Exaile - Amarok like player for GTK+ and GNOME

Two comments:

1. The report's a nice read. Thanks for the link.

2. Did you read the whole report? Because I think the title of your post sounds quite a bit prejudiced. Especially since in the contaxt of this thread it makes the reader believe that you want to say Exaile! doesn't suffer from similar "design flaws". Because actually it does.

I just installed and ran Exaile!, and here are a few observations:

Note: I know Exaile! is at a very early stage of development. I also don't find it bad at all. The following list of "design flaws" just looks at things that I feel are similar to the things the Amarok usability survey complained about. In fact, I think I may like Exaile! a lot, but I did not yet use it.

- First run dialogue:
-- that dialogue box is too much text in one paragraph (bad)
-- The text is mostly clear and understandable, also to
non-technical users (good)
-- It contains information on where to change the music library
source directory... (good)
-- ... albeit in the form "Tools->Library Manager" which I'm sure
isn't user friendly according to the user interface guidelines
(probably bad).
-- The only thing you're asked is where your music is, you can
easily add several directories (good)
-- For me, the "add music directories" dialogue is fine, but not
quite sure what some really not-at-all technical says... I think
one should add some short explanatory (right spelling?) text
here. (maybe bad)

- User interface:
-- The preferences has an "apply" button. I'm really sure gnome
user interface guide doesn't like that at all.
Even worse: The "OK" in the preferences doesn't work without
applying first (at least that's for the "playlist tab location
combo box"). That's really really really bad.
-- And why is there a preference for putting playlist tabs on
top or on the right or on the bottom or on the left? Here
you should choose for the user. Buttons on left or right waste
a lot of space, so the choise should be top or bottom. Top is
probably much more user friendly (because we're used to it from
firefox or IE7 ;-)). (not nice)
-- the amarok usability report says it's bad to have vertical
tabs with vertical text. Exaile! has them too. (silly)
-- Amarok calls its library collection, which is not the standard
in music players and hence should be avoided. Same for Exaile!,
which even calls it library in the first-run-druid and collection
in the main gui. (confusing, pedantic)
-- What does the refresh button refresh? At least extend the
tooltip. (hmmm)
-- The Combo-Box with "Artist", "Album", "Genre" probably lets you
sort you library by Artist, Album or Genre? (hmmmmmmm)
-- There are two seach fields. It's more or less clear that the
one searches the library and the other one searches the playlist.
Still, maybe the search boxes should be titled accordingly?
(well...)
-- More bad things about the playlist tab: Why can I
give a name for the label, but when I select "save playlist" from
the label's context menu, the label name is not prefilled as
playlist name? That would make some sense. Also, the label name
is not saved with the playlist, so I name the label "some music",
save the playlist as "some songs". The label name doesn't change.
I close the playlist, open it again, and the label now reads
"some songs". Also, probably the label of an unnamed playlist
should read "unnamed playlist" and it shouldn't be possible to
save a playlist with name "unnamed playlist".
(really bad)
-- Playlist table:
--- column headers don't have tooltips. What does "#" mean? Many
users could expect "number in playlist", but it is the album's
track number. (okay...)
--- The "playing" track is only indicated by a small
triangle-shaped arrow. No bold font face, background
highlighting, ... (that's not nice)
--- To get to the "playing track", I need to select an entry
from the "view" menu. This may be okay, but I don't think
it's so intuitive. And then, sometimes the playing song is
on top of the visible part of the list (if I was below) or
at the bottom of the visible part (if I was above). Why not
simply place it in the middle every time? (bad)
--- When I'm currently another playlist than the one containing
the "playing track", and I choose "go to playing track", I
don't go there. The playlist view doesn't change to the
playlist containing the playing track. (worse)
-- The interface for "artist information from wikipedia and so on"
is a bit confusing:
--- the "Information" tab looks like it is a playlist tab. Its
location even changes with the "Playlist tab location"
preference. But it's not a playlist. So it should be treated
differently.
--- In the current layout, you get a doubly tabbed
interface, which is quite ugly.
-- The "album art collector" doesn't tell you what it will do.
add some short text ("will try to download album covers from
amazon").
-- What's the blacklist?
-- What's the queue? What's the difference to "playlist"? And
why is "clear playlist" in the "tools" menu? Why not create
a "playlist" menu, that contains "save playlist", "clear
playlist", "new playlist" etc?
-- firefox had the "preferences" dialogue in the "tools" menu some
time ago. They removed it and put it into "edit", where most
people expect it (nautilus has it there, too). Well, Exaile!
doesn't have "edit", but you'll surely find things to put into
edit. Like "shuffle playlist", "undo change to playlist" "redo
change to playlist", "copy playlist", "paste into playlist",
"paste selection into new playlist", "preferences"...
-- Don't abbreviate "OSD" in the preferences. How many people know
it translates to "On Screen Display"? Especially bad in the
title of the "OSD"-preferences box. There's enough space there.
-- Don't abbreviate volume (although I'm quite sure it's clear
what that means).
-- Amarok doesn't use the interface space effectively. Exaile! in
comparison does. For example, "Rating" and "Volume" are rather
well isolated in the top right corner, where they are easily
spotted.
-- Bottom/right there are a couple of icons. What's the brush for?
(none of them has a tooltip)
-- The top left corner is the most visible part of a window. So
that's where the "play", "stop", "skip track" etc buttons should
be.

I'm sure I could find more, but as I said, I just briefly looked at the program. Didn't really use it yet (note the word "yet" ;-)).

I've used Rhythmbox, Listen, Banshee, Beep Media Player, Quod Libet, and now Exaile... and I have to say I like Exaile best of all.

Exaile is:
* cleanly designed, with a polished and intuitive interface
* fast! starts up quick and is very responsive
* easy to install. It doesn't have excessively bloated dependencies like Banshee (which is Mono-based and requires all the Mono runtime crap)
* stable! Even though it's not even at 1.0, it's a whole lot more stable than Listen or Quod Libet which randomly crash on me

I would say that my second choice is Rhythmbox, which is of a similar clean and fast design, although I find Rhythmbox gets very slow with a large library of music and I don't like the way it handles play queues too much.

Exaile rocks!

What features does Amarok have that Exaile lacks? I've never used Amarok myself, as I'm a Gnome guy...

open-mindedness and open source don't always go hand in hand :(

On the other hand, maybe he just wanted to complain about parent post claiming without producing details that Exaile lacks many of Amarok's features.

Or he already has tried a trillion music players and now has one that's at least good enough and is tired of trying a new one every other day.