Monday, March 26. 2007
Amarok2: On Magnatune album info, moods and cloud views
So, thought it was time to post another little update on my work on Amarok2, and as a bonus throw in a bunch of screenshots!
Having "ported" the Magnatune store to the new service framework as discussed in the articel The Road to KDE 4: Amarok 2 Development is Underway, it was time to add some new features for a change. I recently found out that Magnatune has added a descriptive note about many of their albums to their site, and when I asked, they were happy to add this info to the XML file I use so this info could also be displayed in Amarok. Nothing revolutionary, but still a nice little addition I think.
When Magnatune added the album notes to the XML files, they also added "mood" tags to many of their individual tracks. A track can be tagged with several moods that somehow all relates to the track. One track could for instance have the moods: "track has vocals", "sexy", "night or nocturnal", "menacing", "dark", "mysterious or strange".
I really wanted to be able to display these moods in a nice way as they provide an excellent way to start exploring the very diverse Magnatune catalog, but I could not find a way to do this in the current Magnatune Store gui. So I decided to try something entirely new. Seb recently introduced a new proposal for how to handle the Context View. Instead of using a HTML part, the new prototype uses a Qt4 QGraphicsView. This allows for a whole range of new ways of displaying context data. To try this out, and learn something new in the process, I created a simple cloud view to show weighted items. In this cloud view the Magnatune Store can display moods weighted by the number of occurrences in tracks of each mood. Clicking one of these moods adds 10 random Magnatune preview songs tagged with the selected mood to the playlist. The result looks something like this:
For now the cloud only shows moods with more than 20 occurrences. There are MANY different moods in the Magnatune database, and displaying them all would make the cloud view a couple of pages long... To spice things up a bit, I added a nice little fade effect when moving the mouse through the cloud. The following picture does not really do this effect justice, but it gives the impression of what I mean:
These are just the small things that I am playing around with at the moment. There are many really cool things happening with regards to Amarok2 at the moment, so we all have something to look forward to!
Having "ported" the Magnatune store to the new service framework as discussed in the articel The Road to KDE 4: Amarok 2 Development is Underway, it was time to add some new features for a change. I recently found out that Magnatune has added a descriptive note about many of their albums to their site, and when I asked, they were happy to add this info to the XML file I use so this info could also be displayed in Amarok. Nothing revolutionary, but still a nice little addition I think.
When Magnatune added the album notes to the XML files, they also added "mood" tags to many of their individual tracks. A track can be tagged with several moods that somehow all relates to the track. One track could for instance have the moods: "track has vocals", "sexy", "night or nocturnal", "menacing", "dark", "mysterious or strange".
I really wanted to be able to display these moods in a nice way as they provide an excellent way to start exploring the very diverse Magnatune catalog, but I could not find a way to do this in the current Magnatune Store gui. So I decided to try something entirely new. Seb recently introduced a new proposal for how to handle the Context View. Instead of using a HTML part, the new prototype uses a Qt4 QGraphicsView. This allows for a whole range of new ways of displaying context data. To try this out, and learn something new in the process, I created a simple cloud view to show weighted items. In this cloud view the Magnatune Store can display moods weighted by the number of occurrences in tracks of each mood. Clicking one of these moods adds 10 random Magnatune preview songs tagged with the selected mood to the playlist. The result looks something like this:
The new cloud view prototype showing a number of Magnatune track moods
For now the cloud only shows moods with more than 20 occurrences. There are MANY different moods in the Magnatune database, and displaying them all would make the cloud view a couple of pages long... To spice things up a bit, I added a nice little fade effect when moving the mouse through the cloud. The following picture does not really do this effect justice, but it gives the impression of what I mean:
The fading trail when moving the mouse fast across the cloud view
These are just the small things that I am playing around with at the moment. There are many really cool things happening with regards to Amarok2 at the moment, so we all have something to look forward to!
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Hey that's cool!
As an user addicted to Amarok I have to tell you developers that the new interface doesn't seems very good. Actually I hate it! I don't know if you have done some research about how do the users actually use amarok, but I can tell you my experience: all works around the playlist.
So that's what I want to see, really. The playlist and some context information. amarok is like konqueror but for songs only and heavily specialized. Imagine if one day Konqueror gets the files widget a 1/3 of the screen: you wouldn'tbe happy. Perhaps you want to force the user to use a smaller playlist, but I'm sceptic: normally I put all my songs in the playlist, and then I filter. What I'm sure noone needs is a three columns amarok.
Actually having a look at the interface, it seems you can collapse the left column so maybe the interface is not that bad.. but I would hide it by default so that users don't get a "cluttered" impression of this piece of art that is our beloved player =)
As an user addicted to Amarok I have to tell you developers that the new interface doesn't seems very good. Actually I hate it! I don't know if you have done some research about how do the users actually use amarok, but I can tell you my experience: all works around the playlist.
So that's what I want to see, really. The playlist and some context information. amarok is like konqueror but for songs only and heavily specialized. Imagine if one day Konqueror gets the files widget a 1/3 of the screen: you wouldn'tbe happy. Perhaps you want to force the user to use a smaller playlist, but I'm sceptic: normally I put all my songs in the playlist, and then I filter. What I'm sure noone needs is a three columns amarok.
Actually having a look at the interface, it seems you can collapse the left column so maybe the interface is not that bad.. but I would hide it by default so that users don't get a "cluttered" impression of this piece of art that is our beloved player =)
Are you aware that this software is under heavy refactoring ?
