TheParadox2's dashboard

Im using the default feather... and i must say. its a very Nice, Clean UI. But there are some simple changes the default, Gonzo, feather would benefit from. Like my awesome bar recommendation (http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...), i've made a photohopped image.



Here are my changes and why:

1) Put the playing controls on top. Im not sure why we have alot of the useful controls on the bottom, but it seems reasonable that if that were the case, we'd have the app's title bar and the menus down at the bottom too, along with tabs... beyond me... who cares if it looks like iTunes... We can skin our app and they can't, so what ever... Alternatively we can extend the black portion and put high contrasting play/pause next prev buttons that match the seek bar and it won't look like iTunes at all...

2) By default, on the library, the back/forth navigation buttons are disabled... they are available in the library and it serves no purpose but to be confusing... Good in theory, but not in pratice. I don't understand why we should be able to navigate our recent library navigation only to find what we were last looking at... so they're disabled in the library tab to help avoid confusing betwen the back/forth button and the next/previous track button.

3) the now playing data is right above the awesome bar... maybe a reference for searching.

4) Volume sticks out a little better... its got is own black area and i did a horrible job comming up with whats supposed to be a speaker to mute or unmute music... The slider matches the position slider to keep things uniform... and i added % so you can relate the position on the bar more acurately and detect small changes better when you fine tune it.

In hind sight, we could have had the precentage on the left like the time data on the position bar to keep things more uniform... i wasn't thinking clearly i guess...

5) 2 buttons on the right stay there, and theres room to add more... like a crossfade button in the future. If we want to further expand this area, we can add a 3rd black area and collapse the position bar.

6) I've used my awesome bar recommendation in building this shot...simple, standard, and fits in naturally just moved the bottom stuff above it.

7) "Now selected" becomes "Now playing"... If you shuffle songs, you can look at the album art and have a good idea whats next... who cares what the album looks like when we select a track... If we wanted to go that route (and we do) i'll draft up an idea on how we should view albums & tracks by a single artist.

Another reason for this change is i've been listening to a few songs now... and because i have a song selected... i got the same picture... it doesn't fit at all. that and i can't figue our how to not select anything... so its the same picture over and over again. Changing the picture makes the user feel like song bird is doing its job... its read, analyzed and displaying/play my song actively.

8) Other details like playlist come second, because changing these change the main windows contents... so if we change displays, we can offer something more active in this new space (such as the ablum art, Artist, Album, Song, Track details) in a list... I'll draw another yet another pic.

9) i think thats all my changes.

One thing i don't like is having to dig through my library to find my music or find the music i like.

You know what rocks.... the awesome bar. The "search library bar" does the same thing... but its not in the right spot... and it doesn't feel natural to use. Its not accessible, obvisious and simplified and it doesn't really even do a good job at finding the right music... lol its everything an awesome bar isn't!! Ok, So here's my idea:

Lets stop hiding this "filter on the fly" bar and make it more like firefox's interface. People are accustom to firefox, so if we make this bar the whole length of songbird, it becomes obvious... i'll starttyping my song here and it'll find it (in my database/library). just like i search my history/bookmarks in firefox.

Secondly, there is very little use for filter planes if you have an awesomebar... think about it... if im searching for "green day" i could just type "Green when" and find my song faster than using this dumb filter pane: find "green day" on one pane, and "when i come around on another" assuming i don't know the album. its unnaturally slow and clunky.

Basically combine the "location bar" and "search library bar" to be the same thing, and have a secondary, smaller bar for searching other stuff like google or The Hype machine (whatever THAT is). Just like the awesomebar - Search Bar combo on firefox.

We give stars to address on firefox... we give stars to songs on songbird... hmmm....

If we put time to tag them with stars, lets use them! And we can use these pointy figures more effienctly ---- how? WITH THE AWESOME BAR OF COURSE! When i start typing an artist... we should list artists/songs/whatever with the highest star rating first! Then slowly decend.

