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Topic: Separate UI forum? (Read 38699 times) previous topic - next topic
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Separate UI forum?

I think it's a shame that UI gets main focus in the forums, and all the great components that add functionality or flexibility pass away with no or very little user base.

Why isn't a UI-centric subforum created for all the appearence/configuration/ui-support threads, so the real functionality threads can remain the unique use for foobar2000?

Also I think the main page should show recent threads seperate from every sub forum.

In addition to this I think the wiki should be updated. There are many missing components
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P
 

Separate UI forum?

Reply #1 –
That would be great.  I could just completely ignore the whole forum then.

Quote from: odyssey on
I think it's a shame that UI gets main focus in the forums, and all the great components that add functionality or flexibility pass away with no or very little user base.
Totally agree.
I'm on a horse.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: odyssey on
I think it's a shame that UI gets main focus in the forums, and all the great components that add functionality or flexibility pass away with no or very little user base.
So true. I was e.g. so surprised that a long demanded vst wrapper functionality finally didn't get the attention it deserved...

I'm for an UI forum for the following reasons:

a) A lot of traffic is about panels UI. Panels is a rapidly developing beast, new features arise while old bugs remain. So, a lot of need for new topics. But currently, because of some kind of etikette, all new topics stay in one thread. "PanelsUI support in one thread" is nothing but a mess. Same with columnsUI.

b) I don't want to see all the UI "I want to clone my wmp" shite.

But we'll probably face the truth. We'll learn that aside from the UI hype the fb2k project is dying. Core as well as 3rd party plugins. The good news is, I think odyssey pointed this out, this would bring more attention to the technical advantages of fb2k/plugins.

I think we need 3 forums:

Core and devel.
3rd party.
Look and style.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Squeller on
But currently, because of some kind of etikette, all new topics stay in one thread. "PanelsUI support in one thread" is nothing but a mess. Same with columnsUI.


My viewpoint exactly!!  Not to name names, but everytime I post a new subject in it's own thread, there is one member in particular who has appointed himself the *forum police* and attempts to tell me not to do it.  Well, he did that for a while, until I told him to buzz off...

Anyways, I agree that including 500 different subjects all into one thread is not the best way for new users to access the information they are seeking.  Just my .02 cents...............

Separate UI forum?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Synthetic Soul on
That would be great.  I could just completely ignore the whole forum then.


I hope the forum is implemented for the exact same reason.

On a totally unrelated note: there seems to be a new trend of developers lumping different components with DIFFERENT functionalities together which is slightly annoying.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #5 –
Good idea, I guess.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #7 –
Agree. I've been following this forum for two weeks and nearly every day Panels UI is the main subject. Not to offend you, Terrestrial, you're making a good work, but the development of other plugins seems to be stuck. Or is foobar with its plugins ready enough to users to focus on UI?

Separate UI forum?

Reply #8 –
I cannot more than agree ... one more vote for UI Forum ...

Separate UI forum?

Reply #9 –
I couldn't agree more with this

I don't bother coming here as much anymore because the forum is being flooded by the same questions over and over and over that have been answered a hundred times already. Foobar is far more than an eye candy player but thats being lost in all the UI threads sh8. I do like panels UI (not lately though) so I'm not hating on it, I'm just saying that the forum is a mess right now.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #10 –
I agree that this is needed.





@Maranatha
If you have a personal problem with me, I'd appreciate it if you'd respond to my PM's,
rather than quipping every so often about what a pain in your side I've been.
elevatorladylevitateme

Separate UI forum?

Reply #11 –
Separate forums is a great idea, we can't say we didn't see this coming.
we was young an' full of beans

Separate UI forum?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Squeller on
But we'll probably face the truth. We'll learn that aside from the UI hype the fb2k project is dying. Core as well as 3rd party plugins. The good news is, I think odyssey pointed this out, this would bring more attention to the technical advantages of fb2k/plugins.

Work on foobar2000 0.9.5 is still going steady. The main reason for the lengthened development cycle (besides the influence of real life) is attention to detail. We do not want to release a half-finished product and conduct an unorganized alpha test with a whole forum worth of people. Not to mention breaking compatibility every few weeks.

Quote from: Squeller on
I think we need 3 forums:

Core and devel.
3rd party.
Look and style.

Merging the development forum with another forum is a bad idea. It is the main place where developers can go and look for answers. It has less traffic than the other forums, but if it was merged with one of them, the development related content would be very hard to find.


Quote from: TheTravis on
Not to offend you, Terrestrial, you're making a good work, but the development of other plugins seems to be stuck. Or is foobar with its plugins ready enough to users to focus on UI?

If terrestrial actually did good work with Panels UI, it wouldn't be completely idiosyncratic. Hence there would be less support questions regarding it and more room for other components.

