Hi folks,

I've created a little mock-up for the Amarok context browser, wich would improve the look of Amarok in my opinion.

Instead of using vertical tabs to switch between the different types of collections, I suggest a single page with links to the different collections, just as it is already done within the "Internet" tab. Right now, when you click on an item in the internet tab, the contents get displayed and on top of them appear the title and a litle left arrow, wich gets you back to the selection.
The question is why this isn't done for all the other collections? It would be IMHO a lot nicer than the current system. I attached my mock up of how Amarok could look. What do you guys think?

Cheers,
Tony.

That's quite sleek, but from a usability point of view, do you anticipate a lot of scrolling if the user is browsing a large collection then wants to look at playlists? In other words, how do you anticipate the fast switching between sections?

Just like it is done now within the Internet tab. Ontop of every section is a back button. See example:

ok so the scrolling doesn't scroll the entire pane... better. I like the increase in usable space gained by removing the tabs. HOWEVER... it would have been more useful to propose something like this about 6 months ago when work was starting out - changing a fairly major design component midstream is never going to be as easy as starting out that way.
That said, you could post your proposal to the Amarok mailing list to get feedback from the devs (if you are a coder, even better - posting an implementation would gain you major brownie points )

The problem with Tny's approach is that it requires a lot more clicking. Everytime you want to switch browsers, you have to navigate to the "Back" button, and then click the target browser tab. This is already starting to annoy me in the Internet tab, especially because the Back button is so small and visually hard to locate.

This leads me to an interesting idea though: We could implement the Back button in the Internet tab differently: It could be one long button, stretching vertically to the full height of the browser, located to the left of it. Much like the KDE Comic Strip plasmoid does it. I'll give that some thought.

Here is a screenshot of the plasmoid, note the arrow on the left:

I don't quite understand what you mean with a lot more clicks. Here a sample:

With vert Tabs:
- Selected a song from your collection, now you want a magnatune song
- *Click* the Internet tab
- *Click* magnatune : *2 Clicks*
- *Click* collection, select song
- *Click* internet, now you want a Jamendo song
- *Click* back, to get out of the magnatune service
- *Click* jamendo : *2+4 Clicks*

My idea:
- Selected a song from your collection
- *Click* the back button
- *Click* magnatune: *2 Clicks as well*
- *Click* back
- *Click* collection, select song
- *Click* back
- *Click* jamendo: *2+4 Clicks*

IMHO my approach is better when you want to play songs from your collection and an media player. With the current collection you have to scroll to your player, and it can be fairly easy to miss it, especially with a large collection. Further, you loose the place in your local collection and you have to re orientate.
With my idea you select a song from your collection, click back, select your player, select the song. If you want back to the collection you simply hit back again and the collection, witch ideally saves the place where you've last been.
This scenario requires more clicking by the user, but I think it is nevertheless faster and more intuitive, because you don't have to scroll so much.

PS: And it looks sleeker

It is more clicks when moving from the collection browser to the file browser, you can't deny that.

I think this is really something that could be played with and done right though. The first good idea for a sidebar alternative in 4 years I think.