Thursday, October 4. 2007
Playing with the playlist - Part II
My recent post about some of the features of the new playlist in Amarok2 seemed to really inspire people to come up with visual concepts that would make the playlist not only functional, but also look really sweet. One person in particular submitted a really cool mockup and was later kind enough to provide this as an svg file. After spending an evening turning this svg into a series of elements that could be used for rendering different elements in the playlist, as well as tuning the color scheme a little, as the grey color in the mockup looks really sweet on its own but clashed pretty hard with the blue shades currently used in Amarok, I present you with this:
In general we have not settled on a color scheme yet, so we might still go back to the grey, but for now this looks better in the overall scheme I think. Some of the elements of the mockup has not been implemented. most notably the collapsing of album art. The reason for this is that the current plan is to make the information displayed for items in the playlist customizable, which means that there will be a way t disable album headers completely. The text layout still needs a bit of work still as I think having the text in the album header in two lines might look better..
Also, I have spent some time making the playlist handle multiple groups in a more fluent way. This means, for instance, that it is now possible to "chop" a group in half by adding a foreign element to the middle of it. In the following screenshot, track 4 from the first album group has been dragged into the middle of the second group:
So far, I think this both looks good and promises great usability. But now the real work starts! Stuff like dragging an entire album around or removing an entire album from the playlist needs to be implemented. I am also still undecided about whether it should be possible to collapse the tracks in an album group to make it take up less space, which usually means that I am going to prototype it at some point to see how well it works. So there is lots of stuff still to do!
In general we have not settled on a color scheme yet, so we might still go back to the grey, but for now this looks better in the overall scheme I think. Some of the elements of the mockup has not been implemented. most notably the collapsing of album art. The reason for this is that the current plan is to make the information displayed for items in the playlist customizable, which means that there will be a way t disable album headers completely. The text layout still needs a bit of work still as I think having the text in the album header in two lines might look better..
Also, I have spent some time making the playlist handle multiple groups in a more fluent way. This means, for instance, that it is now possible to "chop" a group in half by adding a foreign element to the middle of it. In the following screenshot, track 4 from the first album group has been dragged into the middle of the second group:
So far, I think this both looks good and promises great usability. But now the real work starts! Stuff like dragging an entire album around or removing an entire album from the playlist needs to be implemented. I am also still undecided about whether it should be possible to collapse the tracks in an album group to make it take up less space, which usually means that I am going to prototype it at some point to see how well it works. So there is lots of stuff still to do!
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On the topic of colour schemes - we really need to not hardcode colours... That includes SVG files and the playlist. But for now, it looks snazzy 
Wouldn't it be nice to provide a structure where you can maintain many colour schemes as themes for amarok? Is that possible with the fonts and stuff in amarok-2? So that everyone could customize their amarok look providing some svgs and a config file which contains the other needed stuff?
It looks beautiful here's some comments from the peanut gallery:
_ the colors do need to be customizable. People with accessibility needs may find the chosen colors difficult to read.
_ why is there a horizontal scrollbar? it looks like everything is visible.
_ if you move the album art to the right so it's past the curve of the border, you can center the cover vertically in the album bar. That might look a little nicer, currently the album art is closer to the bottom than the top.
Really awesome work, Amarok is sure to get people excited about KDE, and open source in general.
Thanks.
_ the colors do need to be customizable. People with accessibility needs may find the chosen colors difficult to read.
_ why is there a horizontal scrollbar? it looks like everything is visible.
_ if you move the album art to the right so it's past the curve of the border, you can center the cover vertically in the album bar. That might look a little nicer, currently the album art is closer to the bottom than the top.
Really awesome work, Amarok is sure to get people excited about KDE, and open source in general.
Thanks.
Hi,
1: Yes.. We are talking about the simplest way to do this. it will happen.
2. It was provided by default. I just removed it.
3. Polish will still come
Dan,
1: Yes.. We are talking about the simplest way to do this. it will happen.
2. It was provided by default. I just removed it.
3. Polish will still come
Dan,
It looks very good !
I'm sure making the playlist customizable will please a lot of amarok1 fans, and calm down some trolls.
I'm sure making the playlist customizable will please a lot of amarok1 fans, and calm down some trolls.
That looks really nice ... I would have a question though ... My playlist isn't grouped up in albums as I just have a melody or two from 1 album. I wonder if my playlist would look that good with this layout?! 
