I know I'm going to get flamed for posting this, but why on earth doesn't Foobar2000 have a better user interface - like one of the simpler ones made by advanced users? I expect you folks tell me to just learn the formatting, "it's easy" and so on. However, I've taken a brief look at how it works, but it doesn't seem that simple or easy. I personally have neither the time, nor the will to dig that deep. If the formatting is that easy for the developers etc., why not release a working solution with a better UI?

I think the default UI is pretty good. If you're like me and want something more, install Collumns UI and some panels. I hardly use any formatting to get an interface I like to use.

foobar isn't made for the average joe. it's an advanced audio player for people who can and want to learn a basic coding language so they can customize every little detail. look at the titleformatting. what other audio player lets you code your own playlists to that degree? or how about the 3rd party plug-ins that can change or add on just about anything? if you want a player with a better interface, and you find foobar is too "deep" to customize, then use a different program.

why don't you get some formatting strings for the default user interface or some .fcs files to configure your coloumns ui.

copy and past formatting strings into your default UI. that's quite simple.
or get coloumns UI and get a configuration in this thread. just download and import the fcs file.

i've never checked foo_looks out but i suppose i will give you a pretty UI without to much hassle.

coloumns UI is my choice, i don't need fancy graphics

I LOVE the default UI - it´s functional, that´s GREAT!

Your not alone. Many of the fb2k devotes will acuse others who want a good out of box experience of lazyness, but personally its just one more thing I dont have time to devote to. I think its wonderful that its so customizable for people that want to, but for people that want a great out of box experience there should be a nice instal package with a great GUI.

Sad but true: I've seen many users blaming Foobar for being hard to use/ugly, etc... They've changed their mind only after seing configured versions of the program.

I think Foobar developers just found their user base (very often computer geeks) and see no use in improving out of the box experience.

(Thought to consider: are you talking about the playlist design, or are you referring to the "simple" look of foobar2000?)

You basically answered your own question with your question. Go back to the foobar2000 website and read what it says. foobar2000 is an advanced audio player. You were expecting simplicity when, according to the description of the program, it is meant to be for advanced users.

To be honest with you, none of the formatting, especially for columns_ui, is easy, especially if you do not have any kind of programming experience. It's like trying to customize a car without any autobody experience; you'll get small things (like steering wheel covers), but you won't be able to put on a new body kit. TAGZ is a unique language, and it is the reason you are able to get the level of design that people have achieved in the v0.9 Appearance Thread and the old foobar2000 gallery. It is really the classic problem of simplicity vs. customizability. Most of those who have developed formatting strings and FCS files (for columns_ui) will not accuse anyone of laziness (there will always be one or two lurking; don't mind them); customization is a time-consuming process. Also, many of us will admit that, for a long while, getting the majority of the plug-ins needed for that level of customization has been difficult. foo_playcount, foo_uie_trackinfo; foo_uie_albumart; foo_scheduler (might have been ported); foo_history (might have been ported); foo_uie_tabs (will be ported); foo_freedb; foo_prettypot; foo_toaster (might have been ported); and a whole host of other plug-ins. There are works in the wiki to reduce the confusion, and it's getting a lot better.

You must also understand that, even if all of those plug-ins are put into an installer, they will not be configured for you. Why? Everyone has different needs. If you don't plan on using the database, you will have no need for foo_albumlist, foo_dbsearch, foo_uie_explorer, foo_browser, and all of the other database views. If it was configured to update your files with playcount information and you are sharing your files with a strict need to leave the files untouched, you would be extremely angry at foobar2000 and would not use it again. If you need to connect with your video or photo iPod and your files had album art embedded in them, would you be happy if foobar2000 stripped your album art because it was initially configured to do so? Will you use the hundreds of metatag information a programmer has built into a .fcs or a trackinfo formatting string? Do you even have your files properly tagged? You will be amazed at some of the problems that come up because of improperly tagged files. Why is foobar2000 bare? Because it wants you to put your personality into it, not sign up for the cookie-cutter functionality of other programs.

