Give Roon a Face Lift and bring her into the present with a Material Design look.
Offer a little more than just Light or Dark and allow users to choose from a pallet of colors in addition to letting users choose their own image.
In addition, allow changes in the Artist picture shape from Square to Round and so on…
For a cross platform solution, Material Design - as good as it may be thought through - isn’t an approach I’d be looking forward to. An independent design that’s working the same no matter what OS the actual device uses seems like a far better idea to me. Not that the current design ticks all possible boxes - but it works reasonably well across devices. I’d wish Roon will stay on that path.
Easier skin customization might be interesting.
I have been thinking the same thing.
I think…
Can you illustrate what you are thinking?
Ummmm, I can’t but Google News now uses Material Design…here is an example
Are you saying that the Material Design Google uses on its sites and appears on PC, Linux, Mac, Android, and iProducts is somehow ‘not’ cross-platform?
No, I’m not. What I’m saying is that I don’t like the idea that other things besides Google products look like Google products.
Google is just an example, and are actually late to the game. Many many sites etc use material design and have been for years. Not only is Material Design cross-platform it’s highly customizable so that it can be made to look specific to a product and not like a copy. Basically its a modern design, that lends itself well for future changes.
They developed it. In 2014. It’s their design language.
Nice Wiki look-up…
Yes and no. I didn’t remember when they came out with it, but I was playing with the guides at material.io last year (2017). So I knew it’s their animal.
As I said, it’s quite clever - and works well if you want to integrate something into the “Android experience” - but then if one doesn’t have to why make things look more Android / Google?
Please don’t.
I use iOS because I appreciate iOS. If I wanted Material Design I’d use Android.
Coming up with a design for an app that’s unique to THAT app is fine. Trying to shoehorn another OS’s design language into a different OS is an abomination, pure and simple. Ask any longtime Mac user what they think of the Marzipan layer Apple thought was a good idea to ease porting of iOS apps to the Mac. They are universally horrible because it is using tablet design conventions on a platform not designed for tablet designs. It breaks EVERYTHING that makes a Mac a Mac.
That’s the beauty of the Roon approach of building on OpenGL. There’s a Roon interface and when I’m using Roon, I’m using ROON. PLEASE don’t dumb me down to the limitations that might be inherent to other platforms.
Okay well even though Roon is NOT OpenGL, how about building it upon GNOME so it can act like OpenGL software? And just like that people will be able to use existing GNOME skins to skin Roon to their hearts desire, or leave it as-is if they want.
From the Roon KB:
Roon’s OpenGL-based user interface runs comfortably on most integrated GPUs, but some laptops react to our use of OpenGL by defaulting to the discrete GPU–this can pollute A-B testing between Roon and other software that may not use OpenGL.
I suppose it’s not part of the product strategy to become undistinguishable. Skinning like for kodi will probably never come.
But some more customization is not a bad idea, really; for instance readability may have to be better under certain circumstances - for instance: if people need high contrast settings.
I find Material to be the gold standard of user interface design.
I humbly disagree.
Apple UI, particularly since “the flattening” has always felt (at least to me) more consistent and well thought out and more…solid to the foundations. But understanding that the opinions on “Apple vs Anything Else” often provokes an almost non-rational set of emotions, that’s the last I’m going to say on that.
I’m a big fan of letting Roon be Roon wherever it runs though, and I expect that will leave me in the minority.
Yes Apple is wonderful, its the best, everything about Apple is perfect…
Yes Apple is wonderful, its the best, everything about Apple is perfect…
Yes Apple is wonderful, its the best, everything about Apple is perfect…
There are common design principles across most modern systems.
Microsoft’s “Metro” design language flattened the UX, I liked it (I had done similar stuff elsewhere in the 90s), but the garish colors look dated today
Recently Microsoft has released the Fluid Design — I’m no longer with Msft, had seen it in research studies.
All of these got rid of the sculpting and skeuomorphism, which is a relief.
I think each company’s branding is irrelevant, modern design has common principles.
Roon adheres to them, but could go further.
Which would be good.
That’s not it.
And that’s why I so seldom comment on the platform wars. I get so damned sick of the first response of non-Apple users to people having a preference for Apple being hypnotism, religion, stupidity, fill in whatever derogatory term makes you happy, to dismiss them and tell them that they are somehow stupid or inferior.
I’ve been an Apple user since my Mac Plus in 1989. I’ve also used/administered Windows, SGI, various flavors of UNIX, Linux, pre-OS X (since System 6) and a few various flavors/forks of Android. I’ve got enough experience with the platforms of modern computing to be able to say “I use Apple products because they enable me to get my work done with the least amount of friction.” I don’t go off or start opining on things that I don’t know about. I also don’t go dismissing people out of hand because of the platform they prefer. If you read my responses, I stated an opinion and why I hold it, I didn’t say “that’s just because you use Android”.
There are many reason I stick with Apple, and stuck with Apple through the years that they weren’t doing their best work. Because even “not their best” suited my needs far better than Windows options. Windows STILL does a shit job pasting from one program into another. Windows STILL doesn’t print reliably what I have on screen.
Again. Things that keep me on Apple products are concrete. Not least of which being that I can still run the latest iOS version (and Roon) on a six year old iPhone 5s that can be found and procured for a metaphorical dime a dozen. Great controller to leave lying around the house. Not to even mention the philosophical differences on privacy/security that go beyond the scope of this discussion.
But don’t do me the disservice of dismissing me with some trite “He’s an Apple guy because he’s been hypnotized by the hype” argument. Because, frankly, that speaks more to YOUR biases than to mine.
Additional colors would be a nice addition. My office listening station would benefit from more such options. Good suggestion.