-Brading Software Message Board
+--Forum: Mp3/Tag Studio Suggestions
+---Topic: Usability and interface could be improved started by phatnadz
Posted by: phatnadz on Mar. 04 2004,05:48
Don't get me wrong--mp3/tag has a feature set that is way beyond any tagging tool currently being offered. But quite frankly, the UI sucks. First off, the app should really be able to go full-screen, particularly for those with large mp3 collections. There should be no swapping of toolsets, in fact, this is a sign of poor interface design. Instead, all these features should be included in a toolbar that spans the top, and allows for customization.
Magnus, if you're interested, I can design the icons for the new interface. I can create some top-notch, anti-aliased, transparent icons that will look slick.
Let me know if you're interested--my addy is phatnadz11 at hotmail dot com.
Posted by: David Farago on May 24 2004,14:36
Strange, I registered TS mainly because of the nifty interface. Most of the things I'm doing with TS I'm doing really fast with very few keys/clicks
Ok, full-screen might be usefull, but the extra hirarchy induced by the tool set is usefull in my case, as I don't use the file tools very often and it would be annoying if they used up space.
Posted by: Magnus Brading on May 24 2004,14:59
Yeah, I guess with every interface there's always some people who love it and some people who hate it, it's impossible to make everyone happy, but I agree that the full screen and large font issues suck, and I will try to make a serious attempt at working around these problems once and for all, as soon as I get the time. The fact that these issues have remained for so long is that they are problems relatively "outside my control", that require quite major rewrites to work around, but as I said, I feel it's getting time for that anyway, now that the other new features I've been working on (macros and command-line functionality) are complete.
About the toolsets I have to agree with David, having features hierachically organized often makes an interface easier to use, instead of just putting everything into a big mess.
Thanks for the offer about the icons anyway, I might take you up on it when it's time to redesign the GUI. I think one should be careful with getting too many icons into the interface though, since I'm of the firm belief that if the features described by the icons do not have any typical intuitive graphic representation, giving them an icon/image only makes thing more messy than without icons at all.
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