Now, you may want to check out Brother John's Scripting Tutorial; he has done an excellent job at explaining how to create a playlist design. You owe it to yourself to at least look at what he's done. Also, if you haven't gone through the foobar2000 wiki, now is a good time to do so. It will take some spit and polish to create your own design, but these places hold the building blocks.

That being said, there are many people who like the default interface. Both my laptop and my flash drive use the default interface, and I love it when I'm on the road. No worries about many of the plug-ins used in (and out of) columns_ui; a nice formatting string from the foobar2000 formatting website (which also taught me most of the formatting skills I needed) modified to my taste, and I'm set. I do use columns_ui at home, though, and I spent about two hours getting that set-up. What else can I say? A few hours learning will make foobar2000 more enjoyable.

foobar is beautiful, and if you want it more beautiful just take some time and columnUI to make it better...

Personally, I agree that the default interface is ugly and not particularly useful, but echoing a lot of the posters in this thread I see nothing wrong with that. FB2K is made for people who want to spend time diddling around customizing things. If that isn't your bag you might want to check out Winamp or iTunes.

foobars out-of-the box ui has anything one need to do what foobar is intended for, playing your musicfiles, even converting, tagging and organizing them.
for the rest, it's like in real life: you want more then you do more.
just my three cents...

I personally dislike the default interface, because it's pretty much Notepad that plays music, but i can appreciate its purpose. It's designed to be fast and simple, that's all. It may not be pretty, but it isn't like it's hard to figure out how to play or add songs, and if you're not into fancy stuff you can totally live with it. There are lots of people using the stock interface (or close to it, anyway) because they don't need foobar to be really awesome-looking.

And if you need it to look better, it takes, what, a minute or two to find, download, and import a Columns UI configuration.

You are speaking as someone that knows what you are doing w/ fb2k. I dont and I can tell you it takes a long time to find and download a decent set up. It would seem to make sense that a core group of power users could put together a sleek and easy to use GUI for others to dl in a pack with the required add-ons ect...

It would really help increase the fb2k userbase.

But who determines what is user-friendly, functional, or appealing to the eyes?


That might be true, but does it attract the kind of user foobar2000 aims for?

i would pose the theorie that the present standard ui, or at the least the standard string for it doesnt attract users foobar aims for either, just the possibility to get rid of it does

OK. It seems there are several things we can say as fact.

1) The default interface is mostly ugly. There are some people who like it; the vast majority of people do not, as demonstrated by the hundred-page threads on screenshots of modified interfaces and the huge amount of work done on Columns UI and formatting strings and foo_looks.

If it was worth it, it would be possible to package an interface that would be liked by many more people.

2) FB2K is not interested in appealing to the largest userbase. This is made pretty clear by a lot of the development decisions that happen (no ports, no localization, no ID3v2.3 back-compatibility, etc.) Instead developers are attempting to make a player that appeals to them and a certain mostly technically-oriented, similar group of people.

I don't think you can reasonably argue against these points.

Given this, I think that the decision to leave it as default is good enough. I think the majority of people in the userbase of statement #2 are interested, willing, and capable of customizing the interface, and I think that the ugly default interface of #1 actually probably helps drive away some users who might come away from foobar dissatisfied and frustrated anyway, because the development effort is simply not aimed to please them.

You're probably right, but i don't think the screen-shot threads prove anything. Why would you post a screen shot if you just used the default UI? :/

Well, right, I guess that nobody can know for sure. But my intuition says, and I think reasonable people will agree, that most people who use foobar jack up the interface quite a bit, at least to the point of having a pretty formatting string, if not using columns UI. I bet that the amount of people who use it long-term and keep the default notepad look is probably 10% at most.

I think there should be a decent plugin getting system so things like columns UI were easier to get.

I mean, you shouldn't have to trawl around in the forum for half an hour to find basic stuff :/

I'd like to comment on some of things that were said.

Regarding the default playlist script: This is not designed to provide every imaginable feature, but instead it is designed to provide a reasonable amount of information while still being easy to understand and modify even for new users, or in other words, to be a good starting point to learn one of the central features that make foobar2000 as flexible as it is.

