.4.1 would be very good if could be more configurable or with much better css style

Hey I had not notished that my distribution installed the new beta 1.4.1 , After starting amaroK I was thinking that the layout was broken and was planing to make a bug report and do an reinistall. But the beta was the reason for this layout thing...

Ok... I don't really like it,.. scrolling a lot! but...

- Maybe You can make a playlist button on the top so you can switch from fullscreen playlist to music, artist...etz.

- Positif thing is that after selecting a new song the right site is not going to the top all the time, so you can select diverend songs to the playlist whitout tabbing back all the time.

- I hope you make it possible in the future that the "classic" layout also can be selected. and make an button that can compleet hide the top bar.

- so thats it for now, geep up the good work! amaroK rules! (sorry for my bad English)
Dum 

dum wrote:- Maybe You can make a playlist button on the top so you can switch from fullscreen playlist to music, artist...etz.

If you click whichever of the section at the top is open again (in other words click music while it's on the music tab) the context stuff will actually fold away and leave only the playlist. You just click one of the tabs again to get the context back. That's one of the reason's why I don't see why people have so many problems with the new lay-out. I guess this feature hasn't been publicised enough.

You just click one of the tabs again to get the context back. That's one of the reason's why I don't see why people have so many problems with the new lay-out. I guess this feature hasn't been publicised enough.

Maybe you just haven't read _why_ so many people have problems with the new layout. They are not dumb, they just have other needs, but I wont't repeat myself again. I would very much appreciate it if people who just didn't like the new design without any possibility to customize it (again: not just by changing some CSS) are not branded as neophobic naysayers. I see some trend to this here lately.

We all made some good points, on all three sides of the story. Now the thing is on how to suit them all fine.

No offense, I just wanted summarize some things I've been seeing here around lately. So Amarok on!

patpi wrote:so WTF are U talking about???

My point was that it should be an option, not hardcoded like in the beta.

Jens Mayer wrote:

You just click one of the tabs again to get the context back. That's one of the reason's why I don't see why people have so many problems with the new lay-out. I guess this feature hasn't been publicised enough.

Maybe you just haven't read _why_ so many people have problems with the new layout. They are not dumb, they just have other needs, but I wont't repeat myself again. I would very much appreciate it if people who just didn't like the new design without any possibility to customize it (again: not just by changing some CSS) are not branded as neophobic naysayers. I see some trend to this here lately.

We all made some good points, on all three sides of the story. Now the thing is on how to suit them all fine.

No offense, I just wanted summarize some things I've been seeing here around lately. So Amarok on!

I have read pretty much all the messages and I know there are a number of reasons. But many people seem to have a wish to have the playlist take all vertical space as their primary reason, and I don't think I've seen one of them mention this feature. Since it took a while for me to realise that it worked this way I assumed that lack of publicity for the feature might be a reason for this. It was not my intention to offend anyone.

For the record I don't think that people who object to this feature are neophobic, I tend to think there is an unfortunate amount of inherent conservatism in the human mind, but that's not an Amarok issue and has little to do with the context-browser either way.

I would like to say something to the new Layout,
I got nearly Insane when I opend the new Beta. I tryed several hours to change back to the old Layout.
This is because I like long playlists more than wide playlists. I'm fixed for the sidebar on the left. It was one of the best features of amarok. It showed what I needed to know. I would like to see when this feauter gets configureable. Maybe even for the other tabs. It was a nice try, but not useable or nice for me.

Best regrads
sHiZo