Revolution Music Player
Taking after what great work Amarok has done over the years, it has come to my attention the different changes that Amarok has gone through. Now, with their current version 2.3.1 I am left wondering about what more could be done with the graphical interface. Amarok has wonderful technologies underneath as a music player. Amarok is also neatly connected to KDE widgets that display information for just about anything.
However, Amarok has received critics of many sources asking for stronger work with their graphical interface. I thought this opened the window for others to create something that could potentially become the next Amarok. Probably Amarok 3.
Amarok currently has a lot of things going on in its interface. There are three main panels. Starting from the left Amarok features a collection section which also includes internet music services, playlists and local file search. In the middle section there is a widget area which shows information about the currently playing track, album or the band (through Wikipedia). The far right shows a playing playlist.
This could be confusing from the files shown on the far right from one's collection, but this list on the right is the actual list of tracks that are being played. At the bottom of this playing playlist there are buttons to control this playlist. At the top there is the play button and the track progress bar and a volume button. The very bottom shows information as well on the currently playing track. Much like a status bar.
One thing that I find interesting about this particular version of Amarok is the repetitive display of information about the currently playing track. For example:
No more than 5 times on the shot you see information about the currently playing track. Maybe that is a little visually excessive.
Another interesting thing comes from the way one is to add music to one's playlist. Users have to either drag or double click items on the far left which will then load at the far right to start playing atop. I just don't seem to make sense of the motions that music has to travel in order to be played. I this respect, I am more comfortable with Banshee or even iTunes, both of which play what you click. A very transparent playback of the files you see.
Amarok does a lot of amazing things and has great tools to work with your music. Probably, what needs to happen is to have Amarok control the amount of tools displayed on the screen. Reducing the amount of tools leaving only the most commonly used ones would be good.
But what can change? I tried to simplify the graphical interface for Amarok, giving some emphasis on the creation of playlists and the use of widgets. So I will provide some descriptions to what you are to see next.
Here is a change. I took after what iTunes and Windows Media Player do with their music collection, to group it with an album picture and a list of tracks on the side. From this list of tracks one does the same that the current Amarok does with playlist creation; double click or dragging the tracks onto the playlist area. Also notice the change with widgets, they are now located at the bottom of the window. Clicking through them will bring up the widgets that you like.
The Collection area then slides through the different widgets, stats, track information, lyrics, wikipedia information, youtube videos, etc. It would be good, the collection area disappears and the space is taken by the widgets information. This is the other way of seeing one's music collection, or file collections. A plain list.
Or an Album Cover presentation. All of these have a filter bar atop and buttons to change from the different collection view.
Next up is the playlist content generation. First is the list of tracks which are being played and also a nice cover artwork scrolling. Much like what Songbird did long ago with one of its plugins. Just click the dynamic playlist button and songs will be played based on what Amarok decides.
You can browse your saved playlists and double click on the ones you saved and play them.
Here is the addition I would like to see. To share what you listen to on Facebook, Twitter, or just about any other service that is made available through widgets.
Another way of having Amarok play your music is by turning it into a widget itself. You can hit minimal mode and a widget-like interface will show up and stick on the desktop. You can switch back to any of the other interfaces or tweak the interface.
Next is the fullscreen interface. With computers having more fullscreen interfaces (AKA Mac OSX Lion, Netbook interfaces, Unity). I remember that long ago, Amarok had a plugin that would launch your music in fullscreen mode and it was awesome looking. What I am suggesting is something along those lines as well as the addition of visualizations on the background.
This is the default configuration with covers and controls spread on the interface.
Next is the full image for the covers.
And last is a Karaoke (maybe) idea in which the lyrics are shown so that you can sing along to your songs.
Obviously this is something that can change, songs have lyrics which are very long can have some sort of auto scroll, much like ultimate-guitar.com. Obviously this is not perfect. But I tried to make it simpler and retain the same functionalities that the current Amarok has.
Andy
However, Amarok has received critics of many sources asking for stronger work with their graphical interface. I thought this opened the window for others to create something that could potentially become the next Amarok. Probably Amarok 3.
Amarok currently has a lot of things going on in its interface. There are three main panels. Starting from the left Amarok features a collection section which also includes internet music services, playlists and local file search. In the middle section there is a widget area which shows information about the currently playing track, album or the band (through Wikipedia). The far right shows a playing playlist.
This could be confusing from the files shown on the far right from one's collection, but this list on the right is the actual list of tracks that are being played. At the bottom of this playing playlist there are buttons to control this playlist. At the top there is the play button and the track progress bar and a volume button. The very bottom shows information as well on the currently playing track. Much like a status bar.
One thing that I find interesting about this particular version of Amarok is the repetitive display of information about the currently playing track. For example:
No more than 5 times on the shot you see information about the currently playing track. Maybe that is a little visually excessive.
Another interesting thing comes from the way one is to add music to one's playlist. Users have to either drag or double click items on the far left which will then load at the far right to start playing atop. I just don't seem to make sense of the motions that music has to travel in order to be played. I this respect, I am more comfortable with Banshee or even iTunes, both of which play what you click. A very transparent playback of the files you see.