Columns UI and the gallery thread: My theory is that people who have spent a lot of time (often hours or even days) to customize every single bit of the user interface (titleformat scripts, colors, Windows themes, even panel borders) are more eager to show off their work than people who are more like me and spend five minutes (at most) to add some tweaks to the default UI playlist script and be done with it. While my guess is that indeed more people are using Columns UI than Default UI, I wouldn't dare to pull numbers out of nowhere; I wouldn't even trust a poll where participation is voluntary for the same reasons why I wouldn't trust numbers based on the gallery thread.

Regarding the statements that foobar2000 (especially with the Default UI) is hard to use: From what was said, it seems what is meant most of the time is that foobar2000 is hard to configure. Both interfaces seem to be equally easy to use to me, though there is a difference in possibilities (regarding panels and columns in Columns UI). The real differences show up in the configuration. Simple configuration are reasonably simple with both, since Columns UI offers more features you might actually have to learn a bit more to get the best out of it. However, for example with complex playlist formats that use a block structure to display album and artist information, the complexity soon gets out of control. You have to invest a large effort (time and code size) to get a small improvement.
Is a block stuctured layout something that is inherently hard to achieve? I don't think so, but the titleformatting system was not designed to solve this kind of problem, and it shows that is indeed not suitable for that. What is need in my opinion is a new way to create playlist layouts, something that can use titleformatting to change the parameters, but uses a more suitable approach to describe the layout logic itself.
Looking back, the Default UI had (and in fact still has) a basic way to organize information horizontally: by adding tab characters (in the early days only with $char(9), nowadays $tab() would be a bette alternative), it is possible to display text in columns. However, there is little control over the width of the columns, and practically none over text alignment of a particular column. In the "old days", People often ignored this possibility and used fixed-width fonts in to position text exactly as they wanted, but there was the wish for an easier, more flexible way. Columns UI stepped up to solve the problem, and I think it quite successfully did. Now I think it is time to create a solution that adds more powerful layout possibilities in the vertical direction. Still, this will take time to develop, and while I would be interested to try it myself, I am simply lacking the time to do so. I also haven't heard about someone doing work in that area for foobar2000, so it would be quite a surprise (a pleasant one though), if someone popped out of nowhere and presented a working solution.

Okay, enough ranting for one night. I just hope someone finds this an interesting or even useful read.

foosion's post brings to mind one more reason I think the default UI is not such a bad idea - although it isn't pretty, it's a good demonstration of how TAGZ works, which is arguably the single must-understand aspect of foobar for a user. Even as an experienced programmer, I'd wince a little bit if I looked at the configuration the first time and saw a monolithic chunk of block-format string to piece through.

Well, if that's the case, then I'm proudly among that 10%. I switched to foobar from QCD over two years ago, in part because I liked the plain, simple "notepad" interface. I still prefer this to anything else I've seen.

Of course the simple interface wasn't the only reason I switched, but I think the best way to sum it up is to say that I was not only impressed by foobar's doing virtually everything I needed/wanted it to, but by it's NOT including things I DIDN'T need/want.

Jim

There's nothing wrong with notepad, I use it every day. The only annoying thing is it getting confused with unix line endings, but that's not the point here.

I would just like to add that foobar has the most incredible plugin API of any player out there, and if someone wanted a 'pretty' iTunes like UI, they could start coding it right now, and it could function and look like iTunes in every way, except without the sluggishness of course.

However, noone has done this, and the few attempts that were started were abandoned. I think that once someone has used foobar2000 for a while, even with the default out of the box UI, they realise the power of this design.

When I first installed foobar, I didn't consider it a 'real' media player, simply because it didn't look like winamp. I don't even have winamp installed now; I look at it on friend's computers and realise how impractical and stupid it really is.

And why should a media player look different from every other application on your computer? Winamp, WMP, iTunes all refuse to use the common controls, colours and even the standard window frame/title bar, which just makes them look stupid and flimsy when you take a step back and think about it.

I think this is seriously the main reason i moved to foobar and the main reason i still use it. Like, i'm so hard-core OCD about software having a standard interface that i would probably actually use foobar even if it didn't have such amazing plug-ins. It's that important to me. Software-specific skinning is the worst idea ever.

