Why is custom GUI is so important to you - related to MPC-HC Custom GUI requests

[JonasNo]

I have never understood this custom gui fetish some people have :confused:

From a performance standpoint custom gui's actually slow down the program.
No it doesn't matter how good of a programmer you are.
Extra work is always extra work you can't magically make it go away.

Why do you not just use the standard windows theme system ?

If that doesn't float your boat there are progarms that make the theme system even more customizable.
An example of such a program is: WindowBlinds
http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

Although the things such programs do are not supported by microsoft so there are no APIs for such things and are therefore considered hacks.
You will get an advanced customizable theme system but the price is performance loss, incompatibility bugs, program crashes, strange / buggy GUI in programs, high memory use, sluggish GUI response time, etc..
Did you know: Video encoding and decoding can be affected negativity by such programs ? Such problems are hard to track down and somewhat rare these days (bugs have been fixed) but they still popup from time to time.

So why isn't the standard windows theme system enough ?

Help me understand why a custom GUI is so important to you.

Are you really willing to pay the price of it (performance loss, sluggish GUI response time, out of sync video/audio, slower video decoding, etc) ?

[ramicio]

I never understood the fetish. I watch my video in fullscreen most of the time so the "old" GUI isn't even showing. Even so, it's not part of the video watching experience for me. What I'm watching is what I'm experiencing, not the media player. It does its job just fine. I am the type of person who installs only what I need and looks for the simplest program. Bells and whistles just complicate things and fancy GUIs just slow things down. Granted most computers these days won't see a difference, most people use very low-powered mini computers for media playback, so performance isn't really there in the first place. When I reinstall Windows it doesn't take me any time at all to get things back to the way they were. I don't get the obsession with ricing out every little detail of the GUI and the hardware. Ricers and willing to pay the price of performance for looks any day.

[tetsuo55]

To me the GUI is a necessary evil, the computer doesn't understand my thoughts so i have to use the GUI to tell it what i want.

For me the ideal GUI blends in with the OS and is as absent as possible.

I for example like the scrollbars in ubuntu-unity/android (hint: there aren't any until you make the suggestion you want to scroll)

[mr.duck]

Help me understand why a custom GUI is so important to you.

Because we are human beings and we respond emotionally to things.

I'm sure everyone with windows 7 takes the aero glass theme over the windows classic theme. People want an attractive interface. It raises happiness levels.

[nevcairiel]

I'm sure everyone with windows 7 takes the aero glass theme over the windows classic theme. People want an attractive interface. It raises happiness levels.

I can understand that, i actually look at stuff in windows. But the media player, especially one like MPC-HC which comes without a library or anything, shouldn't it be about the movie itself? :)

[mr.duck]

I can understand that, i actually look at stuff in windows. But the media player, especially one like MPC-HC which comes without a library or anything, shouldn't it be about the movie itself? :)

In Windows XP world, MPC-HC superb. In Windows7 world, it's looking a bit dated and out of place.

I've toggled off all the UI elements in MPC like the seekbar, toolbar, etc so it is just a floating video with no frame. It would be better if it didn't have to be like that. We all like MPC so much and want it to be the best which is why people want the UI updated now I think.

[communist]

I'm sure everyone with windows 7 takes the aero glass theme over the windows classic theme.
Not everyone ;) - I'm among the few people that can't stand the Win7/Vista theme - and would prefer the XP/2k classic theme (which is complete crap in Win7/Vista).

For me the MPC-UI/Theme is perfectly fine (XP here).

[nevcairiel]

It wouldn't be hard to make MPC-HC (or any new player) look more "modern" - the only thing thats a bit problematic to achieve is transparency over the video frame, but other skins that do not use transparency are fine.

The main question here is - why custom GUIs? Do you really need to be able to change the look of your player, as long as there is a decent, modern, yet simple default GUI?

[Qaq]

+1 not everyone. I like GUI as fast and simple as possible. I've set aero off first after Win7 install. I'm really missing WinNT speed... So yes, MPC's original GUI is perfect for me.