Amarok does a lot of amazing things and has great tools to work with your music. Probably, what needs to happen is to have Amarok control the amount of tools displayed on the screen. Reducing the amount of tools leaving only the most commonly used ones would be good.
But what can change? I tried to simplify the graphical interface for Amarok, giving some emphasis on the creation of playlists and the use of widgets. So I will provide some descriptions to what you are to see next.
Here is a change. I took after what iTunes and Windows Media Player do with their music collection, to group it with an album picture and a list of tracks on the side. From this list of tracks one does the same that the current Amarok does with playlist creation; double click or dragging the tracks onto the playlist area. Also notice the change with widgets, they are now located at the bottom of the window. Clicking through them will bring up the widgets that you like.
The Collection area then slides through the different widgets, stats, track information, lyrics, wikipedia information, youtube videos, etc. It would be good, the collection area disappears and the space is taken by the widgets information. This is the other way of seeing one's music collection, or file collections. A plain list.
Next up is the playlist content generation. First is the list of tracks which are being played and also a nice cover artwork scrolling. Much like what Songbird did long ago with one of its plugins. Just click the dynamic playlist button and songs will be played based on what Amarok decides.
You can browse your saved playlists and double click on the ones you saved and play them.
Here is the addition I would like to see. To share what you listen to on Facebook, Twitter, or just about any other service that is made available through widgets.
Another way of having Amarok play your music is by turning it into a widget itself. You can hit minimal mode and a widget-like interface will show up and stick on the desktop. You can switch back to any of the other interfaces or tweak the interface.
Next is the fullscreen interface. With computers having more fullscreen interfaces (AKA Mac OSX Lion, Netbook interfaces, Unity). I remember that long ago, Amarok had a plugin that would launch your music in fullscreen mode and it was awesome looking. What I am suggesting is something along those lines as well as the addition of visualizations on the background.
This is the default configuration with covers and controls spread on the interface.
Next is the full image for the covers.
And last is a Karaoke (maybe) idea in which the lyrics are shown so that you can sing along to your songs.
Obviously this is something that can change, songs have lyrics which are very long can have some sort of auto scroll, much like ultimate-guitar.com. Obviously this is not perfect. But I tried to make it simpler and retain the same functionalities that the current Amarok has.
Andy
Written by Anditosan
15 comments:
Well, yes, Amarok has great features but it seems nobody spent a thought on usability. Its UI really is a bloody mess and needs a re-design urgently.
Hi,
thanks for your ideas for Amarok.
They seem nice at first sight but there are problems with them. There are reasons for doing things the way we did.
We are aware that the UI has problems and we'd like to improve there. If you want to make a real difference and work out the problems with your suggestions to make them ready for integration in Amarok please send an email to amarok-devel at kde org. It'd be great to work on that.
I do not doubt that the Amarok devel team thought out the UI decisions it took. They are a great team which delivers a great music player.
I would love to participate from the Amarok devel team, except last time I tried, the team did not take my suggestions into account. It seemed like my voice was unheard. So I would first like to know what the willingness to redesign Amarok is? Is the team trying to change the UI? What is their attitude?
Andy
"There are three main panels. Starting from the left..."
By default, you can move the panels wherever you want. My layout looks nothing like that.
"No more than 5 times on the shot you see information about the currently playing track. Maybe that is a little visually excessive."
I agree that the statusbar is probably not necessary, and the context view could probably hide the title when the statusbar is in slim mode. On the other hand the playlist very likely is not showing the current track (for instance if your are browsing for another track), and both the context view and the control bar can be set to hide the current track.
"Users have to either drag or double click items on the far left which will then load at the far right to start playing atop."
That is why amarok has context-sensitive drop targets that appear when you drag tracks to the middle. You never need to drag tracks all the way across. And even that is only a problem in the default layout, mine is different.
In your mockup, the focus is in the collection rather than the playlist. But the whole point of Amarok 2 was to focus on the playlist rather than the collection. That was a conscious decision made by the developers.
As for the collection area disappearing, that is how I have amarok 2.3 set up on my computer.
It looks like your main suggestion is changing the collection browser from a list view to an icon view, and/or allow the same thing for the playlist. This may be a worthwhile option, and has been suggested elsewhere.
Otherwise it looks like it is primarily just a reorganization of the panels, which you can already do (although the default layout is possibly open to discussion).
There are intellectual property concerns with a coverflow-like effect, and the Amarok developers have already said they don't really want to just copy it wholesale. There has been some work on alternatives.
There is someone already working on a plasma media center system, this is probably a more appropriate place for the full-screen interface rather than being part of amarok itself.
There are already several plasma widgets for amarok, at least on of which (playwolf) already essentially allows you to minimize it to a widget.
Thank you for taking the time to look at these mockups. I agree with you that there is an emphasis on the Playlist section of Amarok whereas the collection section is less important.