[quote=lav-chan,Apr 4 2006, 01:32 AM]
[quote=david_dl,Apr 4 2006, 01:11 AM]didn't have such amazing plug-ins. It's that important to me. Software-specific skinning is the worst idea ever.

[/quote]

thats properbly true.
taging from the noirmal playlist view would be supercool while we are at it

You can do that in Columns UI.

really? how

In the version for 0.9, at least (i dunno if you can do it in the 0.8 one, i hadn't been keeping up with foobar for months because i was waiting on 0.9), you can go into preferences, Columns UI > Playlist view > 'General' tab, and set the 'Mouse activated inline metafield editing mode' to Columns UI. Then you have to make sure that you put the right fields in your columns (e.g., type 'ARTIST' in the 'Meta field to edit' box for your artist column).

Supercool

Personally, I foobar should be bundled with columns ui and have an option in the installer to use it or the default interface.

Secondly, I think foobar could benefit from a more functional foobar gallery, something akin to deviant art where you can look through the possible setups and download the ones you want.

Thirdly, I think there needs to be some sort of global config file for all of foobar so that all of the settings can be imported in one go. The feature in columns ui is nice, but I'd like to see one for all of foobar, and all of its plugins. Each plugin could insert its own information into the file, and extract it out if when the file is imported. In the plugin's dialog, have check boxes for whether you want the settings for that plugin to be overwritten on an import or not, and whether you want them to be include in a export or not. Including some hard delimiters in the fileformat should make it robust enough against buggy plugins.

Fourthly, 3rd party plugins need to receive more exposure on the main page, with organization into categories based on their function.

My 2 cents.

I don't understand where people get this "omg default UI is ugly" idea. It's pretty much a standard Windows UI containing a tabstrip and a list. If it looks "ugly", your current Windows theme and colour settings are to blame.

It's functional, dead simple to use, and comes with very reasonable defaults. What else would you expect from a default UI? (except for it sticking out like a sore thumb from the rest of your programs, which seems to be something many people are looking for, actually...)

Setting aside the conceptual issues foosion described in great length, I think it's perfectly fine.

Im going to echo a previous statement and say that, while i never liked the way the default ui looked, per se, I never intened to d/l fb2k for its looks. Im ocd about functionality and organization. So I d/l columns ui and that was perfect. If only ipod could organize in the way that i have columns set up, Id be a happy camper.

The only thing that bothered me about the learning curve with fb2k wasnt learning it; imho the scripting language is dead easy to work with once you know the use of each funtion. I just seemed to have problems finding good all encompasing referances in plain english to what everything did when i first started using the program. Yes, after a little digging, I found what i needed, and teach me once and im set. But I can understand why someone getting it out of the box might be frustrated at trying to find out how to use certain functions.

And yes, to echo another poster, columns ui should be packaged with foobar once and for all

That's right. It's a tabstrip and a list. A tabstrip and a list are not a very good-looking or necessarily effective way to deal with thousands of music tracks which share a hierarchy and have a great deal of metadata and artwork attached.

(I say necessarily because depending on your habits, you might certainly find a good way to keep things organized and quickly findable depending on your organization and the playlists you use; but most people prefer different techniques, like the media library in iTunes and winamp and the album-list-style plugins and block layout formatting for fb2k.)

Uglywise, though, you gotta realize you are in the minority. Add up all the people who use skinned apps like Winamp and post threads on their forums saying "I hear people talking about FB2K but boy it sure looks ugly", all the people who use iTunes and WMP, and all the people who use columns UI or a block-layout formatting string, and you are in the big minority. And if 90% of everyone thinks something is ugly, that is coming pretty close to objective ugly.

Again, I have no problems with the default staying as it is. I don't think having an ugly default is a bad thing.

Because a million flies can't be wrong?

When it comes to something as subjective as "looks", probably not. I personally think the standard user interface does a good job of hiding what is possible. Call it user friendly, I think it is indeed a big reason for people to not even give it a chance. The real question is: is mass appeal always the best thing ? I personally, am perfectly fine with what is there because I know what I can do with a little bit of tweaking. But that's me ...

