[gst-devel] gst-player ui required changes

[Steve Baker]

Here is the mail I was referring to. It happened off list which is why
no one ever saw it.

I'll comment on the status of each point

On Thu, 2002-10-31 at 12:43, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> Now, I've been prodding various people into drawing out comments - 
> specific ones as to what we might need changing.
> 
> Here's some stuff from Seth, the UI guy :
> - it should be called a "video player", not a media player.
>   it can play audio if you specifically request it to, but it
>   shouldn't promote itself as such.
Dunno about this yet, it'll make a good flash player one day ;)

> - more UI feedback on problems, like missing plugins, pointing the user
>   to a specific place for help; or, explain why it can play audio
>   but not the video part, and so on
This is what I'm focusing on right now by getting better error messages
out of spider. I'll then focus on getting better error reporting out of
libgstplay.

> - it should play or fail gracefully - which means we need to fix or
>   replace spider
I'm slowly working through issues with spider, but if someone writes a
new autoplugger, I wouldn't shed a tear

> - get rid of stop
Done! Its software, not hardware. There are no heads or motors to wear
out, and no batteries to run down by being in pause forever.

> - make normal mode more like mini mode (seth liked mini mode)
done, normal is now very mini

> - make the player open up with a black window on startup, to suggest
>   it is going to play video.
done thanks to dolphy ;)

> - fix colorspace issues (he had them yesterday ;))
many things would help here:
- warning if colorspace isn't installed
- embed sdlvideosink (maybe this is easier with the new video widget)
- lcs plugin which always gets installed

> 
> and here is some stuff from two other gnome hackers
> - UI isn't resizable
This might be possible now with the improved video widget

> - status bar should go
Gone, although I want to resurrect the time/length display and put it
between the volume and the seek slider

> - fullscreen button should go
done

> - you shouldn't be able to change volume when no media is loaded
to bad

> - seek bar doesn't do the right thing when focussing it and
>   using the keyboard keys
not sure about this one

> - no stop button
see above

> - all of the buttons/sliders should have corresponding menu items
done, but no control of seek slider (I don't think there should be)

> - fullscreen mode should COMPLETELY hide controls (no bar)
This will be possible now that events can be grabbed from the video
widget

> - video should ALWAYS scale, even when xv doesn't do it
need to embed sdlvideosink

> - should differentiate more between the volume and seek bar slider
>   (ie make it UI-obvious they're different and do different things)
Done. has no one noticed how sexy the new volume control is? ;)

> - remove the vertical dividers, they're out of place
done

> - make the regular mode more like mini mode and remove mini mode
done

> - move up the light bulb
light bulb gone

And thomas said
> Here's one point from me personally - I would consider trying out the 
> controls at the top.
> 
> The reason for this is simply that I think it is "wrong" for the control 
> location to change based on the size of the video.
Done, with absolute pleasure

So thats it. I hope this gives some idea on how close we've come to
making GNOME HIG people happy. And hopefully the above tasks that
haven't been done yet can provide some direction to peeps who want to
hack on the player.

Someone still needs to sit down and read the HIG to see what else needs
to be done. And there is still some obvious features that we need like:
- prefs window for gconf prefs
- gconf prefs to justify writing a prefs window
- right click context menu on video widget

And that'll to for me. Any UI discussion seems to cause a shitstorm, so
its poo guns to the ready!

cheers
-- 
Steve Baker <steve at stevebaker.org>