UI Feedback

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williamsardar
Posts: 28
Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:57 am

UI Feedback

Post by williamsardar » Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:57 am

Hi Dmitry!

After progress on the radio issue, I have been keen to become Neutron super user and tester again!

I have got some feedback about the UI:

The Neutron box in the notification shade has very tiny buttons for Play, Pause, Skip. They must be bigger! See the image below. The radio has nice big buttons. (I am using 4.1.2) TuneIn Radio also has better buttons.
Screenshots_2013-03-22-08-47-05.jpg
Screenshots_2013-03-22-08-47-05.jpg (29.1 KiB) Viewed 2447 times
Now 2 pieces of feedback about the menu:
1. Generally when I am using any menu and I try to press something (e.g. an artist folder, or a settings folder, or anything) I find that Neutron thinks I want to scroll the menu, and I have to remove my thumb from the screen again, wait for the scrolling to stop, scroll back to the button and try again. Very frustrating! Perhaps give a dead zone so small "scrolling detections" are ignored, and you have to scroll more than 5mm on the screen before it recognises it as a scroll action? Otherwise it's recognised as a button press. I am pretty sure this is how most other apps scroll.
2. When I am trying to scroll in the options menu (specifically the UI options menu) I almost always find Neutron accidentally thinking I have pressed something. Example: in the UI options menu there are lots of sliders at the top. If I try to scroll down , I normally change one of the sliders by accident!

So I propose new behaviour...
1. When first finger contact is detected, start long-press timer and finger swipe distance measurement (I am talking about vertical swipe distance).
2. If finger is released before long-press time is reached AND before finger vertical swipe distance exceeds the dead zone, register a short-press.
3. If long-press time is reached before finger is released AND before finger vertical swipe distance exceeds the dead zone, register a long-press.
4. If finger vertical swipe distance exceeds dead zone before long-press time is reached, start to scroll AND REGISTER NO PRESS EVENT!
5. With a horizontal slider in a menu that can be vertically scrolled, the behaviour must be more complex! Perhaps need a horizontal swiping dead zone as well here, and do not allow vertical scrolling and horizontal slider manipulation in the same finger contact.

I hope this is constructive.

Cheers

William

cmmike
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2012 9:16 am

Re: UI Feedback

Post by cmmike » Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:42 am

All this UI bicycle reinvention makes me want to palm my face, really.

Why not just adapt a nice existing player UI to Neutron's wonderful audio engine? Apollo Music Player is out there, completely open-source. Its UI is beautiful, functional, well-thought-out and instantly familiar to any Android user. What is it with good-sounding audio players that compels their authors to write their own, and invariably idiosyncratic, UI engines from scratch?

(No offence to anyone, it's just that Neutron's GUI makes me want to throw the phone at the nearest wall sometimes...)

williamsardar
Posts: 28
Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:57 am

Re: UI Feedback

Post by williamsardar » Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:17 am

I actually like the Neutron UI... it's distinctive and does everything it needs to, just needs a bit of work in my opinion.

I feel other music players are too obsessed with the album art.

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