Re: [Banshee-List] Minor Alpha Comments

["Josiah Ritchie" <josiah ritchietribe net>]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 6:45 PM, Allan Day <allanday fastmail fm> wrote:

>  *The notification pop-up*
>
>  I initially found the new countdown timer on the notification pop-up
>  quite confusing. I totally misunderstood what it is supposed to signify!
>
>  The way I read it, the position of the timer next to the 'Play next
>  item' button meant: 'The next item will be played once this timer has
>  counted down'. Clearly, I wasn't thinking very hard about it, but still,
>  that's what I thought.
>
>  One thing that could be helpful would be to place the timer next to the
>  close X in the top right hand corner - that would suggest that the timer
>  relates to the closing of the notification, rather than 'Play next item'.
>
>  Though the timer animation looks very nice, I'm not quite sure what
>  function it serves. All pop-up notifications of this type are temporary.
>  Having the feedback that tells you exactly when it will disappear is
>  useful to some extent, but it is also potentially confusing. Because the
>  same timer isn't present in other pop-up notifications, you are led to
>  believe that this notification is completely different from other
>  notifications, when it's not.

I've appreciated it. It tells me how quickly I need to respond to get
it out of my way or if I need to ignore it because I can't get to it
quickly enough. That has been an annoyance in other pop-up
notifications. I can see how it might be confusing, but with as fast
as it moves and being that it comes up at the beginning of the song,
the confusion can't last very long. The context would rule out it
going to the next song at the end of the animation's cycle. Perhaps
the majority of the confusion related to this would be resolved by the
next item you mention, renaming the button from 'Play next item' to
'Skip this item'. That would contextually put the animation near a
reference to "this item" and would then make sense that you have this
long to make a decision to skip this item.

>  I also wonder whether it would be better to rename the 'Play next item'
>  button to 'Skip this item'. In the context of a pop-up notification,
>  'Play next item' isn't particularly supported by relevant information -
>  it doesn't tell you what the next item is. In comparison, it would be
>  clear what 'Skip this item' refers to, since the details of 'this item'
>  will be displayed in the pop-up itself.

I can see how this makes sense. Doing this might also resolve the
previous enhancement idea. :-)

>  *Window titles*
>
>  At the moment, the format of the window title is: '<Title> (<Artist>)'.
>  For example: 'Rock You (The Roots)'
>
>  To me, brackets doesn't say 'this is the artist'. Hence, to me, they
>  aren't particularly meaningful.
>
>  One solution would be to go for the format of: '<Title> by <Artist>'.
>  For example: 'Rock You by The Roots'. This would have the advantage of
>  conforming to the format of the current item information in the main
>  window (which goes: <Title> by <Artist> from <Album>). Continuity is good!

I like this too. :-)

>  *Browse by current item details*
>
>  When an item is playing, its details are displayed at the top of the
>  window in the format <Title> by <Artist> from <Album>. It would be
>  really nice if clicking <Title>, <Artist>, or <Album> selected the
>  corresponding items. They would become links, more or less.
>
>  Just to be clear, it could work something like this:
>
>  Click on <Title>: the item would be selected and displayed in the item
>  browser
>  Click on <Artist>: the artist would be selected and displayed in the
>  artist browser
>  Click on <Album>: the album would be selected and displayed in the album
>  browser

That sounds like a neat idea, but I'm not sure that many people would
expect it to work that way. I wouldn't but I would enjoy knowing it
worked that way when I found out I guess.

>  *Display of currently playing item*
>
>  It would be really good to have an easy way to navigate to the current
>  item in the browser (in addition to the one outlined above). Clicking on
>  the first column in the item browser would be one way to do this.

How would this be different from what is planned for "Now Playing". As
I understand it, that space would provide information on the currently
playing song. Is that what you are looking for?

JSR/

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