jagot wrote:Some notes:

• I miss the old playlist window with all property columns. It was
  much more powerful. (This is my most important point)
• The applet/widget part takes up to much screen-estate. It looks
  nice - but doesn't do anything useful, really.

I wholeheartedly agree with both of these items. I loved Amarok 1.4 for its clean look and its very clearly arranged playlist which offered lots of information at a glance.

Now when I start up Amarok2 I am greeted, and I'm sorry for being so harsh, by an interface which is ugly as hell. Everything is HUGE and completely cluttered.
- Items in the playlist are huge if they aren't grouped in the same album.
- The icons are huge (well, this is not too bad actually)
- But here comes the worst: the applet pane in the middle of the screen is the very definition of huge. I do own a 20" widescreen monitor (1680x1050), but it's almost impossible to have useful information in all three columns of the interface at the same time without one of them feeling "cramped". Either the track titles get cut off in the middle pane, or everything gets cut off in the playlist. That's especially true if the track name is more than 20 characters, try listening to a House compilation and figure our who's the artist of the current song.

I would very much like the applet pane to be an option similar to the context menu of Amarok 1.4. Just add another button to the button sidepane at the left, so you can switch between the collection and the applet pane.

I know you've thought hard about the new look for Amarok2, and I know you will be reluctant to change anything this late in the process. But seriously, please consider this. If Songbird was able to play songs consecutively without a several seconds pause in between (ridiculous, I know) I'd be using that by now.

Please make the user interface more clean again. Or at least make it an option. Thank you.

Loibisch wrote:I loved Amarok 1.4 for its clean look and its very clearly arranged playlist which offered lots of information at a glance.

I also agree that the old playlist look was much more useful. I'd rather put all those ID3 tags to use in an intuitive, easily-browsed list than clutter the thing with tiny album art in one narrow column. I'm really hoping the "classic playlist view" idea works out, because that clean look is what made me love amarok in the first place.

I agree with that too. The Plasmids is a good Thing, but the completely personalizable playlist has to return in some way. I don't  want to deplore the new look at all. But I think a Powerful Music-Collection-Software under the Open Source Idea don't has to look like a Fancy, Glare, Shiny, High-Designed, App like that iTunes-Thing. Usability comes first, I think. I don't really care about the look, when the features are great. The best thing was if there would be both a UI for Kids (shiny thing....) and also an option to use some of the old functionallity INSIDE that nice look. I think people who switch to Amarok just because "oh my god, it looks so sweet and stylish....."  are users who don't really need a new Player. Or would you buy an Aston-Martin with a 2CV (good old "Ente")-Engine instead of an old rusty Volkswagen with a 99% efficient modern electrical Engine? It's a pity that today is so much about look and glamour all over the world.

PS:

Please don't missunderstand: I like 2.0 very well, but I hope, in a few months, I can even LOVE it like I loved my 1.4 before


Greetz

Jochen

For what it's worth, I'll second, third or fourth what's been said here. I find the new interface to be too big, cluttered and hard to use, which is really too bad. Amarok used to be a wonderful example of clean yet powerful UI design. No longer.

I particularly miss the little player window. To say it can be reimplemented as a plasmoid just seems silly. Not everyone who uses amarok runs it under kde. Are plasmoids supposed to work in XFCE?

The evolution of amarok looks to me like a fine example of why the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is worthy of repetition.

1.4 still works fine - nobody is going to be forced to move to amarok 2. The rewrite is to take advantage of kde4/qt4, and its cross-platform capabilities, and no secret has been made of that fact, but if the 1.4 interface is what rocks your boat, please keep using it for as long as you like, while A2 continues to evolve. Maybe take another look in a year or two and see what happens.

(apologies for the run-on sentence)

Hey, I understand the desire to move to Qt4. We use Qt4 in the LyX project, and it's great. But moving to Qt4 doesn't have to mean rewriting the whole application, or totally changing the interface, or whatever. I can see why it might seem like you might as well do it all at once, but I still think it's a pity. The new interface is cluttered and extremely unintuitive, and you've lost a huge base of scripts and themes and so forth, the easy availability of which was part of what made Amarok what it was.

As for the interface, just for example, I've added a Media Devices applet to the center pane. Now what? How do I configure my media devices? Right-clicking in the pane gives me nothing. There are no menu entries. As a user, I'm completely stuck.

We are aware that the Context View (middle pane) still has some usability issues. We've did some small improvements on it lately, but more improvements are already planned for 2.1.

Other than that, yes - Amarok 2 is different from Amarok 1. But for the better, in our opinion. It's easier to use and less nerdy. The remaining problems will be addressed in future releases.


Remember, 2.0 is only the start of a long series of Amarok 2 releases

Well, since I am a nerd, both music-wize and computer-wize, I'd totally prefer a nerdy application....

Imagine Richard Stallman saying "Emacs is to nerdy, let's rewrite everything to resemble Microsoft Notepad, but with huge, flashy icons!"

In the meantime, I'll check Songbird out

Sorry, A2 is dead for me. To my taste  A2 is designed "to be sold" (pepsi, mp3, A2 - teenager's rubbish) rather to listen to music (as A1 was). Please, change this new app's name

I don't know where you get this "Sold to Pepsi" nonsense from...

If anything Amarok 2.0.0 ( notice all the 0's, this is the _very first_ of a _long_ series of Amarok 2's ) was designed sot that cool things can be built on top of the foundation that we have worked on for 2 years.

For an example check out these 2 blog post about stuff that will be in 2.1

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/858 ... olved.html
http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/859 ... pt.-1.html

Freespirit, thanks! - this screenshot

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/uploads/almostoldschool.png

reborns my hopes wrt the app And - again - UI-related stuffs are matter of taste. To my taste, all cool thing must not cry loudly "I'm here". Only functional core must be visible. Say, kmail is able to do plenty useful things, but it's window doesn't resemble colibri. A2's transport controls are definitely awful (imho, imho, ...).

anli wrote:Freespirit, thanks! - this screenshot

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/uploads/almostoldschool.png

reborns my hopes wrt the app And - again - UI-related stuffs are matter of taste. To my taste, all cool thing must not cry loudly "I'm here". Only functional core must be visible. Say, kmail is able to do plenty useful things, but it's window doesn't resemble colibri. A2's transport controls are definitely awful (imho, imho, ...).

That screenshot just made my day!
Sometimes since I installed 2.0 I've been wondering if it's really worth giving up the powerful playlist of 1.4 that made me love Amarok just to enjoy how good 2.0 looks and integrates with KDE4.
Now I really understand what you meant with "2.0 is only the start of a long series of Amarok 2 releases"