usability review of the mixdown process
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jokosher |
Fix Committed
|
High
|
Michael Sheldon |
Bug Description
Here is a usability review of the steps required to mixdown a project. Attached is a demonstration of what a user would have to go through to export a simple timeline, with associated (slightly exagerated) remarks/thoughts that could occur to the user.
My goal would be to reduce the number of steps and to reduce confusion.
Here is the list of changes that need to be done:
======= visual feedback =======
Buttons such as Remove, Mixdown, Preferences, do not convey their contextual nature. When they cannot be used, they should be set gtk.insensitive.
- when no action is selected, the Remove (action) and Preferences buttons should be insensitive
- when no configured action is set, the Mixdown button should be insensitive
- when no mixdown profile exists, the Remove (profile) button should be insensitive
- vice versa when the above becomes false
======= appropriate widgets and defaults =======
The "export" action uses two widgets for selecting the local output folder. Instead, it should be a GTK filechooser button (there's a widget made exactly for that, with a property to make it select only folders).
The last used folder should be remembered across sessions. Otherwise, by default, it should be ~.
======= useless clicking ========
Do not show a "successfully created mixdown foobar" dialog. It's useless. See also http://
Other than that, the rest is pretty good! ;)
Changed in jokosher: | |
status: | New → Fix Committed |
assignee: | nobody → Michael Sheldon (michael-sheldon) |
Excellent excellent work. You are on fire with the bug reporting today.
We have been intending to replace this dialog for a long time, but it hasn't been done yet because it would be a bit of work to make is really simple and just as flexible. This dialog was designed from a really high level, without a whole lot of attention to detail. It was designed for flexibility, and now serves as a very good example of a much too general solution.
The original idea was to allow extension developers and users to easily extend this dialog. In its current form with two types of extension actions (one which is rarely used) it is pretty useless. If someone can propose some ideas for how to streamline this dialog for the use case of simply exporting to mp3/ogg/flac/wav and still have the flexibility for extra actions this would be great. If not, I vote we just scrap it and put in a Save As dialog with an extra combobox to select format type. Comments?