Please let the developers do their job and, when it'll be time to rework the user interface I'm pretty sure the Amarok team will be happy to hear from users feedback.
Please let the developers do their job and, when it'll be time to rework the user interface I'm pretty sure the Amarok team will be happy to hear from users feedback.
Yes I know =) I was trying to be constructive at precisely at this development stage
I agree with Eduardo, the screenshot shown makes me want to shoot myself in the head before replacing Amarok with Quod Libet. Please be sure to make this clutter an option, the interface is fine in 1.4.5
I was afraid this was going to happen...
The following has been said about a 100 times by now. I seriously considered pointing this out in the blog entry as well, but I had (misplaced it seems) faith that people had gotten the message by now:
Amarok2 is under VERY heavy early development at the moment. The screenshot was meant to show the cloud view feature, and thats it. If you look closely at the rest of the screenshot, you will notice that, besides the new 3 vertical pane layout that is being EXPERIMENTED with (as in: we are trying to figure out if it is a good idea or not, and the discussion about this does not belong in this blog but on the Amarok forums, mailing list and IRC channel) at the moment, there are 2 collection browsers rolled into one (the old one and a new Qt4 version), 2 context panes ditto and a host of other ugly/inconsistent/non-functioning GUI elements. This is what a large program in heavy development/refactoring looks like, and it is not supposed to be pretty.
comments like "the screenshot shown makes me want to shoot myself in the head before replacing Amarok ..." at this point in the development cycle does nothing but dissuade developers from posting screenshots at all!
Please allow us to come up with a consistent proposal for a new GUI concept before jumping all over these very early screenshots.
The following has been said about a 100 times by now. I seriously considered pointing this out in the blog entry as well, but I had (misplaced it seems) faith that people had gotten the message by now:
Amarok2 is under VERY heavy early development at the moment. The screenshot was meant to show the cloud view feature, and thats it. If you look closely at the rest of the screenshot, you will notice that, besides the new 3 vertical pane layout that is being EXPERIMENTED with (as in: we are trying to figure out if it is a good idea or not, and the discussion about this does not belong in this blog but on the Amarok forums, mailing list and IRC channel) at the moment, there are 2 collection browsers rolled into one (the old one and a new Qt4 version), 2 context panes ditto and a host of other ugly/inconsistent/non-functioning GUI elements. This is what a large program in heavy development/refactoring looks like, and it is not supposed to be pretty.
comments like "the screenshot shown makes me want to shoot myself in the head before replacing Amarok ..." at this point in the development cycle does nothing but dissuade developers from posting screenshots at all!
Please allow us to come up with a consistent proposal for a new GUI concept before jumping all over these very early screenshots.
I agree with you.
Consulting the users should be done before development, not after.
It makes developers gain time by not re-implementing things over and over.
And you are right Amarok is all about two concepts: the playlist, and the collection browser that feed the playlist.
The collection browser especially need more tought: I want to browse my collection by album, see more detailed information about tracks (album year, track number...) and not be constrained to a small column with only a tree structure with only text.
Only some toughts.
I hope it will help Amarok developers for the new interface.
Consulting the users should be done before development, not after.
It makes developers gain time by not re-implementing things over and over.
And you are right Amarok is all about two concepts: the playlist, and the collection browser that feed the playlist.
The collection browser especially need more tought: I want to browse my collection by album, see more detailed information about tracks (album year, track number...) and not be constrained to a small column with only a tree structure with only text.
Only some toughts.
I hope it will help Amarok developers for the new interface.
Of course the users should be consulted, is there is a time and a place for that. But right now we are all in "playground mode" basically just trying stuff out, trying to make up our own minds which way we should try to move Amarok. And yes, we are well aware that there are many issues revolving around the proposed new interface. Once we have figured out an idea how to overcome these, or has scrapped the concept totally, then is the time for this discussion. Let the developers have their fun in this very early stage of development, it is what keeps us motivated to continue working on a project like Amarok
My main point is, I guess, that this blog entry was meant to discuss a very specific new feature I was playing with, and a discussion about the new context centric interface is way out of scope and most likely will not reach the developers who actually have the largest stake in designing it.
My main point is, I guess, that this blog entry was meant to discuss a very specific new feature I was playing with, and a discussion about the new context centric interface is way out of scope and most likely will not reach the developers who actually have the largest stake in designing it.
I hope the bad comments won't dissuade you from posting new screenshots 
Maybe you should try to crop screenshots in order show ONLY the feature you want to show, so thatthe rest of the "ugly" work-in-progress GUI is hidden.
I think this cloud view is nice !
Thank you for blogging about your progress... And keep faith !
Have a nice day.
Maybe you should try to crop screenshots in order show ONLY the feature you want to show, so thatthe rest of the "ugly" work-in-progress GUI is hidden.
I think this cloud view is nice !
Thank you for blogging about your progress... And keep faith !
Have a nice day.
Thank you!
No, I don't think I will stop posting screenshots of our progress or writing these, I admit, rather infrequent blog entries. I believe strongly in the open part of FOSS development.
It's just a bit annoying that some people take every development screenshot posted as an invitation to start a discussion that, in my opinion, is very premature and belongs elsewhere.
No, I don't think I will stop posting screenshots of our progress or writing these, I admit, rather infrequent blog entries. I believe strongly in the open part of FOSS development.
It's just a bit annoying that some people take every development screenshot posted as an invitation to start a discussion that, in my opinion, is very premature and belongs elsewhere.
AllMusic.com also has "Mood" information which can be stored in the file tag, it would be nice if the importer supported this as well.
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