[CruNcher]

Because we are human beings and we respond emotionally to things.

I'm sure everyone with windows 7 takes the aero glass theme over the windows classic theme. People want an attractive interface. It raises happiness levels.

Yeaha and more happy worker bees are more productive :P ?
For me look isn't that important especially if look gets in the way of efficient task completion, though if look in the end helps efficient task completion im happy too :)

Though the Aero Gui has been done for Avg consumer same as the Mac OSX Gui and generally geeks don't need such things they are happy with their OS Shell ;)
Microsoft does a lot of data gathering on efficient task completion (user tests,gathering a lot of telemetry,also they have a lot of cognitive researchers) though with Vista they concentrated more on getting the looks factor of Mac OSX to be able to cope with Average consumer demands @ that time of Development they forgot efficient task completion and Vista got a disaster not only because of its performance the UAC Hips also added a new layer of problems.In 7 they improved this again and shortly after back ported it hopefully they keep track on 8 with that :)
Funny thing though Win 7 and Win 8 look more then ever like OSS Guis and their concepts used in the past (KDE especially) and back those days many Windows user hated this concept and the early looks of 8 show this goes on looking @ the new Task Manager for example ;)
I still like the old Win95/2k concept and find it very productive and efficient for task completion and certain features that improve task completion in Vista/7 can be added also to XP :)

[ranpha]

I'm sure everyone with windows 7 takes the aero glass theme over the windows classic theme. People want an attractive interface. It raises happiness levels.

Aero is useful because it can help prevent tearing in videos, that's the primary reason why I have it enabled. Else, I won't even waste nearly ~100MB of video memory for it.

You sure Aero can make everyone happy? Will it bring world peace? There are many definite benefits that can be seen in Windows 7, but I bet people's happiness isn't one of them.

[ramicio]

Idiots make decisions based on emotions. MPC-HC is a serious tool. It's for doing a job, not invoking emotions. Take a look at software. The cheap crap meant for the brain-dead majority is all flashy and not all that powerful, but easy to use. REAL software for people in the business of doing such tasks are never flashy, but powerful, and difficult to master (only because of the vast amount of features.) Look at Photoshop, it's still grey and plain. Even Microsoft Office stuff has become a joke since they started making the UI all flashy. It's disorganized and horrible. People are idiots and want graphic representations of everything rather than reading text. Computers were once meant to be a serious tool for a specific task. Now you people who don't want to put any effort into learning anything about them are ruining stuff for everyone. Go buy a Mac if you don't want to learn anything technical and have everything all fluffy and pretty.

Plain = more organized

All you who claim it would be so easy to integrate into MPC-HC, why not go ahead and do it yourself?

[CruNcher]

Idiots make decisions based on emotions. MPC-HC is a serious tool. It's for doing a job, not invoking emotions. Take a look at software. The cheap crap meant for the brain-dead majority is all flashy and not all that powerful, but easy to use. REAL software for people in the business of doing such tasks are never flashy, but powerful, and difficult to master (only because of the vast amount of features.) Look at Photoshop, it's still grey and plain. Even Microsoft Office stuff has become a joke since they started making the UI all flashy. It's disorganized and horrible. People are idiots and want graphic representations of everything rather than reading text. Computers were once meant to be a serious tool for a specific task. Now you people who don't want to put any effort into learning anything about them are ruining stuff for everyone. Go buy a Mac if you don't want to learn anything technical and have everything all fluffy and pretty.

Plain = more organized

All you who claim it would be so easy to integrate into MPC-HC, why not go ahead and do it yourself?

