Monday, September 3. 2007First day on the job!
So, today is officially my first day working as a independent software developer for Magnatune.com.
The deal so far is that for the first two weeks I will be doing basically what I feel will benefit Amarok the most and after that I will start spending some of my time on small introductory task for Magnatune to get acquainted with their site and infrastructure. So far today, besides having to spend 2 hours making Amarok2 compile at all due to some last minute KDE4 API changes, I have made Amarok2 crash a bit less (which basically meant disabling some huge but non essential chunks of code that are not really ready yet) as well giving the new playlist a bit of tender loving care! The playlist now uses the full width available to it and correctly updates itself when an album gets a new cover. This last bit might not sound like much, but it is quite important for being able to display cover images of albums from Magnatune or other online services where the covers are generally downloaded asynchronously and are thus not always available when a track is added to the playlist. This means that when you add a track from an album that does not have a cached album cover available, the playlist will initially show the default no-cover image, and as soon as the real cover has been downloaded, the image will automatically change to the correct one. Oh, and here is the obligatory screenshot:  The day is not over yet, but I think I have gotten off to quite a good start!  Trackbacks
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Don't get me wrong. I love amarok revolutionary 1.4.x interface.
But comparing to this one, this is a bit unoptimized. This large toolbar at top is wasting space. I suggest you put playlist in center, or at least make it possible to do so (make UI really configurable), because mostly it is handy to have large playlist available at most size of screen, context browser (and other stuff displaying info) is somewhat secondary thing to me.
I agree, the playlist is insanely busy and unusable, the whole interface looks like total crap... Less is more!
I would actually tend to agree with you on this point, but then again, it already looks better than it did this morning and it still has a long way to go.
For use with dynamic playlists that do not need to be much longer than 15 tracks, it is going to absolutely rock, for people who like 10k track playlist, not so much so in the current incarnation. We know this and we are looking into options.
Seriously dude, its quite a franchise you have got going there. "Gimme playlist tabs - the forum post", "Gimme playlist tabs - the mailing list post", "Gimme playlist tabs - the blog comments" and even, and the kids love this one, "Gimme playlist tabs - the digg.com story". If nothing else, I admire your persitance!
As you have been told many times already, this is not likely to happen due to a variety of technical and conceptual reasons. Besides, if it was really that easy, and there were really as many users as you sometimes claim, craving it, don't you think someone would have stepped up to the plate and done it?
What about making whole interface based on plasma? Did you think about this?
While we have thought of this, it has been mostly a thought experiment for fun as plasma is just not up to this kind of application writing and might never be. There are just too many thing that we take for granted regarding layouting, scrollbars, standard widgets, etc that are just not there.
On the other hand, since we are discarding the old player window, we are looking into doing a replacement in plasma.
@ Two first comments
No offense, but I don't think these kind of comments are really constructive. Rather, I've seen them in every blog post with a screenshot of Amarok2. Please don't take it personal. I'm just trying to say that some things just get tiring after a while ("I want tabs in Dolpin/Amarok"; "Amarok2's playlist is to small etc.") Specially if that isn't the point of the blog post. If you want to discuss the new interface, I think a more suitable place would be here: http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/468-to-all-the-self-described-critics.html On topic: Nikolaj, sounds great. Wish you good luck with your job
Screenshots of development versions of Amarok2 seems to have that effect, no matter where they pop up... I have grown quite a thick skin regarding this by now.
We are trying to break some new ground, and for some people, moving away from what their ideal app looks like ( or at least they think so, based on a couple of in-development screenshots ). And thanks for the very first on topic reply!
Have you considered using Solid to detect the network status when loading the music store section and then perform the updates automagically? It seems to me that having a bunch of text that tells you to push a button is not really required if you can get the network status easily enough...
Just an idea, and it's something that relates to the music store code Love the work. Cheers
Automatically updating the different services is definitely on my TODO list, right now what is holding me back is actually a lack of an easy way to tell if the Magnatune database needs updating ( such as a last updated tag ) as there is no reason to download the rather large xml file very time I am online.
But now that I am working for Magnatune, adding such an API to their site should be within my means!
Sounds like a good start in your employment, keep at it!
I'm looking forward to Amarok2, the latest tastes make hungry
Nice work. It's such a great benefit to both Amarok and Magnatune to have someone working on both sides of the interface. Now you just need to get someone working on Jamendo. Is there some open standard for the publishing of music store content?
2.0 is starting to take shape by the looks of it. Best of luck with it.
Thanks for all your hard work on Amarok and good luck with the new job!
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