I agree with you, although I do install Columns UI as a matter of course. It's simply a better default for me and I would guess most 'normal' users. It's standard Windows dialogs, not the ridiculously pimp 'skins' used on other players.

And I have to say that as a lazy geek i'm constantly amazed by some of the ways people have tweaked Column UI to look as l33t as anything else out there. This in particular is lovely.

Yeah, I liked that one alright too. I really dig my personal setup right now which you can dig up from one of those screenshot threads if you're interested.

Interestingly, the sort of 'look' everyone is moving around to with columns UI seems closer to iTunes these days, plus the new foo_browser component is awfully finder-esque.

How about creating a gallery somewhat like the Open Source Web Design gallery (for lack of a better parallel)? In such a gallery, the resulting setup would be shown with a screenshot, and everything needed to achieve that setup would be posted alongside it:

* The main foobar2000.cfg file (which holds both relevant [columns UI setup?] and irrelevant [this is sort of a sacrifice to get a nice look - explained below] configuration).

* any FCS file needed.

* and a list with links to the required plugins needed.

This would let beginners and more experienced people browse, test, modify and share their designs. For the time being, the gallery threads on the forum appear to be more of an idea exchange rather than a material exchange, with some sharing of FCS files, but I haven't seen any sharing of main configuration files. This could have to do with the obvious reason that the main config contains a lot more than UI info, and would potentially ruin an existing setup, but in my opinion, it would be a good way to get a nice setup up and running quickly, right after installing foobar. It is easy to fix the non-UI configuration afterwards.

SvenGlenn

I don't think this would be a good idea. For the exact reasons that you are mentioning above.

If any kind of "theming" would be implemented it should be done in a sane and proper way.

Sharing the complete foobar2000.cfg is just stupid and can also be dangerous. It contains machine specific information (think output devices and media library paths) and might also contain private information like passwords (for proxies or for services like foosic). The foosic client does not actually store your password, but enough information to make submissions using your account.

I also think it would be pretty difficult to cleanly swap around things like that, although I'd enjoy seeing it happen. Another issue is that a lot of people's configuration depends largely on the format and tagging preferences of their collection. i.e. my configuration assumes that every single last file in my albums will definitely most certainly have TITLE, ARTIST/ALBUM ARTIST, ALBUM, DATE, TRACKNUMBER, TOTALTRACKS, MEDIA (CD, 12", cassette, etc), and if appropriate DISCNUMBER, DISCNAME, REMIXER, VOCALIST, FEATURING, and a few others along that line. I wouldn't want my configuration to have to waste computer time and code with "tag guessing" sort of algorithms, and I wouldn't want to have to support a bunch of tags like GENRE that I don't use. I think a lot of the people who are willing to spend a lot of time customizing fb2k are in the same boat, and it's a pain to effectively port that to someone else's fb2k install / music collection.

I like it as is. foobar2000 isn't iTunes or Winamp. If you want it prettier, just do it yourself... I personally prefer having a clean, simple UI and not wasting oodles of RAM and CPU on fancy visual crap.

Yes, i also completely agree with Firon I have setup columns_ui on my father's PC since he dosen't like the default interface(he's used to eye candy, and by using columns_ui is the only way i can get him to use fb2k), but on my own PC i'm using the default UI without doing a single modification, as it's just great the way it is To all the people saying the default UI is ugly, then i can only conclude that those persons must have really bad taste... For once when somebody makes a clean and standard windows interface, then people start whinning about it being ugly, but personally then i can only express my gratitude to Peter for making this desicion To me the standard UI is just beutifull the way it is

This is a useless post in the context of this thread. Maybe people are getting caught up on the word 'ugly'. As a person who has designed a lot of interfaces, I can tell you that if you design an interface, artistic criticism is not the point.

The point is, when I and other people say it's "ugly", here is the almost indisputable fact we are stating: Out of all the users and potential users of computer music playing software, a majority (I think a large large majority, 90% or more, but it's possible it's lower) do not like the FB2K default interface's look.