If you look at the second screenshot, the highlighted track is not in an album-group.
It would still look good.. see previous screenshots to get an idea of what it looks like if all you have is single tracks.
The playlist groups thing looks really awesome. Lets you show nearly as much information as the old playlist, while taking up half as much space horizontally and not much more vertically. Could be unwieldy for people who load their entire collection into the playlist /and/ have it shuffled, but does anyone do that? (Honest question. I do load my entire collection, but I keep it nice and orderly.)
I often load a ton of music into amarok and then hit the shuffle button to make a nice playlist of random music.
I find it nicer than using the random feature because I can close amarok and restart playing from where i left off.
I find it nicer than using the random feature because I can close amarok and restart playing from where i left off.
Looks really good,
I'm not sure if If I would prefer single track albums to be displayed in the same way as multi-track ones. Would take up a little more space, but visually it would be more consistent and the track title would always be left aligned rather than sometimes indented due to the album cover.
I'm not sure if If I would prefer single track albums to be displayed in the same way as multi-track ones. Would take up a little more space, but visually it would be more consistent and the track title would always be left aligned rather than sometimes indented due to the album cover.
Thinking about it a bit more, a solution would be to move the album cover to the right hand side
It looks amazing, congratulations!
As a request, could it be possible to add all the things the mockup have?
(I mean the "view album cover" and "hide album cover")
If you look at the mockup closely you'll see that one the tracks are grouped the container track has a rounded end, it make more obvious that it contains the others.
Again, cheers, I was a little skeptic about the new playlist, and now I believe it will be quite nice!
As a request, could it be possible to add all the things the mockup have?
(I mean the "view album cover" and "hide album cover")
If you look at the mockup closely you'll see that one the tracks are grouped the container track has a rounded end, it make more obvious that it contains the others.
Again, cheers, I was a little skeptic about the new playlist, and now I believe it will be quite nice!
Well, there is another system for doing this in the mockup i did which might work a little better as it does it for the entire playlist (turn the entire album art column off, and put it on left/right). But don't worry, it's being taken care of
(if you are wondering if something is missing in this and if it is planned for inclusion, check out my mockup in the previous blog entry, it should answer your questions on that topic - also, i will be doing a blog entry at some point on the subject of what's missing and differing in this version of the playlist when compared to my mockup... and i suspect some further reasonings on why i mocked it up that way )
(if you are wondering if something is missing in this and if it is planned for inclusion, check out my mockup in the previous blog entry, it should answer your questions on that topic - also, i will be doing a blog entry at some point on the subject of what's missing and differing in this version of the playlist when compared to my mockup... and i suspect some further reasonings on why i mocked it up that way
)
If you want so more ideas on possible ways to present the playlist, have a look at theses foobar2000 user configs:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=49783
http://fooblog2000.com/
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=49783
http://fooblog2000.com/
I like this very much.
Greet work.
Amarok is shaping up quite quickly!
About the possibility to fold albums... well, what's the use case?
In a playlist, people usually load what they want to play, so I assume they want to see the tracks, not hide them.
And playlists are transient enough for not to bother organising them too much (choose what to show, what to fold seems superfluous...).
And the "Show/Hide Album Cover" on each album is useless, IMHO.
Like I posted on kde-look.org mockup page:
It only make gain a few pixels (hidding a cover only frees 1/3 of the cover vertical space).
People will either always want to have the cover shown, or always hidden.
So this should be an Amarok option.
Or better: a "column" to show or not, globally for the whole playlist.
We can't start to clutter the interface with so small features.
Of course, it's only my opinion and it's worth what it is!
As a developer, I now tend to always requiere a valid use case before implementing a feature. Because in the end the application can quickly become cluttered with seldomly useful things.
Feel free to do what you want, you certainly know better the project than me
Greet work.
Amarok is shaping up quite quickly!
About the possibility to fold albums... well, what's the use case?
In a playlist, people usually load what they want to play, so I assume they want to see the tracks, not hide them.
And playlists are transient enough for not to bother organising them too much (choose what to show, what to fold seems superfluous...).
And the "Show/Hide Album Cover" on each album is useless, IMHO.
Like I posted on kde-look.org mockup page:
It only make gain a few pixels (hidding a cover only frees 1/3 of the cover vertical space).
