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WMP 12 design/interface/usability issues (Feedback)
WMP 12 design/interface/usability issues (Feedback)
- As an IT professional of 15 years experience & impressed user of Windows 7 (Home Premium 64-bit), the out of the box for me has been pretty painless & in a whole different to league to my initial experiences with Vista.
I suppose the following is aimed primarily at any MS staffers but also any other users that wish to comment/disagree etc, I'm just looking to start a little discussion as well as maybe get some answers.
WMP 12, why has what for most people (if they just wanted to listen to audio whilst working on something else) the most useful feature of previous WMP's been removed i.e. the taskbar mini-player option. The new version is a VERY poor substitute (IMHO) as the controls are not available all the time they require the cursor be placed over the player, some of the old controls are missing regardless, it can't fixed in the bottom right hand corner next the icon taskbar & away from any other applications the user may be using (When I alt+tab through my open applications it's irritating when WMP 12 keeps popping up in there when I've had years of performing this task without the albeit minor irritation).
The Advanced Tag Editor!!!...many of your users simply want to play their music & have full control of it without WMP 12 doing a Nero Scout & faffing about building a nice 'library' which restricts the ease of use for a user that simply wants to play their music & have direct access to the files to make easy amendments etc.
Skins that incorporate the playlist (like the compact/corporate skin in WMP 9, 10 & 11 did/does) when in skin mode as part of the skin & that can be toggled on & off as required.
Whilst I understand the need to for a company such as MS to innovate I feel that in this case it has been at the expense of the user experience.
Any information regarding workarounds, 3rd party alternatives as well as feedback from MS staffers will be much appreciated.
All Replies
- Agreed. I've always had the feeling that they tried way too hard to make 12 different from 11.WMP11 felt like a finished and mature product in every way. WMP12 is a step back.
I wrote a similar post just now; never noticed that the tag editor's missing. That makes no sense to me. - LOL, I just noticed your post mate. The only difference is your post covers more of the points I agree with & articulates them rather well. Hopefully an enterprising MS staffer will pass your post on exactly as it is to the WMP team or whatever they may be called.
- Thank you all for the feedback regarding WMP12. I have logged this and will also forward your valuable feedback to our develop team.
Sean Zhu - MSFT - Also...We need a fix for the windows media player 12 not be able to play simple video files such as MPEG, AVI, WMV, DVD, ect. The Windows Media Player 12 crashes seconds after playing mentioned video files forcing me to close the windows media player 12.
Windows 7 is wonderful if the windows media player 12 wasn't so buggy. - The lack of an importer for WMP 11 libraries is a MASSIVE problem that nobody here has mentioned. I have more tha 300 GB of music, and had spent months manually editing the WMP 11 library to get the info and album art just right. I hope that MS realizes that building a library is not as simple as having WMP scan for files. Tags and art must often be manually edited as well. With Win7 and WMP 12, all that time appears to have been completely wasted. For that issue alone, I am seriously considering going back to WMP 11, even if that means dangerous registry edits!!
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-get-windows-media-player-wmp-taskbar-toolbar-back-in-windows-7/ - You could use the Metadata Backup tool to transfer your WMP 11 library to WMP 12. Follow the instructions in the "Using Metadata Backup to restore your metadata when moving your library to a new drive or PC" section on that page.
Tim De Baets
http://www.bm-productions.tk
