What about a new, shiny Audacity?

[kiddo]

Hello fellow ubuntueers :) I have mostly finished double, triple, quadra-checking my review on Audacity's user interface. This is a document I wish to send to the Audacity mailing list. However, I want it to be near perfect when I send it. And since this is my favorite community (honest! :)), I would like you to be the first ones to read it, and give me feedback. Did I make mistakes, did I forget stuff, what do you think of this in general, etc?

This is one of my attempts in helping the O.S. community: criticizing.
http://open-source.nanokron.info/?voir=projets/audacity/audacity-interface-guidelines

It's hosted on my personal server in my wardrobe at the other end of the planet, and it has a 80kbytes/s upload bandwidth. So please be patient if there's 10 badgers trying to load 800kbytes of PNGs at the same time! :-\"

[bk452]

Hello fellow ubuntueers :) I have mostly finished double, triple, quadra-checking my review on Audacity's user interface. This is a document I wish to send to the Audacity mailing list. However, I want it to be near perfect when I send it. And since this is my favorite community (honest! :)), I would like you to be the first ones to read it, and give me feedback. Did I make mistakes, did I forget stuff, what do you think of this in general, etc?

This is one of my attempts in helping the O.S. community: criticizing.
http://open-source.nanokron.info/?voir=projets/audacity/audacity-interface-guidelines

It's hosted on my personal server in my wardrobe at the other end of the planet, and it has a 80kbytes/s upload bandwidth. So please be patient if there's 10 badgers trying to load 800kbytes of PNGs at the same time! :-\"
Today was the first time that I used Audacity and I agree with you 200%. I do video editing for a living and this program should have been a walk in the park, but it was frustrating.

I've seen some unfriendly guis in my time but Audacity takes the cake. Your choice of gui is excellent. It's bright, appealing and easy on the eye.

And the names, like that time shifting thing, threw me for a curve. But one thing I'd like to add is a help section that really helps.

[poofyhairguy]

MMMMM

Gtk2 audacity

MMMMM

[benplaut]

it might just be there and i'm missing it, but Audacity is really in need of an "insert" tool, where if you are making a sequence of tracks, and you forget to add one in the front, it's alot of work to line them back up again


very nice mockup! :)

[kiddo]

if you are making a sequence of tracks, and you forget to add one in the front, it's alot of work to line them back up againI don't understand what you mean. Is it something like this?

[track 1] [track 2] [track3]
want to insert another track right before track 1 and move track 1, 2, 3 to the right? Can't that be achieved by CTRL-A and using the move tool before inserting? (as described in my review, the move tool has a very um... fancy name, "time shift"). Don't know if you saw that in the review, bk452. Oh and by the way, I do video editing too (studios.nanokron.info) and you might be interested in taking a look at pitivi.org if you're in quest for a NLE, and maybe contribute if you can :)

About the help section... Well the only option I see in audacity is "online help". Honestly, that sucks ('specially when you're offline). But I'm hesitating to say that in the review.

*awaits more feedback ^^*

[benplaut]

I don't understand what you mean. Is it something like this?

[track 1] [track 2] [track3]
want to insert another track right before track 1 and move track 1, 2, 3 to the right? Can't that be achieved by CTRL-A and using the move tool before inserting? (as described in my review, the move tool has a very um... fancy name, "time shift"). Don't know if you saw that in the review, bk452. Oh and by the way, I do video editing too (studios.nanokron.info) and you might be interested in taking a look at pitivi.org if you're in quest for a NLE, and maybe contribute if you can :)

About the help section... Well the only option I see in audacity is "online help". Honestly, that sucks ('specially when you're offline). But I'm hesitating to say that in the review.

*awaits more feedback ^^*

that's the cumbersome way :roll:

you know... maybe the "Insert" key will toggle whether it adds before, or adds during... if not, that would be a nice touch :)

[UbuWu]

Looks definitely much much better!

[GeneralZod]

This is one of my attempts in helping the O.S. community: criticizing.

Excellent work! Bug reports and the kind of extremely detailed and constructive criticism you have provided are worth their weight in gold, in my opinion.

[bk452]

I don't understand what you mean. Is it something like this?

[track 1] [track 2] [track3]
want to insert another track right before track 1 and move track 1, 2, 3 to the right? Can't that be achieved by CTRL-A and using the move tool before inserting? (as described in my review, the move tool has a very um... fancy name, "time shift"). Don't know if you saw that in the review, bk452. Oh and by the way, I do video editing too (studios.nanokron.info) and you might be interested in taking a look at pitivi.org if you're in quest for a NLE, and maybe contribute if you can :)

About the help section... Well the only option I see in audacity is "online help". Honestly, that sucks ('specially when you're offline). But I'm hesitating to say that in the review.

