320x240 - Working on CenterArt v2.0, need design advice

[Yotto]

I've just completed the main design work on version 2 of my "CenterArt" WPS. Now the SBS and WPS have a unified look and it's not so jarring to go from one to the other. I'm very happy with it so far:



However, a problem occurs when there is no album art to display. The center area is very bare:



I can also keep the 100x100 box in the middle, which I think looks better but still has the same "big empty space" problem:



So here's the question... What do I put there? In my old design, the kbps et al. went in there. But in the redesign I was able to put that information in a more permanently-visible place. Now, though, there doesn't seem to be anything else to put there.

I don't know if I want an image in there. The theme is "all text" except the album art and I think I'd like to keep it that way.

Thoughts?

[karashata]

Personally I don't mind having a little bit of empty space once in a while when I play tracks without album art, though given your two displayed options I'd opt not to put the 100x100 pixel box there when the art's not being displayed. If it is that big a problem I might suggest possibly centering the bitrate and other file info in the space between the shuffle and other status info and the right side of the screen to distribute that empty space on either side of it to make it a little less noticeable.

[yapper]

Use it for the playlist viewer?

[Yotto]

@Karashata: Oooh, I like the idea of scooting the two sides in a bit. I'll look into that.

@yapper: I think I've heard of this beast. Don't know how it'd look in a 100x100 box. Maybe with a smaller font... I'll look into that too.

UPDATE:
I went with the playlist info. It may make it slightly too busy but I couldn't resist the added information. Thanks to both of you, though. Great suggestions!

[perfectdrug]

this would have been my solution:

[Yotto]

You can't see it in the image, but the track duration (the center of the 3 "time" numbers under the progress bar" will switch to ">>" "<<" "||" and "[]" where appropriate to signify each non-play state. Showing "play" is - in my opinion - redundant as you can generally hear in that case, and see the time counting down.

Thanks for the input!

[TexasRockbox]

Maybe replace the empty space with a 100x100 generic picture of a CD?

[Serenity]

If the box stays, a larger clock display would help me more than a generic picture, but that's personal preference.  I understand there's already a clock in the lower right corner.  My MP3 player is usually my watch as well, so I use the Clock plugin constantly.

I really like this theme.

[Yotto]

@TexasRockbox: I'm not big on "space eating" pictures. It feels like I'm using up an area that could be put to better use with *anything* but a random image.

@Serenity:
Thank you! I like the theme as well

I actually use the clock a lot as well. I have my iPod in an arm strap, so I put the clock where it is in the theme so I can look down at my left arm and see the clock without too much trouble. It's upside-down but that doesn't seem to pose too much of a problem.

If you'd like, I can whip you up a "clock" theme. Or, if you're capable of adding clock code you want to replace the "playlist" code which is the very last line in the WPS. I don't believe you can make the font any bigger, sadly. From what I understand of Viewports you can only have two fonts at a time on the screen, and one of those fonts is the tiny default font.

[karashata]

You could use images to make your clock bigger, JDGordon committed a patch recently that allows the clock tags to be used as conditionals (thread is here), so you could even make your clock look like pretty much whatever you want.

[kage]

when I run center-art v2,0, the center box is filled with the "next songs" list...but most of them (like right now for instance) are random nonsense [like IDEQ.mp3, or VUDP.m4a] ...I don't know if that is supposed to happen or not...because, if the track names would actually show themselves correctly, that would not be a bad way to fill that space...
except, maybe get rid of the band name, and just have the track name...



only until they reach the top 2 or 3 spots on the list are they given an understandable name...

there are 10 songs displayed there...

It would be hard, but I wonder is you could put some sort of "active wave" thing there... like a scope of the music waves... It seems like that would be VERY hard to do...but it is just a suggestion

and if you want to keep the "all text" theme, you could do a bar thing instead of waves...and use text as the bars...

I am going to take a gander and say that this would probably be impossible...

[JdGordon]

those are the file names on disk. you've used ituned to copy them on? and yes, only the first few will ever show the actual track info

[kage]

okay...yeah, I used itunes to copy them on...
I will be stopping that soon, because I don't like itunes, and finally have a way to put music on my ipod without it...

I just need to organise my library into something that I can understand...

[Yotto]

Band - Song was a design choice I made. I preferred knowing the band and the first few letters of the song (if at all) to just the song.

You can modify the theme to show just the song. Change the very final line:

Code: [Select]

%Vp|1|+%ia-%it| %fn|

to:

Code: [Select]

%Vp|1|+%it| %fn|

Also, that "+" next to each song is an indicator that the song is queued in memory (which is why you can see the track info and not just the name). I like it but removing it would give you an extra character to see more text.

I'm thinking of having a different way to show the playlist, stretching it over the rightmost data box when hold is on. That should make the playlist view much more useful.

*EDIT*

Also, I'm noticing a lot of missing lines on your screen. Is that the way the theme looks? It's supposed to look more like the screenshots in the theme website.

[JdGordon]

you can also scroll those lines, but it looks pretty shit if you do :p (add %s to the text)