People will either always want to have the cover shown, or always hidden.
So this should be an Amarok option.
Or better: a "column" to show or not, globally for the whole playlist.
We can't start to clutter the interface with so small features.
Of course, it's only my opinion and it's worth what it is!
As a developer, I now tend to always requiere a valid use case before implementing a feature. Because in the end the application can quickly become cluttered with seldomly useful things.
Feel free to do what you want, you certainly know better the project than me
Wow, now we're talking. There is still a lot work left, sure, but this is a big step forward. Far from perfect, but considering how much I like the "current" playlist, I can't imagine how much I will love Amarok2.
However, I request one thing in the next screenshot: Amarok funky-monkey theme!
However, I request one thing in the next screenshot: Amarok funky-monkey theme!
With a minimize/maximize album function it would be awesome.
So by default the album is minimized and you get the album artwork and name of the album. Click on an album entry and the songs of that album scrolls down. click again and they scroll up.
So by default the album is minimized and you get the album artwork and name of the album. Click on an album entry and the songs of that album scrolls down. click again and they scroll up.
this look really nice, but what happens when you have an album where each track has a different art and/or artist?
(a few compilations have that)
(a few compilations have that)
That is a really good question! What would you propose should happen?
Honestly, I don't know how well the underlying collection architecture would handle this. Right now a cover is associated with an album an not a track, IIRC.
In my mind this is a bit of a corner case, as it will not be relevant for 99,9% of albums that we come across, so it is not something that has been given a lot of thought yet.
Honestly, I don't know how well the underlying collection architecture would handle this. Right now a cover is associated with an album an not a track, IIRC.
In my mind this is a bit of a corner case, as it will not be relevant for 99,9% of albums that we come across, so it is not something that has been given a lot of thought yet.
Give an option to switch back to the older, and IMHO far superior, playlist style?
I gust can't get it. Amarok 1.4.7 had a great and convenient play list. You've spend (I mean all Amarok developers) a lot of time "improving" play list. As far as I know you even had a dedicated summer of code project for this. And what is the result? After so many time of codding what I can actually see is winamp like play list with some images. The only difference is that items are grouped. But nobody can't get how items should be grouped correctly(see post #17).
I just can't understand why it took you so long to create a play list which is much more limited than the old version was.
Guys please read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_principle
I have a feeling that Amarok is going to follow the way of Konqueror. It becomes so incorrectly complex and not convenient for average users that nobody will actually like and will be happy when it is replaced by something new.
I just can't understand why it took you so long to create a play list which is much more limited than the old version was.
Guys please read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_principle
I have a feeling that Amarok is going to follow the way of Konqueror. It becomes so incorrectly complex and not convenient for average users that nobody will actually like and will be happy when it is replaced by something new.
The playlist in Amrok 1.4.x is really great for one main thing: Having a lot of tracks in it that can be sorted and arranged according to a variety of criteria (Only, this causes performance problems as the old playlist is not really that well suited for this internally). The thing is, this has really not been necessary, or even the most powerful, way to use Amarok for quite some time. Dynamic playlists handles 95% of the use cases that require the level of control over huge playlists found in the 1.4 series. Because of this, we have decided to make a new kind of playlist that works better with Dynamic playlists, as we really feel this is one of the main features of Amarok. Hopefully, this will actually show some people what we believe is a better and more powerful way of using Amarok.
Now, I am sure you can dream up usecases where the new playlist will just not cut it currently. But... First of all, keep in mind the the new playlist will be quite customizable with regards to the information displayed for each track. Secondly, we have just started using this new playlist in our testing ourselves and are comming up with improvements to the concept all the time. And if it turns out that for some scenarios, it is a serious regression compared to the old playlist, we do have a little ace up our sleeve. If you notice the little star icon in the bottom right corner of the screenshots I posted, this actually enables a very simple prototype playlist view that displays the same data as the new playlist. Now, whether this is something that we will mature into a usable alternative playlist is completely dependent on our experiences using the new playlist. And please, don't start yelling at us for dreaming up concepts that are completely unusable. We do use this ourselves every day and thus are getting quite a good feeling for the usability of it. And anything that just "does not work" will be discarded along the way.
