Opinions of User-friendliness in rockbox

[pondlife]

I'll admit to being totally confused

Any suggestion to how Rockbox could function with the playlist viewer as the main screen (without losing any existing functionality).  Or is this just a silly idea?

pondlife

[bascule]

Or is this just a silly idea?

Oh no; it's the only functionality my Rio Karma had that I still miss.

It showed previous track to current +7 or 8 with the current track in bold with full playback/sound controls active.

It was an excellent UI in my opinion.

[Llorean]

I think we need to drop the "Follow Playlist" option, since it suggests different things to different people. Instead I'd like an option that just describes where you go when you leave the WPS with "Stop" or "Select" (one option that covers both). Menu should ALWAYS be "The Menu".

This option should then have at least these choices (in my opinion) but named more intuitively hopefully: "Playlist viewer with current song selected", "Filetree with current song selected" and "The screen I called the WPS from".

With that, the confusing "Follow Playlist" option can be removed, and if named well people are more likely to understand "This won't take you to the database" *and* understand whether or not they'll be viewing the playlist vs the actual file.

[JdGordon]

my UI gripes: (WITH solutions..)
(I'm at work so obviously not in the best of moods....)

quickscreen - imho it is totally useless, the 3 settings that are there might be nice for whoever initially did the screen, but for _me_ they are useless.
solution: let me make the 3 options customizable... 60% of the code is already done and in svn (look at the #if 0 code in gui/quickscreen.c)

pressing stop in the wps goes to the browser instead of the menu, bug is probably my fault, just keep forgetting to find and fix it :p

right and select both do the same thing in the browser, why on earth cant we add the customizable action on right from the insert options? yes, I know ondio doesnt have select, but we have a nice thing called #ifdef which would work fine here.

as for the playlist viewer.... I agree that its one of the more hidden screens and should be fixed up... first thing it needs to hapen is it to stop using the plugin buffer to store track names (why is this done anyway? doesnt playlist.c have a function to get the track name of any track in the playlist?)

bookmarks... another probably great feature which is a bit horrible (imo) to use which could do with some TLC from anyone with an idea how to do them better *looks around at the blank stares*

menu needs reorganising, I dont think anyone disagrees with that.. I think we need to plan a time in IRC to sort that out... (or leave that for devcon08?)

OH.. for the hidden music folder... what about if in "supported" view we show folders marked hidden except . folders? actually.. scratch that.. we should make it so hidden folders are always shown except .folders (which are only shown in "all")

I think thats all from me for now

*sees lloreans post*
I disagree... stop should always go back to the menu also.. select is the only button which I think should get an option. the rest of the post I agree with

[Llorean]

quickscreen: Repeat and shuffle often have dedicated buttons on CD players (and actually several MP3 players I own), making them semi-obvious targets for a quickscreen. File view, I think, is arguable for presence on the quickscreen though.

right vs select: I personally think "Select" should be the customizable one. "Right" should ALWAYS enter a folder, never insert it, since it's a "navigation" key. Other than that, I wouldn't mind giving "Select" a list of possible options, that list being "Same as right" plus every choice in the Insert / Queue list of options.

bookmarks: Yeah, they're at least half broken most of the time, aren't they? Maybe a GSoC project could be removing then, and reimplementing them from scratch with a better UI?

menu: Yeah, I was going to propose a reorganization, but being the lazy sod I am, haven't gotten around to it yet, beyond printing out most of the menu structure. Devcon could be really good for this.

Hidden Folders: If a user doesn't want a folder hidden, they SHOULDN'T HIDE IT. The OF quirks that apply JUST to the Sansa shouldn't be coded around. When we have our own USB mode it won't matter anyway.

Stop: I think Stop and Select should behave identically in terms of what screen they return you to. Specifically, for blind users, "Stop" is more practical than "Pause, then Select" since pausing stops the voice. If they want to clearly hear the name of the song being played, Stop needs to go to the current file. It's been requested an awful lot by them, and I think "Stop, then Menu" to get to the menu isn't too much of an imposition as opposed to just "Stop" getting to the menu, unless you feel like getting Voice to play while audio is Paused.

[JdGordon]

quickscreen: I dont see why that stops it from being customizable.. I have no problems with people leaving them if thats what they like... I personally never turn on repeat and just as frequently enable shuffle.

right vs select: well the idea is more what I want.. I dont care which is the custmoizable one.

bookmarks: agreed

hidden: well, your right, but I doubht there is anyone who changing this would harm... and it would sure help alot of people, unless you feel like getting usb storage working in rockbox.

stop: I understand the whole thing to make it easier for blind users, but the main menu was put in to be the home/start/main screen.. the one where you would be dumped in when nothing else is happening so you can choose easily where you want to go.  imo it should work like this. stop->menu, select->browser/playlist/file
arg.. I dunno... I dont like stop going to the browser....

[JdGordon]

Oh no; it's the only functionality my Rio Karma had that I still miss.

It showed previous track to current +7 or 8 with the current track in bold with full playback/sound controls active.

suggestions on how it could work with the various targets?

[Llorean]

I think if music stops naturally (end of playlist) it should go back to the Main Menu (right now it doesn't), but if it's stopped by user input, it should go back to some other screen (since a user can VERY easily press Menu too).

[cpchan]

quickscreen - imho it is totally useless, the 3 settings that are there might be nice for whoever initially did the screen, but for _me_ they are useless.
solution: let me make the 3 options customizable... 60% of the code is already done and in svn (look at the #if 0 code in gui/quickscreen.c)

Totally agree with this. That is why in my personal builds I have this replaced with a customable "Quick Menu" with a modified patch that used to be on the tracker. However, the idea got rejected and the flyspray page is now closed.

menu needs reorganising.

Agreed.

OH.. for the hidden music folder... what about if in "supported" view we show folders marked hidden except . folders? actually.. scratch that.. we should make it so hidden folders are always shown except .folders (which are only shown in "all")

Hiding just dot files and directories is a good idea.

Charles

[Llorean]

Why should files a user INTENTIONALLY marked as Hidden not be hidden?

[JdGordon]

because how many users ever INTENTIALLY hide files?

[cpchan]

Why should files a user INTENTIONALLY marked as Hidden not be hidden?

Because most of of the time it is not intentional, but done by the OF or comes hiidden at factory,. To me this falls under "The principle of least surprise" for the new user. If a user really want to hide a file, then he/she can just rename it to a dot file.

Charles

[Llorean]

If it's hidden by the OF, it won't show up by default on their computer either... How exactly is having Rockbox not hide files marked as hidden (and probably hidden on the original computer) least surprise?

You're talking about solving a problem that is only caused by some OFs, by creating a problem (people asking "how do I hide files") for every other firmware, and for people not using the OF? We should respect FAT32 flags.

Most file browsers respect hidden files, and either require a manual option to show them, or provide visual feedback so you know they're hidden. On the Sansa, how do you put files in a hidden folder without making it visible first?

[JdGordon]

because most likely the user has set to not hide hidden files.

[Llorean]

Then the user knows that hidden files exist, and can do so in Rockbox if they want to see them.

Seriously, you're suggesting taking away the freedom of users to hide files without renaming them (something you CANNOT DO in Windows Explorer) simply because of a strange behaviour in an OF that people WILL NOT HAVE TO USE.

Tell me, how does a clueless windows user choose to hide their files if we always show hidden files?