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Thanks for interface improvements (GTK) in 3.3beta2 !! (and some questions on Winamp Classic Interface)

Added by Pascual Lucero almost 12 years ago

Hello,

I would like to thank John (and in general, all contributors to Audacious) for the interface improvements in the GTK interface. Especially, this:
"The close buttons on playlist tabs in the GTK interface can now be hidden."

I think in my humble opinion that this should be the default behavior for the playlist tabs (in other words, the user can choose if the close buttons could be shown, but are hidden by default), it looks much beautiful and it is easier to manage tabs (and now I am not afraid to press the close button by mistake in Audacious, closing the playlist means losing it!)

On the other hand, I haven't used the Winamp Classic Interface for years (yes, I have been using Audacious for years, since 1.x versions as my default player in Linux) and I decided to give it a try again, just to see what did I missed. I must say that nothing has missed; GTK interface is definitely better. So I would like to ask if something can be done with the Winamp Classic Interface (or perhaps abandoning it?)

Particularly, I mention five aspects:

1) The main player box ... can be resized?? This was the main reason at the beginning to change to the GTK interface, the inability to resize the player box (and the default is too small for me; when I choose "Roll Up Player" is ridiculously small for me and worse that I cannot change its size)

2) Is there a way to see more easily playlists in this interface? (something similar to the tabs, or something to see all playlists and switch easily between them). Currently, the only way is to press a button to change to the next or previous playlist, without seeing a list of playlists.

3) Does search library functions work in this interface? (I didn't see how)

4) Bug: The status icon plugin doesn't work well with this interface. When Audacious is hidden into tray and then restored, windows positions are lost (i.e, it doesn't restored the same position of the windows). As far as I have seen, main player box and equalizer are remembered, but not the playlist editor (when I restored it after being hidden into tray, it is shown in the center).

5) Bug: If I disable the status icon plugin and minimize the player (in the task bar), when I restored the player, the playlist editor is not minimized and restored.

Thanks for your attention.


Replies (4)

RE: Thanks for interface improvements (GTK) in 3.3beta2 !! (and some questions on Winamp Classic Interface) - Added by John Lindgren almost 12 years ago

1) Winamp Classic skins (with the exception of the playlist window) are a fixed pixel size, so as screen resolutions increase, the windows get smaller. No real solution for this, other than creating a new interface with a totally new type of skin.

2) Yes, use the playlist manager ('P' key turns it on and off).

3) The search tool works, but you have to go into the preferences window (under general plugins) to turn it on or off, and it won't dock nicely as it does in the GTK interface.

4, 5) These are most likely bugs in your window manager. The undecorated, docking windows used in the Winamp interface are unusual among Linux programs, so they tend to trigger WM bugs. If you were intending to use the Winamp interface frequently, I would recommend switching to XFWM4; it is the most reliable WM that I have found in this regard.

RE: Thanks for interface improvements (GTK) in 3.3beta2 !! (and some questions on Winamp Classic Interface) - Added by John Lindgren almost 12 years ago

Also, since closing a playlist means losing it, we do show a confirmation dialog by default. If you have checked the "don't show this again" option, you can get the message back by deleting the line "no_confirm_playlist_delete=TRUE" from ~/.config/audacious.

RE: Thanks for interface improvements (GTK) in 3.3beta2 !! (and some questions on Winamp Classic Interface) - Added by Thomas Lange almost 12 years ago

Regarding to the tab close buttons:
It makes me happy that you like it because I have added this option to Audacious. :)
But in my opinion enabling them by default is more user-friendly and consistent so we should stick with this.

RE: Thanks for interface improvements (GTK) in 3.3beta2 !! (and some questions on Winamp Classic Interface) - Added by Pascual Lucero almost 12 years ago

@Thomas Thanks a lot, I am one of the happy users with this look in the tabs. I understand why you don't enable it by default, but still looks wonderful. The GTK interface is getting better.

@John Oh, I see, I guess I won't use then the Winamp Classic Interface. I think it is more like keeping a legacy for the people who started used XMMS, because definitely it doesn't look very good. In my case, when I started used Audacious, Winamp classic interface was the default, so I liked to skin it by looking at the Winamp page (my favourite skin was "The Book of Winamp"), until someday we were "forced" to use GTK interface (I didn't realize it existed before it appeared as default) ... it was like discovering a new and much better world. But I thought, just as a curiosity after these years how the Winamp interface has evolved but it is not compatible with my window manager it seems (I use Openbox). So, I guess I won't try that experiment again, and I am happy with the current default interface.

Hopefully some of my ideas about interface I mentioned in http://redmine.audacious-media-player.org/boards/1/topics/397 can be implemented in the future. Thanks :)

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