Sorry but from a efficiency point i can't agree the Ribbon interface is a very good concept and can improve task efficiency for a lot of applications by a big margin not for nothing Sinofsky became the head lead for 7 bringing this in almost everywhere where it makes sense and even making it a design guideline and it doesn't improve task efficiency only for AVG user but also more experienced ones sure if you stuck in an old concept it gonna take time to master the new one efficiently :). I dont say it's suited for every application though and seeing the move in 8 to bring it into Explorer is somewhere where i think it will be bad for experienced people though therfore it will be optional i hope ;)

[ramicio]

I can't understand what you said. Your post is two giant run-on sentences. Prettiness of a GUI has NOTHING to do with work efficiency, organization does. You don't see Server 2008 R2 shipping with Aero.

[mr.duck]

Do you really need to be able to change the look of your player, as long as there is a decent, modern, yet simple default GUI?

Nope I don't think it's that important, as long as there is a decent, modern, yet simple default GUI - which sounds ideal.


- Take the main menu bar. Grey, large amount of waste space on the right, ancient design that can be improved.
- Seek bar: White and grey, ugly, low contrast. Could be improve visually which will improve usability too.
- Player controls: Simple, plain, small (so not bad). Inefficient use of space because of the large wasted area. The mute button looks like it was lifted from windows 95!
- Information: Tiny text. No way you could read that in a home cinema setup without getting close to the screen.
- Status: again it wastes way more space. Couple more pixelated and ugly icons.


Google chrome has simple interface, fast and efficient, but looks very good too. MPC could shoot for the same goal?

[CruNcher]

I can't understand what you said. Your post is two giant run-on sentences. Prettiness of a GUI has NOTHING to do with work efficiency, organization does. You don't see Server 2008 R2 shipping with Aero.

I was referring to this "Microsoft Office stuff has become a joke since they started making the UI all flashy." It seemed to me you criticized Ribbon as being "flashy" and not useful in terms of task completion efficiency. Aero and Ribbon are 2 entirely different things.

[ramicio]

It is a joke. I have to search the internet to figure out how to do anything and where stuff is anymore. Not very efficient. It's just another excuse for them to require people having "degrees" in using this software. Make money off the books, off the courses, and off the certifications.

[ranpha]

- Take the main menu bar. Grey, large amount of waste space on the right, ancient design that can be improved.


It can be removed if you don't like it.


- Seek bar: White and grey, ugly, low contrast. Could be improve visually which will improve usability too.


The seeker is easily visible, you are talking BS if you claim it isn't so. As for it being white and grey, do you have any conclusive proof that other colors are OBJECTIVELY superior than white/grey?


- Player controls: Simple, plain, small (so not bad). Inefficient use of space because of the large wasted area. The mute button looks like it was lifted from windows 95!


The mute button can be changed for a long time already, if you want it. If you don't want to see wasted area between the player controls and the volume slider, how about resizing the MPC-HC window? Voila! Wasted area gone!


- Information: Tiny text. No way you could read that in a home cinema setup without getting close to the screen.


People who use home-cinema setup (XBMC, MediaPortal or WMC et. al.) usually doesn't use MPC-HC at all. If they don't use the internal capabilities of those HTPC programs and want to use MPC-HC as an external third-party player, most of the time, those people will make MPC-HC to automatically go full-screen without interacting with MPC-HC GUI at all. Those kind of people usually do not even bother MPC-HC GUI.

- Status: again it wastes way more space. Couple more pixelated and ugly icons.


Can be removed if you want it.



Google chrome has simple interface, fast and efficient, but looks very good too. MPC could shoot for the same goal?


MPC-HC already has simple interface which are fast and efficient. And it looks good too for me. You certainly cannot claim that everyone thinks MPC-HC GUI is ugly.

[CruNcher]

Maybe you can learn to like it a good way is to understand what is behind this concept and how many iterations it's gone through http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx

[Atak_Snajpera]

I've set aero off first after Win7 install. I'm really missing WinNT speed... So yes, MPC's original GUI is perfect for me.
Why DID you switch off AERO????? It runs exclusively on GPU!!! Try to move fast some window and compare cpu utilization. On aero I have ALWAYS lower values.

