[GeekShadow]

Ok, I was wondering what represent for you the service pane (the one at the left) and how add-ons/features should integrate with it.

Personally I think the service pane is for what it means, services.
Each service have a group name, and allow the user to access music, playlists, devices, concerts, digital shop etc.

Once on Songbird there was a web bookmarks group, and I really liked this feature.
I think we could bring back this feature, and also adding some "home page" with search feature for users.
So for me, the service pane should allow not only to browse media, but also the web.
As displayed on the left with small icons it's both representing features, applications and content.

This all I found on Songbird wiki as I'm not sure they ever made guidelines for this :
https://wiki.songbirdnest.com/@api/deki/...ze=webview
https://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Developer/...ervicePane
https://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Releases/O...ne_Cleanup

Some example with Firefox add-on/tabs :
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox...style-tab/

Could we compare on how it's handled with other media players ?
Maybe it could be worth a blog post on how we should handle the UI ?

[freaktechnik]

I am against adding not media related stuff to the service pane.

Since we are the only media player having tabs, we have to reconsider it completely.

From the users point of view this is a completely new concept. this either allows us to introduce new locations for things or we have to place stuff, where users are used to it, even if we have a diffrent UI.

I personally think, web-realted stuff would overload the pane: You have your libraries, the services, radios and all your playlists. that's already enought for me to have a scrollbar on my full HD monitor. Searching a playlist, when you have even more nodes makes it even harder. Even tought you can visually divide playlists quite clearly, the additional lines disturb the eye.
I also don't think that a user really needs bookmarks or anything like this in nightingale. The browser in ng is not a browser to "browse the web". It's a browser which is here, to download music (/media) and download add-ons.
Since the user won't expect a browser in nightringale (we don't promote it...), it could raise couriosity, if there was a node in the service pane. For old users, it won't be helpful, I guess.

Because I prefer a simple and slick interface I'd prefer refraining from adding more to the service pane by default. Feel free to overload the service pane with an add-on. I don't care about add-ons I dislike.

More of my toughts I can't write down... Since it's kind of a hard argumentation...

[ilikenwf]

How about we just make bookmarks an optional addon?

[ilikenwf]

I'm all for making both options available as choices.

Don't want bookmarks/services? Ok. You do? That's fine too...I'm sure we can make both optional, and both work. Choosing the default, then, is the biggest issue.

[Timmythepirate]

(10-27-2012, 06:26 PM)ilikenwf Wrote: I'm all for making both options available as choices.

Don't want bookmarks/services? Ok. You do? That's fine too...I'm sure we can make both optional, and both work. Choosing the default, then, is the biggest issue.

My opinion is services should be visible by default, but bookmarks should be invisible by default. The most important thing is that visibility should be easy to change.

[ilikenwf]

As long as it's easy, I say go for both options...

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

I'd like to have that web/non-music-service thing in a firstrun Add-on. I personally did like bookmarks in Songbird, but hate the static advertisement for example in Philips Songbird (e.g. non-removeable bookmarks).
A customizeable bookmark category would solve the issue. If you don't like it, uncheck the add-on on firstrun or uninstall it afterwards. We'd need it to link to the bookmark stuff that is still available from xulrunner code (if it hasn't got removed yet), or we need some other api for add-ons to register bookmarks (which then are disabled without the add-on installed). We should consider default bookmarks (for example generated in the bookmark add-ons firstrun) for some musik sites...

That's how I think it could be solved without running into the bloated or uncustomizeable track, still leaving an opt-out for the ones not using the browser at all.