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??

joker wrote:What are opinions of other amarok's users??

See past opinions in forum. The new placement for context browser will give many possibilites to rewrite it. I'm waiting for other changes and then I will say what i think

I totally agree. The new Contex browser layout makes the user interface a complete mess.
The old interface is much better. Now it is ugly. More arguments you can find at http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129413

I also agree, it's very messy! Cant even read the lyrics without scrolling....

... and you can imagine, how shown playlist togetrher with contextbrowser looks like on resolution 800x600 ... but after some time this change was introduced in SVN, I get accustomed

Using Amarok with a screen resolution of 1600x1200 renders this userinterface quite unusable. It looks plain ugly, and is one of the worst things that ever happened to Amarok - thanks there weren't that much! I just made a screenshot of what it looks like: Amarok 1.4.1-beta1 at 1600x1200 pixels.

I think the best thing would be to give users the choice on how to split the UI.  Downgrading for now...

Despite of this, keep up the fabulous work, and thank you for creating my favourite KDE application!

Regards,
Jens

Hi there,
compiled and installed 1.4.1-beta1 today, 'cause I was interested in the new layout. Guys, what kinda stuff are you smoking? This layout is absolutly f***ed. There's so much useless space in the context and the lyrics tab. Perhaps you can find some companies sponsoring amarok for showing some ads in the free space. No thanks. Why changing the old layout? That makes no sense at all. As far as I can see (not very far), there are no positive responses on that sh**. So, I will recompile 1.4.0 (because of libvisual 0.4.0) and wait for better days to come. Please, amarok is really a great MM-app for linux, don't corrupt it by trying to change something just for changing something. In Germany exists a word for that: "verschlimmbessern". I've a resolution of 1280x1024; the cover preview is 100px like the infobox on the right side. So there are about 1000px wasteland between the song and the relevant infos. So what?


Get well soon

m0nk

wow.. people complaining about a beta?

play with it a little, experiment with different ways of organising your space.

BOTH the browser panels can be hidden completely with only their titles shown, all the different browsers can be toggled on or off depending on whether you ever use them, it's now possibly to have a full screen context browser if that's what you prefer.

but whatever you do, don't judge the layout by the content and organisation of the context browser at this stage.

The content is css - anyone can write a theme for the context browser.

At the moment, it would be really good to hear whether anyone would be interested in actually having a go at changing around what's displayed, or even drawing up some mockups, instead if just flying off the handle because you're too scared of change.

Live on the edge!

It's not about complaining, it's commenting the new way the UI design has changed - something that was asked for. If you don't comment such things at a beta stage, what use do your comments have at all? Isn't it a good thing to get feedback from people who I guess are huge fans of Amarok? Well, some criticism could have been written in a more relaxed mood, but it shows how emotional people are about their favourite audio player, I guess...

The new design wastes space, and I don't think the music collection or lyrics tab look better if they are put in columns CSS-wise. This layout just makes sense, the way it is displayed follows the content. It's usable, everything is in one quick view, the playlist is the center everything else floats around. In difference to this picture, I like the new way tabs are placed at the top of the playlist, but I would love to see it the way described below...

Compare it to this one: Trying to reorganize the huge mess with multi-columns won't look any better if the playlist is nearly maximized. It's definetely a step in the wrong direction, at least at this stage. Making it optional and switchable, with a then better layout, is certainly worth a try. Another thing worth testing would be the tabs just to switch the whole "main screen", without having it splitted vertically, while the left bar stays. The layout of the relevant tab would have to follow, too.

After all it's an interesting and good thing to see that new ideas are evaluated within Amarok, but not everyone has to like everything. So let's discuss it at this stage, and I'm pretty sure Amarok will evolve in a way I can't imagine but will find positive in the end.

That's kinda what I mean by experimenting - for example, do you *need* amarok's window that large?

I'm rather fond of my layout at the moment

Just speaking for myself: Yes, I need the window that large, as I put it on it's own virtual desktop to have as much information directly accessible in my "media central" as possible.

But there we have it: It's people using a narrow vs. people using a wide Amarok layout.

I guess the majority of all users prefer the latter just because:

- higher (and especially wide screen) resolutions get more and more common
- X allows you to use virtual desktops to put any application on it's own screen
- a wide layout makes more information available at a glance

The last point refers to the playlist itself, being able to show more columns, as well as having the context browser and the playlist present at the same time without the need to scroll down to see most of the available information.

People running a lower resolution setup should have the possibility to adjust their favourite audio player the way it suits them best - but not at the cost of serving the majority (if my estimation fits - what about a poll?) of all users a suboptimal experience. Of course it would be best to make all this configurable, tabs swapable and so on, but I really don't know how much work this would be. At the moment I can't think of one "static" layout that fullfills both in the same way. I still doubt a better multi column layout in the context browser will help that much with higher resolution setups.

I agree with Jens Mayer here, the new layout
is a problem for widescreen users.
I like to have the contextbar and playlist at
the same time, however, with only 800px
the playlist is too small to work with when using
the new layout.

People (devs) in #amarok say that it wouldn't
be wise to let the user choose between the
two layouts, so I'd like to vote for
"keep the layout as it was"

Fuchs

First thing that came on my mind when I saw Amarok's new layout: "Wow! Is this a two and a half months late April's Fools joke or something?"

It simply makes no sense. The Music, Lyrics and Wiki tabs are all vertically-oriented (ie. typically having more height than width). Putting them on top of the playlist makes them unviewable because they are conflicting with the playlist, which is also vertically-oriented. The usability regression is huge. Not only do we have less vertical space for the playlist, but we have to scroll to actually see something on the upper section.

And really dangle_wtf, some of us like having more than 3 columns. Not to mention having them wide enough to actually read them. Geez.

And some of us don't... you have any idea how silly 3 columns looks on a wide desktop?

There are some interesting things happening where people are actually taking the time to see what they can do about the width of the context browser contents... stay tuned.

dangle_wtf wrote:And some of us don't... you have any idea how silly 3 columns looks on a wide desktop?

Well first of all nobody said you had to run Amarok completely full-screen. Second, wide displays are actually what this new layout hurts the most! Wide displays are starving for vertical space, and this layout makes a very inefficient use of it by placing stuff on top of each other, which makes it impossible to take advantage of the very large display width.

Anyway, what would be really cool is an IDEAI layout. That way anyone could rearrange their main window exactly as they wish. (I do believe the old layout should be the default though.)