An observation regarding the second part: Panels UI attracts a lot of users of a specific kind, users who install foobar2000 because they have seen a screenshot of Panels UI. These users care mostly about looks, they rarely ask for advanced non-visual functionality. I have noticed that some of them discuss eagerly about scripting for Panels UI, but lack knowledge of basic standard functions. How do you expect this crowd to further the development of the already existing broad set of non-visual components?


We, the foobar2000 team, share a dislike for Panels UI due to its poor design* and implementation, and we have a consent that we do not want to show additional support for it. So as painful as the current situations is for everyone - both the users and us - we will not create an additional forum. If there is to be a separate forum for Panels UI and everything related to it, someone from the community will have to create it on their own site.

However, if someone from the Panels UI community wants to step up and take initiative, here are some suggestions from myself that could improve the situation:
  • Panels UI itself: Convince terrestrial that it should be redesigned. In particular it should use a real scripting language for everything that is not related to formatting text from tags (and maybe even that). This could solve a whole lot of design flaws and limitations, if done properly.
  • The Panels UI thread: A bug tracker would be useful. Despite the name, bug trackers can also be used for feature requests and the like.
  • The appearance thread(s) and the configuration upload threads: A gallery based site would work wonders to organize those.

*) Note to Panels UI users to avoid confusion: This statement is about the design of the Panels UI component, not about the visual designs you create.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #13 –
Good idea.
I think another good idea would be to have a sticky thread at the top of the 3rd-party plug-ins forum (Or the proposed 'appearance' sub-forum), indexing all of the major foobar2000 references (panels UI wiki, components wiki, any other decent blogs/sources etc), giving it the title 'Read here first - be warned!' or something similar. I know this certainly would have helped me when I first came to the forum asking about panels UI anyway. Not sure what others think about that though?

-mac

Separate UI forum?

Reply #14 –
A separate forum would do wonders for readability and easier searching.

The thing that I fail to understand from some comments is: what is the correlation between Panels UI and stagnation of new components? As far as I can tell there is a ton of components, a lot of them  in active development and there is a new one almost every month! I don't think any audio player can match that.

As far as the panels UI goes, I think that some configs are great! Not because of the eye candy, but because of great component integration. I use Scaled configuration by Falstaff and its great because of the convenient buttons for cover search, lyrics search, play list changing etc... It makes a whole bunch of added component functionality seem like a real part of the program which really enhances usability.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: foosion on
We, the foobar2000 team, share a dislike for Panels UI due to its poor design* and implementation, and we have a consent that we do not want to show additional support for it. So as painful as the current situations is for everyone - both the users and us - we will not create an additional forum. If there is to be a separate forum for Panels UI and everything related to it, someone from the community will have to create it on their own site.

But those users will come here regardless. Even if there's an off-site forum for Panels UI alone, half of them will still end up posting their questions here. You might consider adding an appearance forum with maybe something like "unsupported" in the title, so the devs and other uninterested people can just ignore it, and everybody else can use it and know what to expect of it.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: MC Escher on
But those users will come here regardless. Even if there's an off-site forum for Panels UI alone, half of them will still end up posting their questions here.

A sticky thread redirecting them there, would solve that, and give a justification for removal of threads which ignore it. However, i dont think that panels UI alone is the "problem"... but instead what it represents. A really good offsite would be more like an "unofficial fb2k community", which focusses mostly on 3rd party plugins.

Inside of the fb2k community, there are currently two very different audiences. One of them is the one which uses panels UI and other plugins which offer a VERY high degree of configurability - this audience tends to care mostly about looks, and getting exotic and very specific features to work, no matter what the cost is. The other audience - which currently tends to be very silent... isnt much interested in tweaking and configuring the hell out of fb2k - or even making it look like a skinned player.... their desires and questions are much more basic and more near the core of fb2k. So, we are talking about two entirely different "needs" - and i'm not sure if they mix well in a single community.

- Lyx
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: Lyx on
Quote from: MC Escher on

But those users will come here regardless. Even if there's an off-site forum for Panels UI alone, half of them will still end up posting their questions here.

A sticky thread redirecting them there, would solve that, and give a justification for removal of threads which ignore it.

We have something like this at http://www.fooblog2000.com/forum/ but no sticky has not yet been implemented, nor has the fooblog community really gotten off the ground.
Most of the discussion there seems to center around FofR's configurations.

I would ask FofR if becoming that community is really what he wants, before implementing the sticky, though.
elevatorladylevitateme

Separate UI forum?

Reply #18 –
I have to agree with most of the people in here - a forum for just PanelsUI would not be a good thing. I fail, however, to see how a UI forum would cater to only PanelsUI. A significant number of users still use ColumnsUI and have questions regarding the configuration and customization of those components. I still see a lot of users who use ColumnsUI for their configuration. I'd imagine they would be in the minority of people to show off their foobar too.