Now, I am sure you can dream up usecases where the new playlist will just not cut it currently. But... First of all, keep in mind the the new playlist will be quite customizable with regards to the information displayed for each track. Secondly, we have just started using this new playlist in our testing ourselves and are comming up with improvements to the concept all the time. And if it turns out that for some scenarios, it is a serious regression compared to the old playlist, we do have a little ace up our sleeve. If you notice the little star icon in the bottom right corner of the screenshots I posted, this actually enables a very simple prototype playlist view that displays the same data as the new playlist. Now, whether this is something that we will mature into a usable alternative playlist is completely dependent on our experiences using the new playlist. And please, don't start yelling at us for dreaming up concepts that are completely unusable. We do use this ourselves every day and thus are getting quite a good feeling for the usability of it. And anything that just "does not work" will be discarded along the way.
What if you put the context tab again in Amarok. When it's active the left panel will only have 3 entries: Music, Lyrics and Artist, and when you click on them, the respective plasmoids in the central panel come to the very front.
But when you click in a different tab, the information shown in the central panel changes, for example if you click on the magnatune tab, then the information about how to buy music or explore magnatune store may appear in a plasmoid in the central panel. For example what if you make a plasmoid in which you can have a playlist with magnatune songs that you can listen to and if you like them, then you drag and drop to the main playlist and a dialog appears so that you can pay for the songs.
You can have also some plasmoid for the media storage device, maybe one that shows what songs you have in your device like the one I described above, and in the left panel, some very simple entries, like one that says, sync, remove, connect, etc. and if requiered more plasmoids for more complicated tasks.
Finally if you click on the collection tab, then the central panel disappears, and you have the old amarok playlist, making drag and drop and organizing your playlist as easy as in the 1.4.x series.
I know the whole idea of the central panel is to give more relevance to what is now the context tab, but since there is now plasma on it maybe you can use all that space to make other thinks in Amarok, not only looking at the artist information, easier.
What do you think?
But when you click in a different tab, the information shown in the central panel changes, for example if you click on the magnatune tab, then the information about how to buy music or explore magnatune store may appear in a plasmoid in the central panel. For example what if you make a plasmoid in which you can have a playlist with magnatune songs that you can listen to and if you like them, then you drag and drop to the main playlist and a dialog appears so that you can pay for the songs.
You can have also some plasmoid for the media storage device, maybe one that shows what songs you have in your device like the one I described above, and in the left panel, some very simple entries, like one that says, sync, remove, connect, etc. and if requiered more plasmoids for more complicated tasks.
Finally if you click on the collection tab, then the central panel disappears, and you have the old amarok playlist, making drag and drop and organizing your playlist as easy as in the 1.4.x series.
I know the whole idea of the central panel is to give more relevance to what is now the context tab, but since there is now plasma on it maybe you can use all that space to make other thinks in Amarok, not only looking at the artist information, easier.
What do you think?
I dont think we will put the context tab back in, but it is vry much the plan to move as much context information about your current action into the context area, much like you describe. For example, when browsing a service, like magnatune, instead of having it show artist and album information in a little window at the bottom of the bowser, it should show it in the context area. This will also make it possible to display a lot of related information that there is simply n room for displaying currently.
The one showstopper for me, currently, is that there is no really good way to nder html in the context view (And no, using QGraphicsTextItems does not cut it...
The one showstopper for me, currently, is that there is no really good way to nder html in the context view (And no, using QGraphicsTextItems does not cut it...
i don't care about album names or track numbers: 90% of my music is not from albums but from singels with many tracks not even released as physical copies
what makes the current playlist so sweet is the ability to sort it by attributes such as year & filetype, although it still pains me that whenever i load up a filelist based on, say genre, then it sorts the tracks like this
1 artist
2 album
3 song
so the tracknames do not list up alphabetically next to artist names ;(
since all the mumbo jumbo album name, art & track numbers can be seen in the central part of the new amarok, will i be able to customise the new playlist so that it only displays:
artist name - song name (alphabetical order) - time ?
what makes the current playlist so sweet is the ability to sort it by attributes such as year & filetype, although it still pains me that whenever i load up a filelist based on, say genre, then it sorts the tracks like this
1 artist
2 album
3 song
so the tracknames do not list up alphabetically next to artist names ;(
since all the mumbo jumbo album name, art & track numbers can be seen in the central part of the new amarok, will i be able to customise the new playlist so that it only displays:
artist name - song name (alphabetical order) - time ?
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