(04-25-2020, 01:01 PM)Tim Curtis Wrote: We think our WebUI is light years ahead, fast and really easy to use. It's not cluttered with unnecessary buttons, visual cues and first-use stuff. As I mentioned in the announcement post, read Quick Help which clearly explains how to navigate the UI.
Developing and maintaining in-place moOde updates across major Raspbian releases requires funding and resources that our small project does not have.
I am sorry, but I have to disagree: the UI is not intuitive, indeed it is really clunky and full of inconsistencies. This is an obvious fact, that I shall document below. It may be ahead of volumio, but only because volumio's UI is an unmitigable disaster. Fast? One should be able to navigate the UI easily, and many changes during the last releases have gradually reduced both intuitiveness and speed.
Unnecessary buttons, do you want an example? You select "configure" from the menu (without a visual clue that it is a menu) and you end up in the pane with configuration settings and you get the various choices: Library, Audio, Network, System, etc... This is unnecessary: you can just go to one of the four main options and then you change with the pane. Why the extra step? It just slows down the access to configuration – introducing a modal step, which in UI design should be avoided unless strictly necessary.
More unnecessary steps: once you are in the Library view, to change to folder/cover, and even to do search, one has to use the Library menu, and select. This is basically one step too many for very simple operations. Even to perform search!
Inconsistency 1: The "Library" menu has a visual clue that it is a drop down (the down arrow point), whereas the main menu does not have it.
Inconsistency 2: the configuration has panes to select the various configuration areas. But the library view has that ***** menu.
Inconsistency 3: to search in folder view, I just have to type in the "search" field. To search the Tag view, I have to use the menu.
And these are the things I noticed after just a few minutes.
For the first time in a few years I think I should start considering alternatives. The UI seems to have been designed with the intent of making moOde difficult to use.
Note: I am not trolling, I provided arguments above. But after watching with horror what has happened with version 6 and later, 6.5 is probably the last straw. I am ready to engage ("pro bono", so to speak) to discuss more things privately. Another proof: until recently I was still ready to use the 6.0-6.4 UI, but now I had to install cantata on my computer to browse the folder hierarchy. I know users that only use the folder hierarchy, and their UX is destroyed by the last choices.
Ban me if you want, but I am ready to help. One should not have to read the "quick start" guide to know that tapping on the cover art brings to library view. Can you provide an explanation how this makes sense at all?
