Almost all those problems could be solved with tabs…
This remarkable HCI insight comes from a comment on Amarok’s blog, where people have been very busy trashing the latest Amarok2 UI mockup which happens to be, let’s be honest because it’s only a mockup anyway, quite horrible.
Wasted place all over the place, too small text placed within too large widgets, inconsistent style, a festival of duplicated information in the playlist view on the right, the ever-dreaded tabs on the left (yes, tabs are usually evil).
Seriously.
Someone has to wake up and fix this but hey, guess what, it’s just a mockup, so they might!
What is more interesting, however, is the shift of focus in the way users are supposed to interact with the player. The developers make it clear that they want to make the “context browser” central, and reduce the importance of the playlist. I’ve been advocating something similar since the early days of Collections (already in my initial manifesto), but I find it bold of them to push this change in an already widely popular program.
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