[vlc-devel] Re: VLC Mac OS X remarks by Felix

[Derk-Jan Hartman]

On 10 okt 2005, at 16:52, Vincent van den Heuvel wrote:
> Hi Felix,
>
>> My preferred position of your new buttons is at the bottom of the  
>> window actually, so they would replace our current popup-menu and  
>> the shuffle-checkbox.
>
> Why didn't I use the bottom screen-estate? Because of the screen- 
> estate!!! I want to use the status bart for information! See  
> example! If i add buttons to it, it will become either visually to  
> large, or future editions of VLC Media Player will give interface  
> problems (expanding with a extra buttons for example). In iTunes  
> you'll be 'traveling' around for your buttons, here we have
> all our core functions near each other. If the statusbar is folded  
> out by clicking 'Playlist'. We have to 'travel' downwards for those  
> buttons. If we want to kill the statusbar and search function in  
> 'Simple View', we can't reach the buttons unless we click
> the 'Playlist Button'.

I kind of agree that the buttons should be above the "playlist view".  
Still... I'm not sure how i feel about buttons that "affect"  
something that is possibly not visually present when using the buttons.

About the playlist button. Have you considered the enormous load it  
is gonna generate to keep this button up to date? You are thinking 20  
files here. I know ppl who have 20000 items in their VLC playlist.  
It's like having a scolling info dialog. It might look fun, until you  
test it in practice. Scrolling text was taking so much CPU, it was  
directly affecting video playback !

>> We don't need a new design of the volume-slider at the moment,  
>> because we are using the iTunes-like-slider already (this was  
>> implemented after 0.8.2, but you can check a current nightly build  
>> to have a look at it).
>
> I will change it back (I took it to the extreme because of the  
> legal issues)!

He, still thanks though.

>> BTW. It might be good if you subscribe to vlc-devel (you can do  
>> that on developers.videolan.org), so you can get our responses  
>> directly. Additionally, uploading attachments larger than 50 kB to  
>> a webspace will make our moderators happy, because they have to do  
>> that by hand otherwise.
>
> I will do!!! ;-P
>
>
>> What are the advantages of tiff-files btw.? I know that rsrc-files  
>> are the old resource forks of the classic apps (and I'm pretty  
>> much against picking them up again), but what's the point of tiffs  
>> except that you can merge different images to a single file and  
>> therefore have less files in your bundle?
>
> I am not going to interrupt the current workflow, but from a Mac  
> Developers 'point of view' it's easier to port an application
> to a other platform using either resource files (iTunes, QuickTime  
> and Airport Software) or TIFF/PSD files one file containing  
> multiple resources. It's just like mouseovers using CSS instead of  
> JavaScript. Javascript preloads the images and makes a call
> to the image (ea MouseOver/MouseDown). In CSS you define a area  
> (like a image map), the whole image is preloaded anyways. People  
> preceive this as more responsive. Because of the tight dead-line  
> forget about this for now. I'll create PNG resources for you.

Yeah, i think that's gonna be a bit easier :D

>> Indeed. Our first beta version 0.8.4-test1 was released on  
>> September 26 and a second one is following as soon as possible. We  
>> hope to release the final version at the end of october. It would  
>> be nice to have your new buttons in that version already
>
> I'll do (as Yoda said: do or do not!) ;-)

Thank you so much.

>> Your new drafts are really nice. I would prefer thicker lines  
>> concerning shuffle and repeat, but except this, I like them. About  
>> the volume-slider, see above please. I prefer our current one  
>> actually.
>
> I'll play with this...

After this release we will drop support for 10.2, which will allow us  
to make use of a large set of the "newer" features in the Cocoa kit.  
That should help everything along as well.

BTW. I'm missing something in your mock-up. Namely the prev/next and  
stop buttons. VLC cannot do without those buttons atm. They might  
seem useles if you are used to QTP, but for VLC they are an absolute  
must atm.

DJH



---
Videolan - VLC media player
Derk-Jan Hartman (hartman at videolan dot org)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc


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