Now, the problem with this set-up is when you use your awesome bar to search your history for say something you found on The Hype Machine or Last.fm and stuff from your library pops up... so the idea is we should list our music FIRST then internet stuff second... and maybe a cool icon to let you know if the content is remote and not local. This also might not be an issue if we start typing an address...

...and if you wanted to get real fancy... you could give your history... remote media stars too to help orgainze and find stuff too. If we keep history, and we give it stars, we should be able to easily spot the remote media against our own local media.



Whats different:

1) Just like the Back/forward are always there... we should make reload/home there too... so they're there... but they should probably be grey out when looking at the library

2) Um... Theres an awesome bar. Obviously.

3) There is a favicon on the awesomebar... its supposed to be the library icon when your looking at the library, so i used the icon thats standard now when you go to search your library on the current version. Its also NOT changable... but will change when your looking at a page to its favicon... Clicking the awesome bar will revert it back to the library icon indicating your going to query your library.

4) I forgot to put text in the "search library field"...If you couldn't guess what i typed, it was "3 D".

5)There is a plus button at the end... same as the current method. but this one should open your query in a new tab if you query returns a million results... right now it doesn't seem to do anything.

6) There is a secondary search field.... but this one will only search remote media and the internet... it IS changable (but it exclude searching the library. You can't search your history with firefox's search bar either... so it follows the same concept)

7) finally the panes selector... which seems kinda useless now... but i guess i f you like your panes... you can bring them up for cover flow or other stuff.

8) The first 1 to 8 items that should appear have stars... and i made the point to show it descends from highest rating to lowest rating... I say 8 being that you might get alot of returns still. Here's how i think the priority should be based:

a) Highest rated song. Closest Match.

b) If Both are rated the same... the artist that has the highest average rated songs.

c)If Its the same artist... the album with the highest rating...

d) If its the same album... the one thats played the most?

e) Stuff that has no rating, but matches

9) After the 1 to 8 closest matches... i thought we should be able to bring up other clear matches... such as the single artist (Read: to replace filter pane)... which also brings up the list in a new tab. But while i don't explain it clearly... this isn't limited to artist... we could also use albums.

10) Meta Data... (Read: Lyrics) Meta data could be comments, others that perform in the song (ft. artist)... dates... genre, composers, label... but really what I had in mind lyrics... because everyone knows the words to songs... or has a good idea of a single phrase but mght not know the song title, artist and album... so you can search for a song if you know the words to a song. Clicking the meta items opens the results in a new tab.

11) Histroy... yea... i thought we should look at remote media independately... so clicking it opens a new tab... and display hits to the string in history...

12) Interface was made using inverted colours of the current player at the bottom... the image is completely photoshoped... and i couldn't figure out the orginal text font so i found one that was close...

Please.... tell me what you think!

Equalizer should have a graphical explination.

Would be nice to have more bands... like it seems like a no brainer to have a 20 hz band -- the lowest the human ear can hear, and a 20khz band...

And a graph that shows the nice smooth curve.

DLNA -- while still in its infanacy stages is a very smart idea. It allows me to play MP3 stored on my computer on my TV, as well as pictures and movies (divx, xvid, H264, WMV and so on)

However, DLNA won't be just limited to computers or TVs... we'll see this in cameras, camcoders... possible steroes and sound equipment -- a bunch of stuff! and we should be able to manage and share our media using songbird using this method.

Best yet, DLNA is configuration free... so if its properly implelmented it just has to 'be there' and your library is 'shared' accross your network under the media server name "songbird"

Painless.

DSP effects. There is one thing that will truely get me to convert from winamp to songbird and that is DSP PLUGINS.

If someone has winamp, get the DSP plugin called enhancer (http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details...) and you'll know what i mean. I urge you from my deepest urging place to implement and allow DSP plugins like those used on winamp to be compatible with songbird.