I just imagine myself working with my playlist. The motion always starts with part of the local collection, the internet and other areas where one gets the music. Ultimately, what Amarok will do with the playlist is just to play it. How much change will I want from the currently playing music? I think very little. So, that was my reasoning, I put all the music sources on the left and then the music playing area adjacent to it on the right. While your playlist is playing, you are left to work with the right as you please, or take a look at the lyrics, wikipedia, youtube, or any other widget.
I did see the widgets showing in the middle area, but I can't help but get confused with what to do while I am holding the click and the music is on the mouse pointer. It just seems too much travelling for so many items.
On the idea of widgets, I believe there is plenty of room for creating widgets that work perfectly with Amarok. Surely, there could be a fullscreen mode for Amarok as well as an independent widget.
Thank you for your comments. :D
"I would love to participate from the Amarok devel team, except last time I tried, the team did not take my suggestions into account."
Developers cannot implement every suggestion by every person. Sometimes they haven't had time yet, sometimes they think the improvement is small compared to other changes that need to be made, sometimes the suggestions cause more problems than they fix, sometimes the suggestions don't fit with the direction they want to take the software, sometimes the suggestions are infeasible to implement, sometimes they are just bad ideas.
Just because they didn't accept your ideas doesn't mean they are not open to suggestions, there are many other possible reasons.
"The motion always starts with part of the local collection, the internet and other areas where one gets the music. Ultimately, what Amarok will do with the playlist is just to play it. How much change will I want from the currently playing music?"
I almost never touch the collection. I have my list of songs, and I play them. I sometimes change the playlist, but working with the collection itself is very rare for me. That is why I generally have the collection hidden entirely.
If your focus is on the collection, you can already reorganize the panels to give it more emphasis. But even if your focus is on the collection, most of the time you are listening to the music. So I think focusing on what you are listening to is appropriate.
"While your playlist is playing, you are left to work with the right as you please,"
But, as I said, I think the idea was that you would rarely need to work with the collection, people spend much more time playing music than making major changes to what is playing.
"It just seems too much travelling for so many items."
The traveling is often less the way Amarok has it set up.
"Surely, there could be a fullscreen mode for Amarok as well as an independent widget."
Considering the small size of the Amarok team, I think their time would be much better suited polishing the normal windowed interface, and not duplicate the work of people who are working on dedicated full-screen interfaces.
Yeah, sorry. I think I need to edit that comment. I mixed up the jargon so it did not come out very clear. Sorry toddrme2178. And yes, I understand it if Amarok does not include all of "my" suggestions. It is a development process anyway. That is not what I meant to say, rather I meant to say that when I tried to suggest they did not seem very open to change. They had a clear goal with their interface and, at that time, they only wanted someone who could tweak the buttons and colors. So I decided to leave it alone, but alas, Amarok 3 should be popping up here soon, so it's time for ideas. That's what I am trying to exploit.
At the same time, please bear in mind that I am not asking people to "work extra," I am just letting my mind think freely on what, I think, could be a possible Amarok interface. Whether they take it or not is not my responsibility. How they react to this mockups is up to them. I am only conceptualizing ideas, that's all.
Again, the Amarok team is amazing. Great code, great thinking. I like them tons. That's why Amarok is the best music player out there.
Andy
Fair enough.
Are you aware KDE has a specially-designed forum specifically for feature suggestions and mock-ups like this?
http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php
I think you are more likely to get good feedback there than on an openSUSE-specific blog aggregater.
Yeah, I have posted on it a couple of times. I like it. Just that my ideas didn't get tons of attention. I like my blog too to post ideas :D Hey Todd, what teams are you part of?
Try Clementine or MPD along with ncmpcpp.
You can configure MPD to use PulseAudio, install MPDris (now playing applets, Ayatana sound indicator) and configure ncmpcpp to send notifications using notify-send (looks nice in KDE4 as Plasma supports it; you can use basic HTML).
This is just a workaround for Amarok's big and unsuable interface.
GNOME's equivalent of Amarok is currently Banshee, which is the same or even more powerful, but its interface is much simpler and comfortable and not that ass-painful as Amarok's one.
@Andy spoke my mind and I have nothing to add. As much as I love amarok I can't help feeling the UI is a nightmare. Beside too many things trying to grab my attention, and duplicate information all over the place. It is also not easy or straight forward to do simple things like creating a playlist. or adding a track to a "playlist". also sending a file to a connected device from a playlist is *almost* impossible(cus I have not figure out how it can be done) I mean its not that this things can't be done. Just that it takes so much travel to get them done. Amarok is the best Music player out there. But it needs to do alot to make some of its powerful features exposed and available to the user. Also the UI could be much more simpler and less noisy out of the box. Just IMHO.
Ever tried YaRock ?
http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/YaRock?content=129372
Cheers
I liked it. It looks like it's the first step of what I was trying to show here on this posting, simplicity. But it looks like it does not have the widget capabilities that Amarok has.
I am a manager on the kde forums.
Post a Comment