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Version 4.0 is horrible so far

Added by Blood Raven over 4 years ago

My experience so far with this update is not pleasant. I'm using Linux Manjaro, if that matters.

First off, where the hell are my global hotkeys? Who thought it was a good idea to make a major update by stripping such a major feature from the player?!
The UI is thrown around all over the place, none of that sleek and clean old look. I really don't understand why you have to force your users to get used to a new interface (that looks worse in my opinion) instead of continuing to use what works perfectly well and everyone knows so well.
Turning the "Menu Bar" visibility off, you now have no way to access it again. Period. You can only delete all config files and start anew, unlike the old version, where an Audacious icon popped up at the top left and gave you access to your menu... Why strip YET another feature?! If not for the right-click>services>plugins, I would not be able to access my options menu either, because the options button is gone too!
Another thing, the font you use to display the time next to the progress bar is not width-fixed and as it moves around, the actual progress bar changes in width! AND it has no fixed minimum width, so when resizing the window to be as small as winamp, the progress bar becomes a dot. Very useful. Why not just put the numbers above the bar and have its width fixed? Beats me.
Also the buttons are dark on a dark background, which looks horrible and they're hard to see. This might be from the Manjaro theme though (Adapta-Nokto), I'm not sure.

The whole update seems like an overall huge downgrade and stripping of features. I can't even tell what you DID add. And the worst thing is, I can't downgrade it because I deleted my install files for the older version, I'll have to build it anew from the source, which is too much work. This shouldn't be the case when giving your users a major update, they should be excited, not wanting to downgrade it straight away.
Sorry for being a negative Nancy, but someone had to say it.

To sum it up, to make your player usable again:
-Include global hotkeys
-Fix all those UI bugs and put the buttons back where they belong.
-Make a set of white icons for dark-themed OS's. Put it in the preferences if you can't auto-detect it.


Replies (5)

RE: Version 4.0 is horrible so far - Added by John Lindgren over 4 years ago

You can rant if you want, but this is a volunteer project and the way to improve things will be by contributions, not complaining.

If there are bugs, submit bug reports as usual. Check for duplicates first though. Some of the things you mention already have fixes in the works.

Features were not removed intentionally. GTK2 is going obsolete and we can't keep depending on it forever, so code had to be rewritten, and we didn't have time to recreate everything exactly in the Qt port.

RE: Version 4.0 is horrible so far - Added by John Lindgren over 4 years ago

Some particular items to mention:

- Ctrl+Shift+M will show the menu bar again.
- While you were complaining, someone else has already created a new global hotkeys plugin: https://github.com/audacious-media-player/audacious-plugins/pull/86
- 4.0.2 makes the time label fixed width so that the time slider doesn't change width. See https://audacious-media-player.org/news/47-audacious-4-0-2-released
- If Qt is not using the same icon theme as GTK applications are, it probably is misconfigured. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and_GTK_applications
- If you want to downgrade without building from source, you can use the Arch Linux Archive: https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/a/audacious/ and https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/a/audacious-plugins/

RE: Version 4.0 is horrible so far - Added by Blood Raven over 4 years ago

Wow... Thank you, that was really helpful.
I'm sorry for the rant-format of the post, in hindsight I probably should have went to the bug reports section instead of ranting in the forums. I guess I was a little stressed and angry at the time. Sorry.
I guess I'll just wait for 4.0.2 and later to pop up in the Manjaro repository to bring fixes and stuff. It usually takes a week for new stuff to appear there, so I'll survive somehow :D
And believe me, I would contribute if I could code, alas I'm not a programmer. I love Audacious, despite my disappointment in the new version, and I don't doubt it will get these bugs sorted out, it's a large new release after all.
Thanks again! Cheers!

RE: Version 4.0 is horrible so far - Added by John Lindgren over 4 years ago

A couple more fixes I've made for 4.0.3, based on your feedback:

- Added a menu icon to the toolbar when the menubar is hidden: https://github.com/audacious-media-player/audacious-plugins/commit/ed0f136cde8ceed3c4774685c56907dfb512925a
- Changed the size policy for the time slider so that the minimum size is respected: https://github.com/audacious-media-player/audacious-plugins/commit/f873b25a76f3756c0109e7aa396da66212d4e1c9

The feedback is helpful, and I can understand the frustration when a new version breaks things.

I am not sure exactly what you meant by "The UI is thrown around all over the place", so if you can explain that better, I might be able to look into it.

Global hotkeys will probably not land until 4.1.0, but if you find any more regressions, please let us know.

RE: Version 4.0 is horrible so far - Added by B hisacro over 4 years ago

another nice feature would be bringing back view on all-workspace option..

I'm still on gtk2 and not planning to use qt (almost none of the gui applications I use need qt) so it would be a real shame if support for gtk2 is dropped (I get that it's outdated but I'm okay with explicit building option..)

Really appreciate audacious team for active development.

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