I wouldn't mind seeing a new site come up regarding the configurations of the UI. The Nub4Life configuration site's gone now, so there's not much in terms of places to find premade stuff.
We dreamed of a world in peace but killed for a life of ease.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: foosion on
We, the foobar2000 team, share a dislike for Panels UI due to its poor design* and implementation, and we have a consent that we do not want to show additional support for it. So as painful as the current situations is for everyone - both the users and us - we will not create an additional forum. If there is to be a separate forum for Panels UI and everything related to it, someone from the community will have to create it on their own site.


I agree with you that it may be poorly designed. In fact the "language" to configure PanelsUI is too complex for my taste.
On the other hand PanelsUI fills a gap in foobar which is the possibility of extreme visual customization. You developers should have seen it coming. Maybe you underestimated the need of a plugin for visual configurability in this degree. There is no point in complaining now.
Why developers don't take a more constructive route and contact terrestrial and discuss ways to improve it, or even redesign it?
I don't see the interest for such a plugin lowering in the short run simply because there is nothing like it (to my knowledge) in the competition.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #20 –
Quote
I agree with you that it may be poorly designed. In fact the "language" to configure PanelsUI is too complex for my taste.
On the other hand PanelsUI fills a gap in foobar which is the possibility of extreme visual customization. You developers should have seen it coming. Maybe you underestimated the need of a plugin for visual configurability in this degree. There is no point in complaining now.
Why developers don't take a more constructive route and contact terrestrial and discuss ways to improve it, or even redesign it?
I don't see the interest for such a plugin lowering in the short run simply because there is nothing like it (to my knowledge) in the competition.


Personally I don't see why the fb2k developers should waste their time 'helping' terrestrial, it's his component, he can do as he likes. I'd say a good proportion of fb2k users couldn't care less about his component, and would rather have the fb2k devs spending their time on something worthwhile. It's likely, however, that this group of users is less vocal, since rather than spending their time messing around with visual configs and showing off on the forums, they just use foobar2000 for playing and managing their music libraries.
The only changes I ever make to my foobar2000 installation is updating it when a new version is out, and updating the few components I use (columns_ui, foo_dop) when compatibilty breaks, a problematic bug surfaces or there are significant improvements.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #21 –
Quote from: beto on
Quote from: foosion on

We, the foobar2000 team, share a dislike for Panels UI due to its poor design* and implementation, and we have a consent that we do not want to show additional support for it. So as painful as the current situations is for everyone - both the users and us - we will not create an additional forum. If there is to be a separate forum for Panels UI and everything related to it, someone from the community will have to create it on their own site.


I agree with you that it may be poorly designed. In fact the "language" to configure PanelsUI is too complex for my taste.
On the other hand PanelsUI fills a gap in foobar which is the possibility of extreme visual customization. You developers should have seen it coming. Maybe you underestimated the need of a plugin for visual configurability in this degree. There is no point in complaining now.
Why developers don't take a more constructive route and contact terrestrial and discuss ways to improve it, or even redesign it?
I don't see the interest for such a plugin lowering in the short run simply because there is nothing like it (to my knowledge) in the competition.


it defiantly could use some reworking and it may have a few redundant operations but i really cant complain because in its current state it seems to be bug free, and it does things that no other plugins do. like display, hide, and resize specific panels based on tags and other variables. im also using an older version anyway so that may help.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #22 –
Quote from: gob on
could use some reworking and it may have a few redundant operations but i really cant complain because in its current state it seems to be bug free, and it does things that no other plugins do. like display, hide, and resize specific panels based on tags and other variables. im also using an older version anyway so that may help.

The problem is not what it does, but how it does it. Currently it is only interpreting titleformatting, which doesn't support indenting. So you've got code like this (but more complex):
Code: [Select]
$if($or($stricmp(%codec%,mp3),$stricmp(%codec%,flac)),$meta(comment,0)' blah','Codec is not flac nor mp3.')

If the PanelsUI would use a scripting Language which supports indenting you could write it like this:
Code: [Select]
If Stricmp(%codec%,mp3) Or Stricmp(%codec%, flac) Then
    $output = Meta(%comment%).' blah'
    Print($output)
Else
    $output = 'Codec is not flac nor mp3.'
    Print($output)
EndIf

As you can see a real scripting Language, would make complex scripts, which you produce in PanelsUI, much more readable.

Separate UI forum?

Reply #23 –
Um... I indent in Panels UI all the time...

Granted, there are legitimate beefs that people (ie developers, users tend not to really care) with the component's use of the titleformating language, but that's not one of them.
elevatorladylevitateme

Separate UI forum?

Reply #24 –
Quote from: freanir on
The problem is not what it does, but how it does it. Currently it is only interpreting titleformatting, which doesn't support indenting. So you've got code like this (but more complex)
No, you are wrong. Leading whitespace is not being displayed. You see, PanelsUI is developing, sometimes into the right direction. But I understand with the current "the whole world in one thread" solution we sometimes miss some news...