Re: [Usability] A few ideas to improve searches in Rhythmbox

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 11:39, John Spray wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 10:14, Julien Olivier wrote:
> > Search [        ] among |songs from [name of the artist]|
> >                         |songs from [name of the album] |
> >                         |all songs                      |
> I'm not sure I understand how you're suggesting that interface be laid
> out onscreen.  Is this to be an extra list box in the main window?
> 

I was thinking of a 1-line select box, like the one next to "save to
folder" in GNOME's files save dialog. But maybe a radio box would be
better, even if it takes more room (the advantage being that you can see
all the choices at the same time...).

> I agree that the search box presents UI problems.  Here are a couple of
> ideas of my own:
> 
> -When the song list contains no items, but there is text in the search
> box, present a message in the list box along the lines of "Search for
> 'penny lane' found no results".  This should alleviate most of the
> potential confusion about why no songs are listed, although it doesn't
> eliminate the minor annoyance when the user realises they've got to
> manually clear the search box.
> 

Maybe a better solution could be to show "Search for 'penny lane' found
no results, press _here_ to clear the search"...

> -Change the functionality of the search box.  Given that its primary
> function is for search the whole library (since in most cases a
> particular artist can be searched by eye), perhaps this should be made
> its only function?  A longer label such as "Search the whole library",
> and when there's text in that box, disable the artist/album/genre lists
> and have the song list present results from the whole library.

> My second suggestion is clearly a sacrifice of functionality for clearer
> UI: its implementation would depends entirely on how severe people think
> the search box UI problems are.

I wouldn't mind the loss of functionality that your proposition would
induce, as I only use the search box to look for music in the whole
collection. But I guess it could disturb other users...

-- 
Julien Olivier <julo altern org>