Steven, I'll leave it up to you.
+1
...if you do go with a collapsible tree-hierarchy view, please included an "expand all" option.
+1
I agree with hiccup, simplifying navigation is the key.
+1
This is is a complex task for sure... unfortunately, for good input, I have gotten used to the layout by now as well, but I did struggle with the preference layout in the first months as there's a lot of burried settings and at times in places/wording I wouldn't have them expected to be under.
A few things I remember and/or that I still find difficult.
The biggest 2 issues for me:
- how layouts & 'saved views' are handled & managed. This I feel should be streamlined and integrated better into the preferences ui connecting how views are handled in the different places in MB, plus some global settings. eg, especially mass-editing I struggle with atm still, as in, if I update my main custom view and I would like this to be used globally now, this is very time consuming & confusing to do as some are stored tab relative, some playlist relative, etc and applying a new 'master view' is fairly cumbersome once you started applying custom views in some places
- preferences' ui layout has grown organically over time I feel, therefore the structure & grouping isn't easy to understand / is overwhelming for the first weeks/months and could/should be more intuitive. (great would be to do some focus group testing... i.e. see what most new users struggle with, the average itunes user as well as the technically minded... but this is costly & difficult to do...)
The smaller issues or practical examples:
- tieing into the above request for streamlining views - Layout (1) & Layout (2) could become Layout (Global) (= global player layout settings), Layout (Panel Settings) (i.e. what atm is the lower half of Layout (1) plus the 'Arrange Panels'..? is there a way & would it make sense to collate those ?) and Layout (Views) (= settings relative to tabs/playlists/etc, ideally with a good workflow to save/load single bits as well as mass-apply settings (global or to multi-selections ideally, but this might be complicated to do...))
- Internet retrieval of information should be its own tab I feel (i.e. Artwork, Lyrics, etc), and disable-able globally (i.e. I disabled all artwork retrieval, and occasionally I still find the odd new cover.jpg in backup logs that must have come from MB somehow)
A few thoughts.
- (Potentially,) a search in the preferences, although welcome (if do-able without too much effort I think as it), relies on a user-test phase as its' usefulness will rely on people using the same nomenclature/wording... which for long term users is probably a given they sort of know the nomenclature used, but new users might not and therefore a search might not be helpful but frustrating ?
My few centimes.
Churs.
c.