Amarok 2 Development: Checkout proposed new GUI

[eddie]

This week KDE.News reported about Amarok 2 in its series of articles on "The Road to KDE 4". The article talked about proposed new features for Amarok 2 that the developers are working on. The most interesting and very likeable changes that we may see in Amarok 2 are the proposed new GUI and Phonon support.

Checkout the mock up


I am sure all of you must be drooling by now on the new usability improvements and looks that this mock up offers To know more about the features that we should expect from Amarok 2, head over to KDE.News

[mediator]

Looks cool!

[gxsaurav]

why are all the Music players trying to immitate iTunes layout & look?

[eddie]

^ There is nothing wrong in imitating something good. The point should be how to make something good even better and that is what Amarok developers are doing.

Even in its current state Amarok is probably the best music player available on any platform and the current efforts will take it in just another league. Read the link I gave to know more

[phreak0ut]

^^Windows and Mac boys don't stop their ranting, do they?

[kalpik]

Awesome! Cant wait for KDE 4

[amitava82]

It looks cool. can someone tell me where exactly it looks like iTune or copied from iTune? i guess some people just have the HABIT to make irrelevant comments..

[hailgautam]

I wish it could be ported to windows as well..

[gxsaurav]

Originally Posted by amitava82

It looks cool. can someone tell me where exactly it looks like iTune or copied from iTune? i guess some people just have the HABIT to make irrelevant comments..

Oh comon, it's not about a Windows\Mac fan, it is just something funny I found. Just look at the layout of buttons, playlist in the mock, does it rings a bell (iTunes, Yahoo Music engine). That is what I was talking about.

here is something new, try taking inspiration from the old VCR or Decks. The VCR or these days DVD Player is places below the TV set, means buttons are below the video\audio screen. Something seen in WMP, VLC player & a lot more.

Or better yet, make it like a deck

[dissel]

[rohandhruva]

Originally Posted by hailgautam

I wish it could be ported to windows as well..

It certainly will be. Thanks to the Qt developers, they have released OSS version of Qt for Windows and mac, so KDE4 onwards almost all KDE applications will run on windows. There is even a KDE4 windows installer in the works

[Pathik]

do u mean there ll be an virtual KDE emulator of sorts or there ll be windows versions of KDE softwares????

[eddie]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

here is something new, try taking inspiration from the old VCR or Decks. The VCR or these days DVD Player is places below the TV set, means buttons are below the video\audio screen. Something seen in WMP, VLC player & a lot more.

That is where your whole comparison is flawed. WMP, VLC etc. are "Media" players while Amarok is an "Audio" player. There should be a difference between the interfaces of two players. Media players need to predominantly play Video files because of which they need to have buttons at the bottom. This makes them more usable in full screen mode but Audio players don't need to work in those modes ever. Modern audio players can more appropriately be compared to web browsers or file managers where you browse through your music, adjust your playlists and go back-forward between various songs. This can be handled using buttons at top in a more proper way.

Also, just so you know, KDE 4 is being developed in close association with FreeDesktop usability experts. So every GUI step or move they make goes through various thought processes and are not selected randomly.
__________

Originally Posted by pathiks

do u mean there ll be an virtual KDE emulator of sorts or there ll be windows versions of KDE softwares????

There'll be Windows versions...just like what you have for GIMP and Gaim etc.

[mehulved]

From what I get, only kdelibs and kde apps will be ported to win32 platform not the kde desktop?

[eddie]

Yes. The whole desktop will not be ported. Windows-only users might never be able to experience things like Plasma, Solid, Phonon and Decibel etc.

[mehulved]

I was just having a discussion on IRC on this topic.
I got 2 points, kde 4 maybe prolly ported to windows in future.
The second point is that you cannot run a DE/WM on windows so it might not be possible to run KDE on windows.
Also got this nice link http://www.kdelibs.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

[eddie]

Actually Windows already has a few explorer replacements so if KDE developers go on that route to make whole KDE desktop environment to work on Windows then it probably can be done but I don't know how possible that is.

[gary4gar]

Great Gui!
i might shift to KDe from gnome to try it for few days
and see if kde is worth its hype

[rohandhruva]

Originally Posted by pathiks

do u mean there ll be an virtual KDE emulator of sorts or there ll be windows versions of KDE softwares????

No, there will be a native windows version of KDE. How it will be implemented, as a replacement to explorer.exe or otherwise, I don't know..

[NucleusKore]

nothing new

[phreak0ut]

Originally Posted by gary4gar

Great Gui!
i might shift to KDe from gnome to try it for few days
and see if kde is worth its hype

Amarok works just fine even on Gnome. That's how I've been using it all these days. Any thing new which can be found on Amarok when used with KDE? Please let us know..

[Possible]

Yes phreak0utt - One thing if not many, you get better looks and customizations when you use it on KDE. But I guess you can do that by installing KDE stuff on Gnome too... Still, it feels the best (and doesn't show the Clearing Cache Memory) on KDE alone.

[phreak0ut]

@possible-Thanks for letting me know