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  Second Alpha Release of Amarok 2.0, Codenamed "Aulanerk"
Sound and Music Posted by Lydia Pintscher on Saturday 26/Jul/2008, @13:48
from the goddess-of-the-sea dept.
The Amarok team is proud to present the second Alpha of Amarok 2.0. Development is moving at full speed and a lot of bugs have been fixed since Alpha 1, as well as features polished. Thank you to everyone who has already helped by filing bug reports and sending patches. Please keep them coming! Read the release announcement for a list of bugfixes and changes. Get Alpha 2 today and help make Amarok 2.0 rock.


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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them.
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Awesome!
by Dread Knight on Saturday 26/Jul/2008, @16:45
It's great! I'm already loving it!


I find the vertical tabs on the left rather ugly...
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  • Re: Awesome!
    by Jan Ask on Saturday 26/Jul/2008, @19:34
    Yes, Amarok does look fantastic, but I would also like to see something that replaces the vertical tabs.

    Anyone from the Oxygen team in da house?
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    • Re: Awesome!
      by Kit on Saturday 26/Jul/2008, @20:00
      Last I heard the art they had for the vertical tabs was still meant as a placeholder for when they get some art meant for it. Not sure if anythings changed since I last heard about that, though.
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      • Re: Awesome!
        by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen on Sunday 27/Jul/2008, @02:42
        That is exactly why it's that ugly :) That way we don't forget ;)
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        • Re: Awesome!
          by Vide on Sunday 27/Jul/2008, @11:26
          Can you simply ge rid of vertical tabs and vertical texts? They are impossible to read, give a cluttered sensation and, to sum it up, are the only negative part of the Amarok experience (which is, a part from this, fantastic)
          [ Reply To This | View ]
          • Re: Awesome!
            by Kit on Sunday 27/Jul/2008, @11:32
            And how would be a better method to access that content?
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            • Re: Awesome!
              by Emmanuel Lepage Vallée on Sunday 27/Jul/2008, @16:35
              The iTunes way to do it, only one big treeView. Of course, in Amarok we have a second level of horizontal tabs inside of the first level (services, podcast and things like that). But i think that a single treeView would do the job better. Now, I am ok with the current system, but i remember when i first used Amarok (i was on XMMS before and iTunes (4.*) in wine for my iPod), i didn't liked the left tabs stuff but not at all. It was taking so many click to access playlist.

              I think that there should be not more than 2 of those tabs. The default one should be the treeview with Playlists, podcast, services, devices and "see all media" and the second should be the collection, with local, remote and device in different tabs.

              It sound like iTunes/RhytmBox/Other player, but it is still more usage than always having to click 5-7 time to access a basic feature.
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              • Re: Awesome!
                by Ian Monroe on Tuesday 29/Jul/2008, @22:07
                Holy vertical space batman!

                We already tried this sort of thing before, it was really ugly (even worse then our current tabs!) and left little space for the actual browsers due to all the tabs.

                The iTunes model only works because they don't have a playlist per-se, but use the playlist-space to show the collection browser normally. But then people can also make their own playlists somehow. Not sure. Anywho: the point is that iTunes tree view isn't an isolated feature, and adopting it means making Amarok cramped and ugly or becoming a complete iTunes clone.
                [ Reply To This | View ]
            • Re: Awesome!
              by Darkelve on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @01:46
              "And how would be a better method to access that content?"

              At least provide the [b]option[/b] to use something else than vertical tabs... horizontal tabs, text, ANYTHING but vertical tabs... my neck isn't made to turn 90% (ok, a *little* less) and I'm not used to reading text that's rotated 90 degrees. At least, if you keep the tabs, make the text readable from top to bottom:

              R
              E
              A
              D
              A
              B
              L
              E

              T
              E
              X
              T

              Yes yes I know you loose a lot of space this way. It's still better than text that's near impossible to read or icons that you can't tell what they do.
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              • Re: Awesome!
                by Insomniak on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @04:20
                In my opinion, vertical tabs are not a problem.

                Personnally, i don't have any problem to read and to know what they are doing. It's better than Horyzontaly tabs, it takes less area...
                And reading from top to bottom is more annoying than 90° oriented text.

                But the idea to add an option to configure these tabs, for people who prefer 90° oriented text or top to bottom text, is really good.
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                • Just use KDE's vertical tabs, please!
                  by Sebastian on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @05:32
                  There exist vertical tabs in many apps like Kate, KDevelop, Konqui... But Amarok uses its very own implementation since the early 1.x releases. The same about the curious selection bar in the playlist they were using. I believe it would already help if they just leave it to the Oxygen (or another) style to draw the tabs...
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                  • Re: Just use KDE's vertical tabs, please!
                    by Mark Kretschmann on Tuesday 29/Jul/2008, @07:40
                    Our implementation is superior to the one in KDElibs, as it uses the whole vertical available space, which makes it much easier to use the tabs with muscle memory.