*awaits more feedback ^^*

you might be interested in taking a look at pitivi.org if you're in quest for a NLE, and maybe contribute if you can

I took a look at Pitivi. It's just the kind of thing I've been looking for. I can't thank you enough! I think I have everything installed but I can't get it up and running. Is there a command prompt?

BTW, I see that your helping with the Ubuntu section. I'm new to linux but I want this project to succeed. How can I help?

[maruchan]

Kiddo, very good mockups, but watch your capitalization - especially in the preferences area.

Now please tell me you're moving on to do Cinelerra's interface :)

Edit: One thing I don't really like about the mockups is the lack of visible left and right borders on the waveform views.

[bk452]

Now please tell me you're moving on to do Cinelerra's interface :)

LOL. That's why I pulled up Audacity. I just needed to cut out a portion of the audio, which is simple, but I couldn't figure out how to do it on Cinelerra.

In all fairness, Audacity is a good program.

[Burgundavia]

Audacity in Ubuntu should look like a GTK2 app RSN, as we get wxwidgets 2.6, which links against GTK 2.x. That does not mean it will act like a Gnome app. I have never used audacity, but those mockups look quite good!

Corey

[kiddo]

Thank you all again for your comments ^_^


I took a look at Pitivi. It's just the kind of thing I've been looking for. I can't thank you enough! I think I have everything installed but I can't get it up and running. Is there a command prompt?

BTW, I see that your helping with the Ubuntu section. I'm new to linux but I want this project to succeed. How can I help?
Forgot to update the website about my debs not supporting dependencies. Please try to catch me on #pitivi at irc.freenode.net, I am nicknamed nekohayo, maybe we could solve that there.

Kiddo, very good mockups, but watch your capitalization - especially in the preferences area.
Now please tell me you're moving on to do Cinelerra's interface :)
Edit: One thing I don't really like about the mockups is the lack of visible left and right borders on the waveform views. Thanks. Sorry about the caps (I've done those mockups / texts over and over again, but since I am not native English, this header capitalization makes no real sense to me). \\EDIT: the screenshot has been corrected
Cinelerra: well I guess I would have done that already... IF I had ever been able to make it work. You see, as a 1yr+ linuxer, I have NEVER ever been able to get cinelerra to compile. And I never found packages that worked either. So I gave up on it after a few months. Besides, I'm placing my bets on PiTiVi from now on. You know, it was a total mess before 0.1.4 (or 0.1.1.4, I'm so messed up in the versionning). I did comment the interface (http://open-source.nanokron.info/?voir=projets/pitivi/pitivi-design-guidelines) at that time.

So um... yeah ^^; where was I.


In all fairness, Audacity is a good program. Sure is. But I believe the horrible gui behavior (that's a subjective view) makes it look "abandonned" and "not up to the task", but it is not. This is very bad from a marketing point of view.

\\EDIT: hey I just saw that I got linked from osnews. Who's the culprit? Did it even before I could do it myself ;-) now I don't have a reason to comment that news

[gil-galad]

The big reason for the "problem" (And you obviously know this) is that audacity is programmed in wxwidgets and not gtk2. Your mockup was obviously made with glade. The programming interface makes a big difference on how it looks, even though wxwidgets can use gtk2 widgets, it is still programmed in wxwidgets, which can make a big difference in the look.

Also, even though it may not be as pretty, wxwidgets (and Audacity) are very nice because they are completely cross platform.

Also it would be more fair to include the Audacity screenshot of it using gtk2 instead of gtk1.

EDIT: Hmmm... Looks like audacity may not work with gtk2 at the moment. That is definitly a problem they need to work on.

[darkmatter]

Exellent idea, kiddo. That mockup is amazing.

[kiddo]

Yeah I am aware of this gil-galad, but I don't really have another way ... :)
If anyone can use GTK2Audacity right now, please, send me screenshots! I am very curious to see audacity's UI without the "gtk1 uglyness" factor hurting my eyes (no uh... "bad words" intended ~ cat's got my tongue on this one)

//Edit: I went back to the audacity wiki because the issue was tickling me, and here's what I found:


Audacity supports wxGTK for Linux (and other Unix), wxMac for Mac OS X, and wxMSW for Windows using either MSVC++ or Cygwin. There is no support for wxMotif, wxX11, or other wx variants yet. Audacity does not currently support the Unicode or GTK2 builds of wxWidgets. When configuring wxWidgets on Unix, make sure you don't enable these features. To be safe:



./configure --disable-gtk2 --disable-unicode
It is said to not support gtk2 from wxwidgets currently... how can you make that actually work? (just curious)