Second Alpha Release of Amarok 2.0, Codenamed "Aulanerk"

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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Comments

by Dread Knight (not verified)

It's great! I'm already loving it!

I find the vertical tabs on the left rather ugly...

by Jan Ask (not verified)

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?

by Kit (not verified)

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.

by Dan Leinir Turt... (not verified)

That is exactly why it's that ugly :) That way we don't forget ;)

by Vide (not verified)

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)

by Kit (not verified)

And how would be a better method to access that content?

by Emmanuel Lepage... (not verified)

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.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

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.

by Darkelve (not verified)

"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.

by Insomniak (not verified)

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.

by Sebastian (not verified)

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...

by Mark Kretschmann (not verified)

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 :)

by tryfan (not verified)

Putting the letters
a
b
o
v
e
each others would make the interface totally unreadable.

by greg (not verified)

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

by Insomniak (not verified)

Oh, nice idea !

Better than adding option to configure the tabs, and more pratical.

by Vide (not verified)

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 :)

by ireko (not verified)

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

by bsander (not verified)

I don't see what you're referring to..

by ireko (not verified)

"explore by category" box

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

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).

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

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.

by KubuntuUser (not verified)

Hi

Is there a release schedule for 2.0 ? Otherwise, anyone knows when are they shooting to release 2.0 final? Thanks!

by Jonathan Thomas (not verified)

Final release should be Octoberish, last I heard.

by KubuntuUser (not verified)

Thanks, Jonathan!

Hope we see it in Kubuntu 8.10!

by Mark Kretschmann (not verified)

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.

by Anon (not verified)

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...

by Mark Kretschmann (not verified)

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.

by Anders (not verified)

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!

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

People who are worried about such things should just as well stay away from Amarok for the time being. :)

by ben (not verified)

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.