Bugzilla – Bug 12538
Playable menu options do not need a "play" icon
Last modified: 2010-05-27 14:46:24 UTC
If you are at the end of a list or have reached a screen where the option is directly playable the lack of icon means play. The same is the case for tracklists within an album. We do not need 12+ play icons for every track. It is unnecessary and redundant. I suspect I will be overruled:)
The consensus in the bug meeting is that this should not be done. Do you have additional reasoning to support this proposal?
(In terms of process): Because no one seems to have told the designers this change was being made? ;-) Seems like the burden of proof, and the bug request, should be on a reason for adding the icons, not removing them... (In terms of an actual rationale): An argument can be made either way, I suppose, but the convention, for the most part is not to use icons. Zune and ipod don't use them, and none of the major media players I can think of (Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp) use them either, mainly because of Noah's reasoning: if users assume clicking a track means "play," (and they generally do, current squeezebox design notwithstanding), the icons are redundant. There are also space issues - we have certain interfaces (such as controller) where the amount of space available to show song title text is already pretty short. Requiring the use of an icon (which arguably isn't needed) to the right of the text is going to shorten the max width of an already-short string. Finally, the absence of play buttons is one of those things that I think just feels weird to us because of the "new" auto-playback behavior when selecting a song. (It's new to us, but not to most media players - the only other example I can think of where pressing a song doesn't play it is the Microsoft Zune). I don't think new users are going to have a problem with it at all. Wish we had time to test it..
Having said all that, this is one of those "pick your battles" scenarios. We have bigger issues to deal with than this. Just be aware that this decision is directly in conflict with the opinion of the design team.
Matt came and talked to the bug meeting participants during the meeting and made a number of good points. He suggested we review other media player applications (any specific recommendations, Matt?) and is considering performing some kind of test with real users.
Created attachment 5379 [details] ipod touch screenshot
Created attachment 5380 [details] itunes screenshot
Created attachment 5381 [details] songbird screenshot
Created attachment 5382 [details] winamp screenshot
Created attachment 5383 [details] WMP screenshot 1
Created attachment 5384 [details] WMP screenshot 2
Created attachment 5385 [details] zune screenshot
Attached are screens for winamp, windows media player, songbird, ipod touch, itunes, and the microsoft zune. I'm sure we could find more examples given the time; this is what I found on the web after 15-20 minutes of searching. The Zune is the only major player out there I know of that does not automatically play a song when you select/press it; on the Zune you're taken into another menu (like our previous design). But I've yet to see any serious interface try to indicate that a song is playable (within a long list) by putting a play icon next to each song. The only exception that comes to mind is web-based players where the play icon is part of a button that must be clicked (but this is done to indicate where you need to click - in these cases the song title itself usually isnt clickable - which is a different issue than what we're discussing).
I"m confused. What change is being proposed here?
Just removing the "play" icons that currently sit to the right of each track inside an album/playlist etc. To be honest, this bug isn't the end-all be-all, but it's one of those process things. It would be nice if we could be trusted to try our solution (which happens to be the industry convention), namely just having no "helper" icon to the right. These are songs; it really shouldn't be too controversial to expect users to figure out that pressing a song will play it.
The icons are gone- r6295 What I think we need to refocus here is how we're spending our time. On the one side Weldon should not constantly need to defend his very small design decisions with 10 examples and 5 paragraphs of supporting text. On the other side I think the engineering team are too quickly dismissed as not having a valid point of view when it comes to design critique. We're all time-stressed here. We need to come up with a method of interacting that isn't sucking the time right out of what's available to do the actual work.
Agree with Ben, we need a better system... For one, I'll start attending bug meetings...
This bug has been marked as fixed in the 7.4.0 release version of SqueezeBox Server! * SqueezeCenter: 28672 * Squeezebox 2 and 3: 130 * Transporter: 80 * Receiver: 65 * Boom: 50 * Controller: 7790 * Radio: 7790 Please see the Release Notes for all the details: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Release_Notes If you haven't already, please download and install the new version from http://www.logitechsqueezebox.com/support/download-squeezebox-server.html If you are still experiencing this problem, feel free to reopen the bug with your new comments and we'll have another look.
These bugs have all been marked resolved and belong to a component which is being removed. Therefore they have been moved to the most applicable of the new components.