Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas
User Experience and Rockbox- A rethink required?
adityabhandari:
Check out thIs lInk.
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bduX-uMpdUZTllZjFjNWUtYTk2My00ZjA0LTg0OWQtMjFkYTY4ZDM5MTY1&hl=en
GodEater:
"Sorry, the page (or document) you have requested is not available."
Nice link :(
saratoga:
It works for me now.
Most of those changes look sensible to me, and some have been on various todo lists for a while (the EQ menu for instance).
adityabhandari:
I guess nobody read the first page on the pdf :P ???
ROCKBOX USER INTERFACE
Rockbox as a product has matured. So has its user-interface. The current UI is quite functional, if not beautiful. A few minor tweaks would make it even better. Rockbox as a DAP has matured. It supports a variety of players and a variety of codecs. It plays your music, radio, even acts as a recorder. It performs these functions more or less flawlessly. No doubt this is a huge achievement, however, we need to ask ourselves a few important questions.
Is there room for improvement?
Hell yeah!
A few points:
#Navigation to secondary menu's should have the similar intuitive way back instead of returning to the root menu
#RBX doesnt remember states. It should remember and tell the user about currently selected things. This includes all the settings as well as the database.
#Transitions in menu, help add a sense of direction to the menu layout and helps the user form a mental map of the menu more easily. transitions
#Advanced equalizer should be accompanied by a graphcal representation of the equalizer showing resultant of the changes being made. The equalizer can give information regarding lows, mids and highs according to corresponding frequencies
/-/The database should be made more reliable. It currently crashes a lot if too many buttons are pressed? Also, if load to RAM is enabled, it should be loaded to RAM at boot itself. Currently, it takes a while before the database is available to the user, especially if it is huge!
?Bookmarking should be more simplified and easier to understand
/-/It doesn’t sleep, it powers off, atleast in case of ipod video 5g
?Increase font size in headers
?Header information to be reviewed- Players of all screen sizes have the same header! Atleast in players with slightly bigger screens, the header could look better?s
What can we look forward to in rockbox?
Because of a relatively low prominence given to applications, rockbox doesn't really have many applications which people would use on a daily basis. Rockbox is primarily a music player and most ironically, neither of the applications put under the plugins>applications nodes is related to music! A lot of work can be done in this regard. Applications specific to music could be the next big thing for rockbox. A driving factor that can never lose charm since it's open ended. So many music based applications can be built! We have just the right platform for it, it's open-source and it's free. The potential is unimaginable. Rockbox could become a playfield of innovation through collaboration of individuals such as ourselves! Look at the way mozilla has flourished. Today, one can safely say that mozilla has become so widely adopted because of its support for extensions/addons. No wonder, it's a developers favourite browser as also of the everyday users.
To sum it all, I would look forward to the following things in Rockbox:
*Development of an API that simplifies the development of applications
*A simple way to apply ‘patches’ by non-developers as well, ie, without having to compile anything. E.g., there’s a patch out there that displays the metadata of songs instead of the filename in thet playlist view. And users like me want it, but can’t have it!
#UI Proposal provided
?UI Proposal can be worked out
/-/Conceptual suggestions, no UI proposal required
Edit
Also check out this file for the transitions in UI
http://www.box.net/shared/bpb4grc5i1
Llorean:
--- Quote from: adityabhandari on January 04, 2010, 02:34:28 AM ---#Navigation to secondary menu's should have the similar intuitive way back instead of returning to the root menu
--- End quote ---
Doesn't it work in almost all cases except the few, which we're already discussing action for on the list?
--- Quote ---#Transitions in menu, help add a sense of direction to the menu layout and helps the user form a mental map of the menu more easily. transitions
--- End quote ---
Transitions slow down the user interface, and waste battery. This isn't a particularly good improvement. There is no "direction." You could be going down, or left, or up. Currently whichever menu map best fits your mind is what you'll imagine, rather than having a perspective forced upon you with a set transition effect.
--- Quote ---/-/The database should be made more reliable. It currently crashes a lot if too many buttons are pressed?
--- End quote ---
"Please fix bugs" isn't something that should be brought up here, at all. If there are bugs, file proper bug reports, one report per bug.
--- Quote ---Also, if load to RAM is enabled, it should be loaded to RAM at boot itself. Currently, it takes a while before the database is available to the user, especially if it is huge!
--- End quote ---
Do you mean that boot should be delayed until the database is ready? This seems like it would be very frustrating, as it's just means that it still takes just as long for users to get to the database, but if they didn't need it immediately this time they have to wait for no reason.
--- Quote ---?Bookmarking should be more simplified and easier to understand
--- End quote ---
This isn't helpful at all. As we said earlier, please make specific suggestions, because "easier to understand" doesn't mean anything useful.
--- Quote ---/-/It doesn’t sleep, it powers off, atleast in case of ipod video 5g
--- End quote ---
Why is powering off bad?
--- Quote ---?Increase font size in headers
--- End quote ---
Do you mean the status bar? Please, try to use the same terms as the manual, or this discussion could become very complicated. The status bar is now user configurable.
--- Quote ---?Header information to be reviewed- Players of all screen sizes have the same header! Atleast in players with slightly bigger screens, the header could look better?s
--- End quote ---
The status bar is user configurable - the user can now choose a theme which displays what they want.
--- Quote ---What can we look forward to in rockbox?
Because of a relatively low prominence given to applications, rockbox doesn't really have many applications which people would use on a daily basis. Rockbox is primarily a music player and most ironically, neither of the applications put under the plugins>applications nodes is related to music! A lot of work can be done in this regard. Applications specific to music could be the next big thing for rockbox. A driving factor that can never lose charm since it's open ended. So many music based applications can be built! We have just the right platform for it, it's open-source and it's free. The potential is unimaginable. Rockbox could become a playfield of innovation through collaboration of individuals such as ourselves! Look at the way mozilla has flourished. Today, one can safely say that mozilla has become so widely adopted because of its support for extensions/addons. No wonder, it's a developers favourite browser as also of the everyday users.
--- End quote ---
Please, try to write specific suggestions. This isn't a press release, you're not pitching something to a sales department or trying to get venture capital. You're more or less wasting space with "just imagine all the great things you can do" segments.
--- Quote ---*Development of an API that simplifies the development of applications
--- End quote ---
Being a non-programmer, are you deciding the current API is not simple simply because there are few apps, or what?
--- Quote ---*A simple way to apply ‘patches’ by non-developers as well, ie, without having to compile anything. E.g., there’s a patch out there that displays the metadata of songs instead of the filename in thet playlist view. And users like me want it, but can’t have it!
--- End quote ---
This will never realistically happen. If you can create a binary patch, you've already got a build you could simply distribute instead. Patches are not for non-developers.
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