There is some really good evidence for this. First and best I think is the great deal of work and obviously heavy adoption of Columns UI and the huge amount of discussion on this forum about interface customization and formatting strings. Second is the reaction to the player on other forums. Almost every single thread I have ever seen on the winamp forums, or last.fm forums, or any board where the subject of FB2K even comes up, is completely filled with people saying "I heard FB2K is good, but boy it sure looks ugly. Is there some way to fix the look?" and then people explaining the customization options. Immediately. That is the absolute first reaction. There are no threads talking about Winamp saying "I heard winamp is good, but it sure looks ugly." That's because Winamp looks good out of the box, in the sense of "good" meaning "most people like it." Third evidence is the fact that three quarters of the posters in this thread are agreeing that it's ugly without even a second word and talking about what should be done.

This is regardless of functionality, which is a different argument, and one I think the default interface loses on as well.

Now you can say that these people all have terrible taste and they don't recognize amazing artistic standards-compliant interfaces when they see them, but they are the population the interface design is dealing with. If they have terrible taste, tough damn luck!

So the question being posed by this thread is:

Would it make sense to include an out-of-the-box interface which more users trying out the player would like, rather than the current default?

OK?

My answer: yes and no. I will agree to putting columns_ui (and several popular plug-ins) into the standard installer, but not for making columns_ui the default installation interface. Several things drive this (and I may very well be wrong about them):

1. The foobar2000 developers are not developing this program for everyone's benefit; this is a niche; just one corner of the audio player universe. If they were developing for everybody, I'm pretty sure they would have integrated columns_ui by now, and they would have been working on a skinning element for the program. They aren't, and it isn't their aim.

2. foobar2000's power is in TAGZ and its relation to the way people tag their files; if a person can not or refuses to understand TAGZ, foobar2000 will pretty much be a waste to them, and they should use another program. While there are plenty of people who can help and have helped, it is secondary to one's own ability to customize foobar2000.

(I am in no way trying to discourage anyone from using foobar2000, it's just that, because of the way foobar2000 is designed, you have to be willing to learn a few things.)

The other thing you must realize is that there are people who do not get on this or any forum and discuss foobar2000. There is no way of telling how many people do, and how many use the default UI versus how many use Columns UI versus how many use foo_looks or foo_ui_gfx.

There will probably be a special version of v0.9 released with the plug-ins in them, but don't expect it to be configured in any way you will like. The customer/downloader is only right if the business/foobar2000 developers put them first.

Then either use columns_ui instead, code another UI or simply go use something else than fb2k, instead of spamming this forum with useless posts like these.

What you and others entirely seem to don't understand is that Peter has made and designed fb2k after his own likings, and then he kindly offers the app for free to others who also happen to like it. This should be appreciated as the gesture it is, and not with comments about Peter needing to make another UI(or make columns_ui default) because some eye-candy lovers thinks the default UI is ugly.

Edit: Beaten by RevivalofHonor

Dude! I posted three times prior in this thread. I do use Columns UI instead. I agree that the default UI should stay the way it is. My answer to the question you just quoted is NO, just like yours! Did you even read what I said?

Revival, on the other hand, made a lot of the points I made with regard to the power of learning to customize it yourself and the targeted users of FB2K. Thank you for some useful discussion. I have no idea how Martin H connects his post to yours.

I apologize. I misunderstood what you said totally. Sorry about that

Whoa, thanks. Sorry if I sounded too harsh myself.

Here's the thing, Winamp has a pretty interface, but wastes a lot of CPU and RAM doing so, which isn't really the ideal for fb2k, in case you haven't noticed. Switching from the modern to classic UI makes a BIG difference in resource use. foobar2000 was not designed to look pretty, even though it does give you the ability if you so choose. However, unlike other players, this option (columns UI) is highly customizable and can let you do just about anything, but is STILL a powerful and complex feature, like the rest of the program.

It was designed to give you a lot of useful features, and be a very powerful program, while still being resource efficient. That's why I don't think a default "pretty" UI would go along with the rest of foobar2000.