I have tried the new update. You added a lot of widgets! I guess this is just for testing, to see what works and what doesn't. So after testing them, here are my comments; first screenshot of the widgets I think are worthwhile:
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Top left: album art only. Looks good, but no useful functionality. Not for me, but I can see why some people would want it.
Top right: album art with controls. This is my favorite. I love the design and hidden functionality. I think it could be improved though: when nothing is playing, instead of darkening the album art, how about displaying only the album art in standard colours (no title, no shortcut to mediaplayer), and having all the touch events launch the mediaplayer selection (or mediaplayer if only one)?
Second row: transparent controls only. Resizes well down to 2x1. Simple and functional, there is a use for it.
Third and fourth rows: transparent metadata with controls and shortcut, but no album art. Resizes well to 3 wide, but not 4 wide. 1 high looks kind of squished. 2 high looks too spaced. Shortcut icon looks a bit out of place (stands out too much, and clashes with the clean design).
Fifth row: album art, metadata, controls and shortcut. Ideal width is 4, 3 looks squashed. Same comment as the previous widget for the height. I wish it was transparent.
I think what you need is combine the last 2 widgets (3rd,4th + 5th row) into a single 4x1 widget, with the following features:
- Album art on the left, resize to fit in a square with 100% of widget height. Touch event should launch the mediaplayer or selection menu.
- Only show song title, to give more space to the controls.
- Previous, Play/Pause, Next buttons
- No mediaplayer shortcut, since this is already handled by the album art. I was hesitating whether an indication of which player is active would be useful, but actually the album art already kind of perform this function since it shows what would play.
- Transparency option.
You could also expand the above into a 4x2 widget, with bigger album art (of course) and more metadata shown (artist and album).
There is one more widget which is worth keeping as well: it is the other big layout, with the controls at the bottom.
Yes. I think Microsoft designers did an awesome job on that tile interface for phones. It looks good, provides good user customisation options, and is very functional. Here is another picture showing how well one of your widgets fits in it:
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