Bugzilla – Bug 2106
Help link has changed to Home
Last modified: 2009-09-08 09:25:47 UTC
The three links at the top used to read "Home"/"Server Settings"/"Help". They now read "Browse Music"/"Server Settings"/"Home".
I changed this deliberately for the fishbone skin in change 4202, since help is not actually help. never has been. it is actually the home page :)
So, this is a Fishbone specific bug? Also, the order has changed? Was that intended, KDF?
It was intended. Teh former 'home' link is really just a link to the last chosen 'browse' and the help link was the home page, listing Plugins and Help links. This has garnered more and more complaints of late since more plugins and additional links (in settings as well) are added to teh home page. However, Fishbone skin is Browse mode based, instead of Home based, so I feel that the browse link at the top should be located top left.
Dean, overall UI is your call. As this is intended, my stance would be to close this since its not a bug. However, if you feel that this will introduce more confusion than it will fix, I'm open to reverting it or suggestions for better link titles
oh yeah. Philip, suggestions for link names would be great from you as well :)
Ok, now I'm confused. If I click on the "Home" link at the top, I get the Help list and that's all. I think it should be "Help" if that's what it shows in the area below. As far as the UI design on Fishbone, I don't want to steal your baby. :) But I could make a couple of recommendations..: :) Top left pane: - Get rid of the "Browse Music" link, it's redundant to the popup menu. Replace with a slimserver graphic, left aligned. - Right align "Server Settings" and "Help" with a space between the links. - Left align the "Browse..." menu - Right align the Search items. On the top of the right pane, use two rows (like the left side), and make them equal in height to the left side. This will look cleaner and more symmetrical. - Right align the switch player popup - Right align the Player Settings, Undock and Statistics Icons. - Put the Sleep link in the same row with Repeat, Shuffle and Player - Player can be renamed Power These are only suggestions, like I said, I don't want to crush your excellent creativity with Fishbone.
The You have to have plugins installed that have the links created, or the IRBlastTest which installs settings links. The problem really stems from the confusion of the 'help' link being the place where we have to tell users to look after installing things like the IRBlastTest, or the Biography plugin. The old 'home' link is simply an always present link to the currently selected browse choice (since the pulldown only works onChange), but I could make the graphic perform that link. I'll try these out.
Ah. So I have additional links in that popup menu. why not put them there?
It's been considered, but I was worried about it becoming cluttered and long. I wanted to try to create one with separators to keep each grouping cleaner, but I can't find any code to do that sort of thing. ie: Browse Artists Browse Albums Browse Genres Other Browse Links ------------- RadioIO Slim Devices Picks Other Internet Radio ------------- Biography Plugin Album Rewview Other Plugins ------------- Additional Settings Maybe I'll have to look into using a floating div or something. Also, where does one find a slimserver graphic? EN includes a Slim Devices graphic, but that would best link to slim devices. I'll have to look at other ways to get the 'go back to my preferred browse mode' link.
I can understand now why KDF has changed the link names; what we have now is reasonable. I'm not fond of "Home" - perhaps it could be named "Plugins/Help" or "links"? However, it is confusing having the plugin pages together with the help links. It would be much better if these were split - have a help link and plugins link. The plugin links I have are player-based (album review and biography). Perhaps these should be somewhere on the right-hand "player" panel (eg. above statistics)? i.e. have a "plugins" link or player-specific plugins, and one on the left (where it is now) for server-based plugins. Even better would be to integrate them into the browse panel, so when an album is selected, the album review link could be next to "1 album with 11 songs by 1 artist", and "biography" when an artist is selected. They could be put into the song information page too, underneath/besides play/Add song links. I imagine that's not so simple though, as it would affect other skins?
Philip, that's correct. The plugin has to initiate the links. Player-based plugins can have their settings pages under player settings->plugins, but the main links (ie from home page) are not something easily moved. They are tied to home.html, which is why the confusion exists. The Fishbone skin was a big departure from the standard styles (well, most just the header part), so it has limits. Each new feature for the home page gets harder to support. The Feedback is useful. I'll try out a few things and see where it goes.
Without wishing to add too many enhancement requests to a single PR, could I also suggest that it would be really nice to have some kind of "Add to favourites" link somewhere? Now there's a "Favourites" (why not Browse Favourites?), but no way from the skin for adding/removing from favourites. Perhaps "Add to favourites" (is this a plugin, or a standard part of slimserver now?) could be incorporated next to the "Download | Clear" links in the current playlist, or within the browse panel when selecting items to play?
adding that level of integration is well outside the capability of a skin. please file a separate PR, or reopen the web interface to favorites one.
Dean, can't seem to right align seach items (unles syou just mean move the form to the right. The selection items wont right align inside the pulldown. status header can't change exactly as you have said due to other features not always shown: unsync link for synced players (I didn't want this myself, but it was requested and I seemed to be alone in not wanting it) sleep link wont fit with repeat etc unless the browser is very large, or on high res screen. player group form changes size wildly due to showing sync groups. I might left align it under the player model graphic, however. Then right side in the row with player selection can be the unsync and sleep, i think
Created attachment 811 [details] what i'm trying to say
Sorry, I meant that those links should be closer to the right side of the frame. (not the menu items). Attaching a photoshop mockup...
Created attachment 812 [details] what I've done..so far the right side matching the player pulldown would have the sleep, and the unsync links. the playername is a bit redundant given the pulldown, so I have the name only show if the pulldown isnt' there.
Cool. Some thoughts: The white bars are a little jarring. can they be just some spaces or a slash or something? You could move the player settings to the next row and label it as just "settings", on the right, opposite the player name. Are the statistics server specific or player specific? If they are server specific, they should be on the right.
commited my tune-ups and fixes to trunk change 4224./ I used the slimdevices graphic, but I'd love a Slimserver graphic if you can provide one (or tell me where it is hiding from me :)
That looks awesome! I'm really psyched about this. I think the slimdevices logo looks good, but if you want a SlimServer graphic, I can make one for that space. Couple of notes (I always have notes)... 1. Now that I play with it, why aren't Server Settings and Statistics in the menu with everything else? The menu could be one-stop shopping! (Help's probably ok there, it's for people who get lost. :) 2. Shouldn't the stats page open up on the left? 3. The content in the black area should have a small empty border around it. It should probably be the same number of pixels as between the Slim Devices log and the left edge of the screen. Both black frames should have this. 4. The player settings could go in the menu too, especially because they open up on the left side. If you think it's important to keep the link on the right, then the settings should appear on the right. 5. I'm not sure we need a "Home" link on the left. There really isn't a "Home" anymore with the popup menu for all the left side modes. 6. What do you think of moving the player popup menu down where the player name is? If you did that and the above, the top row would just be the logos on both sides, directly under would be a popup choosing the content on the left pane and the player on the right pane, which are really equivalent. (additionally in that row would be search, which is very useful and undock, which folks seem to like.) 7. The ffwd and rew icons have always looked a little off to me. Do you have original ones that aren't squished like that? 8. The "The current playlist:<br>Save | Download | Clear" could probably be kept on one line. Put "The current playlist:" on the left and the "Save / Download / Clear" on the right. That would save some space and make it a bit more consistent. Sorry for all the notes, but I think this very close to being perfect (these are all little tweaks), feel free to ignore one or all. I'm really psyched about this!!!
So, KDF, where do we stand on this? I think it looks great for 6.2 and we should open other bugs for other issues. Marking fixed, reopen if you disagree.
There are 536 bugs in the database with targets of '---' that were fixed prior to new year 2006. I am setting them to targets of 6.2.1 to keep them from showing up in my queries.