                    We've in fact been asked to put this code into KDElibs, but due to time restrictions this hasn't happened yet.

                    As for the _look_ of the tabs, I can assure you that we're working on improving it muchly. In fact it looks already much better in trunk.

                    One word, as a hint: Nuno :)
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              • Awful idea!
                by tryfan on Tuesday 29/Jul/2008, @05:58
                Putting the letters
                a
                b
                o
                v
                e
                each others would make the interface totally unreadable.
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            • Re: Awesome!
              by greg on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @04:13
              What about good old QToolBox (http://doc.trolltech.com/qq/qq07-toolboxes.png)
              Of course something less ugly, but this will keep tab labels horizontal, and wont take up so much space
              [ Reply To This | View ]
              • Re: Awesome!
                by Insomniak on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @04:26
                Oh, nice idea !

                Better than adding option to configure the tabs, and more pratical.
                [ Reply To This | View ]
              • Re: Awesome!
                by Vide on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @07:15
                IMO it's the best solution, at least if we follow the "tabs" paradigm, I even did a mockup and posted it on amarok-devel but it was rejected saying that buttons may grow in number and then occupy more real estate. I don't think so, but I'm not a developer so I can't really blame them :)
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              • Re: Awesome!
                by ireko on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @09:37
                something similar, and I think it is good, take a look at right part of the site http://www.cuil.com/search?q=amarok if this efect would be included in amarok it would be great
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                • Re: Awesome!
                  by bsander on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @12:52
                  I don't see what you're referring to..
                  [ Reply To This | View ]
                • Re: Awesome!
                  by Ian Monroe on Tuesday 29/Jul/2008, @22:17
                  Thats pretty much qtoolbox, fyi. (just minus the ugly)

                  We are planning on having something like that for the playlist browser (which uses qtoolbox currently).
                  [ Reply To This | View ]
              • Re: Awesome!
                by Ian Monroe on Tuesday 29/Jul/2008, @22:14
                Heh yea we did this before exactly. It was horrible. ;)

                Here is my documented proof:
                http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/34-New-sidebar-for-amaroK.html
                And users saying they don't like it:
                http://amarok.kde.org/forum/index.php/topic,5918.0.html

                Unfortunately no screenshots... they were probably censored for the children.
                [ Reply To This | View ]
Release Schedule?
by KubuntuUser on Sunday 27/Jul/2008, @07:40
Hi

Is there a release schedule for 2.0 ? Otherwise, anyone knows when are they shooting to release 2.0 final? Thanks!
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  • Re: Release Schedule?
    by Jonathan Thomas on Sunday 27/Jul/2008, @10:21
    Final release should be Octoberish, last I heard.
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    • Re: Release Schedule?
      by KubuntuUser on Sunday 27/Jul/2008, @12:02
      Thanks, Jonathan!

      Hope we see it in Kubuntu 8.10!
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      • Re: Release Schedule?
        by Mark Kretschmann on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @00:39
        We hope so too :) We're working at a feverish pace to make this possible, but there are no guarantees.

        In any case, it will be available for download.
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Amarok 1.4 import??
by Anon on Monday 28/Jul/2008, @21:19
Is there already a way to import all the "old" Amarok 1.4 database info (playcounts, ratings etc.) into the new 2.0 Amarok?
This keeps my from switching...
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  • Re: Amarok 1.4 import??
    by Mark Kretschmann on Tuesday 29/Jul/2008, @00:31
    Yes, Seb Ruiz has been working on a converter script.

    I'm not sure if the script is already usable at this point, but it will definitely be doable in the final release.
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    • Re: Amarok 1.4 import??
      by Anders on Tuesday 29/Jul/2008, @07:32
      Argh... but I want it NOW ;)))!

      Anyway - is the database structure so much different that a converter script is so difficult? I, too, am still kept off from trying Amarok2 because that would mean trashing all my album covers, playcounts, ratings and so on... would be great if a converter could be added before the final version is out!
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      • Re: Amarok 1.4 import??
        by Ian Monroe on Tuesday 29/Jul/2008, @22:16
        People who are worried about such things should just as well stay away from Amarok for the time being. :)
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radio tab
by ben on Sunday 03/Aug/2008, @13:44
Amarok is nice but it also needs simplicity. The way the integration of radio streams is organised does not look very good. It does not make sense to have lists in the tab window.
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