[ramicio]

There is such thing as 2d acceleration...but any desktop card lacks in this area as they are just made for gamerz/ricerz. A GPU is not an independent device yet. They still sap from the main RAM. Aero is a resource hog.

[mr.duck]

ranpha, you are too funny now... just... wow lol

[mr.duck]

Aero is a resource hog.
A resource hog takes all the resources. Aero does not do that unless you have very limited resources. Of course win NT or XP will run way faster than Win7. MS decided to add features which need faster hardware to run. But no need to argue about any more as it's getting off topic.

[ramicio]

No, a resource hog is something that is crappily-written or employs something that doesn't add any function. The latter applying to Aero. It's nice and sparkly but you needed a serious machine to run it when Vista came out. Winamp would be an example of the former and some of the latter. It doesn't suck up ALL system resources, but it allocates all of its plugins as soon as Winamp is open no matter if they are disabled or not. Take for instance if you install a WASAPI plugin with exclusive mode. Once you start Winamp you will not hear other system sounds regardless of if Winamp is playing or not.

I use MPC-HC to watch video, I don't stare at it with nothing playing nor focus on how it looks. It should stay the same. I support them adding skinning support, but NOT if it means more resources will be used when the default UI is used. If it is so important to you ricerz then you should make your own offshoot. It's not like it's proprietary code...

[mr.duck]

MPC-HC already has simple interface which are fast and efficient. And it looks good too for me.

Then what are you doing here? Hint: re-read topic title. Let's change the MPC-HC GUI. Don't update your software if you don't like it. Voila! New look GUI gone! :)

[ramicio]

This topic started as to why you would want it changed. I understand it as the OP is fine with the UI and they were trying to understand why people are so obsessed with making this player ricey. Nowhere does the OP advocate changing the UI.

[mr.duck]

It's nice and sparkly but you needed a serious machine to run it when Vista came out.
LOL ok.

Seriously though, start another thread if you want to talk about the virtues/drawbacks of aero.

[ramicio]

Seriously though, no. Don't let your "emotional experience" of using a computer cloud your common sense. This is staying on topic because it's always been about a false sense of ugliness versus functionality. Microsoft isn't in the charity business. You better believe that if their OS didn't cost over $200 then it wouldn't be all sparkly and nice looking. They would have devoted the fewer resources into functionality. Linux is a great example. A command line is ugly and majorly archaic, yet perfectly functional and still used by professionals.

Again, keep your hippie rice-burner computer crap out of people who want functional software. It's OPEN SOURCE! Make your own offshoots if you turds feel so strongly about how ugly it is and leave the classic UI alone for those of us who aren't emotional idiots.

[mr.duck]

This topic started as to why you would want it changed.
Glad we are clear on that :)


ranpha will troll here though. Even though the topic is about why people would like the GUI to change, he will continue to try and argue why everything must stay the same. Just wait and see...


EDIT: Ok now you are just being an asshole.

[nevcairiel]

This topic never was about the actual looks of MPC-HC, it was about the ability for you to customize it. Please focus on that, and discuss if there is a need to actually be able to customize the UI, maybe keeping in mind that the default UI could be modernized slightly, without sacrificing any usability.

[ramicio]

Someone should make their own instead of polluting the original code for those of us (huge majority) who want it how it is.

[Qaq]

Why DID you switch off AERO????? It runs exclusively on GPU!!! Try to move fast some window and compare cpu utilization. On aero I have ALWAYS lower values.
Thanks, but I see no benefit for my needs from that. My GPU (little ATI 5450, BTW) is busy enough trying to play back HD video in highest possible quality. I can get perfect vsync without Aero. MadVR takes care of it.

[mr.duck]

Someone should make their own instead of polluting the original code for those of us (huge majority) who want it how it is.

There are always those in society that resist progress and change in favor of the old ways. Some even turn to extreme violence; especially when religion is involved. I guess the best thing to do is to ignore them?

[Guest]

Closing as it has degenerated to off topic stuff and insults. It was obvious from post 1 that it would end up like this.