What's With the Browser Windows?

[Jason Dunn]

A random thought: I think Windows Media Player is a decent media player. It has some rough edges, and it has a lot of trouble with music stored on a network drive (there's a rant there all unto itself), but I tend to use it over all other players (at the moment). The Media Guide tab is a good way for me to listen to music and watch videos that I might not have otherwise encountered - I've discovered some great music that way. But the method they do so is irritating. When you click on almost anything in that area, it will launch a browser window...which makes no sense when you consider that the Media Guide is an HTML page. Why not let me navigate inside the media player? Why pop Web browsers in my face, distracting me from what I was doing in the first place? I'm sure this happens at the request of the media partners that provide content, but I think Microsoft needs to lay down one simple rule: what goes on in the media player stays in the media player.

[klinux]

Like iTunes? :)

[Mr. MacinTiger]

I agree with you, but then again MS has never seemed to put 100% logic and creativity into WiMP...It's like they are good to go to a certain point and after that they stop thinking.

And, man oh man, have you checked out WiMP for OS X? I will say that the included skins are passable and that it will play some web and audio content, but does maybe 40% of what Win WiMP does. There's no way you could use it for your main media player or a jukebox...They crippled it beyond belief! :roll:

[Mojo Jojo]

Beat me too it... but lets not turn this into an iTunes / Windows Media Player thing. :D

Actually though Jason, may I ask which player do you have? I have 9.00.00.29xx and most of the stuff I see in the media player for links take over the window. An older version perhaps?

I do have a problem with 'dead ends' though which is very annoying. Say I am browsing for things in the media player and then I click a link for (lets go get todays example, no its not my peference);

Media Guide > Double Your Pleasure > Nina Sky...

The video starts but now I have no way to get back. The navigation buttons are removed.

No offense to Microsoft but constructive advice is that they need to spend some time in usability interface class. A lot of the lower tier or non-spotlight products suffer from this. You can see it in their PDA OS, the media player as pointed out above, to some extent their network setup, etc.

There is an inconsistency of 'User Experience' that tarnishes the whole image or experience of their software. Does the world end? No, not at all. But the User Interface is your first chance to make that first impression with users and a poor experience can taint the functionality.

Wonder if Microsoft has a Usability group that over sees their range of products. Sort of a unified view or if each project is responsible on their own? Anyways... I would have to update the resume. :D

[Jason Dunn]

Like iTunes? :)

If it could play WMA files, I'd consider it as a viable option, but it can't, so there's no point in bringing it up is there? ;-) (and no, transcoding WMA to AAC is not "playing WMA")

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

What about Winamp 5?

BTW, I'm still using WMP 6.something for playing back my video files, hehe.

[klinux]

Like iTunes? :)

If it could play WMA files, I'd consider it as a viable option, but it can't, so there's no point in bringing it up is there? ;-) (and no, transcoding WMA to AAC is not "playing WMA")

You are 100% correct Jason. In fact, this ties back to the question you posed the other day about what audio codecs do people use.

I found that WMA files that I have previously reipped are pretty much useless on the OS X platform. Later when I ripped to AAC I could not play them on my PC, that is, until iTunes Windows came out, but I still cannot play them on my PPC (although I now have an iPod). Who knows when I am going to get into Linux when I can play neither WMA or AAC! :)

This is the reason why I am now back to ripping in MP3...

[Dave Beauvais]

What about Winamp 5?
I'd used Winamp v2.x for years, but stopped when I saw how horrible v3 was. For a year or so, all I'd used was WMP8/9, but a few weeks ago I decided to give version 5 a try after getting annoyed with WMP9's media library. I haven't used WMP since.

I do use the classic skins instead of the newer "modern" skins since they make the software quite sluggish even on a fast PC. With classic skins, it's amazingly fast, has a small, uncluttered interface that docks to the corner of the screen out of the way, has a pretty nice media library, and can play just about any type of video except QuickTime and Really bad Media. I can't get it to play audio CDs for whatever reason, but that's not a big deal since I rip all my new CDs before I even listen to them. :)