In rhythmbox, the cover art is displayed bigger in the main UI, but it's far away from the rest of the info about the current track. I think displaying the cover right next to the track title, artist and album, like banshee does, makes more sense.

So, I think what we have now is the best compromise for those constraints :
- Display the cover art next to the info about the current track
- Do not take up too much screen real estate
- Make the cover art big enough so that it's recognizable

Those who want to enjoy the cover art in all its glory can also go to the "Now Playing" source.

while i agree that the album cover in rhythmbox seems to be far away from rest of the info of the song, I DISagree that the current size of the album art is recognizable or in any way useful. 
Maybe the current solution would be completely different than either of these two methods, but the current method is definitely broken and i suggest that at least as an option the rhythmbox should be added if not made default at least until we find a better solution

IMHO the previews are big enough, but there could be a way to see a bigger preview of albums not currently reproduced.

And a tag, something... I didn't know about this feature (i.e. hovering on the current cover) until I read this bug :)

This has been a headache for me for a while. The best solution, for me, would be to allow “Now Playing” to view the album art scaled to the whole available space, rather than that tiny ~500px thing. Perhaps this could be implemented as a “Album Art Only” toggle button in the Now Playing view (that’s important, since you can toggle fullscreen in that view), and then you can see the song title/artist and controls when you hover over the view.

I’ve been interested in doing this myself, but so far I’ve just spent days mucking around in the Banshee codebase, unable to make heads or tails of any of it. (short version: I tried making it as an extension, I tried two ways of making it as an extra visualizion for the OpenVP extension, I tried forking OpenVP  entirely just to have a place to start from, and every time I learned that I’m nowhere near well-versed enough in C# or the Banshee codebase even to know where to start.) Is anyone up for tackling this problem that seems like it should be easily solvable, or, failing that, could somebody point me in the right direction for implementing this as a patch or extension?

Hey Tina,

(In reply to comment #4)
> This has been a headache for me for a while. The best solution, for me, would
> be to allow “Now Playing” to view the album art scaled to the whole available
> space, rather than that tiny ~500px thing.

Tina, can you provide a screenshot for that?


> I’ve been interested in doing this myself, but so far I’ve just spent days
> mucking around in the Banshee codebase, unable to make heads or tails of any of
> it. (short version: I tried making it as an extension, I tried two ways of
> making it as an extra visualizion for the OpenVP extension, I tried forking
> OpenVP  entirely just to have a place to start from, and every time I learned
> that I’m nowhere near well-versed enough in C# or the Banshee codebase even to
> know where to start.) Is anyone up for tackling this problem that seems like it
> should be easily solvable, or, failing that, could somebody point me in the
> right direction for implementing this as a patch or extension?

Well, in the IRC channel and the mailing list you will likely get better help than in a single bugzilla ticket.

If the screenshot you provide looks weird enough, I think the bug should be solved in the NowPlaying code (Banshee code), not in a new extension.

Created attachment 244478 [details]
Banshee’s “Now Playing” interface

Created attachment 244479 [details]
Banshee’s “Now Playing” interface, in “fullscreen”

Here, I made some screenshots. Those are taken on a 1280×1024 screen, maximized.

In the “Now Playing” view, there are three design elements:

1. The cover art itself. This is really, really small, and it won’t scale up or down for me when I resize the window.
2. The text, showing song title, song artist, and album title.
3. The slight reflection below the album cover, à la iTunes.

In my opinion, all three need to be defined relatively, based on the available area; this would fit the needs of everything from a netbook to a TV screen. Also, I’d love to see a toggle button or something that expanded the album art to the full available size (proportions constrained), without the second or third elements (maybe it could show the text when you hover over, or something).

I did think of the mailing list and IRC, but those can be rather intimidating to newcomers. I figured I’d start here, at least.

(In reply to comment #8)
> I did think of the mailing list and IRC, but those can be rather intimidating
> to newcomers. I figured I’d start here, at least.

Please don't think that way! We're a friendly bunch.

Your plan to fix this bug sounds great, let us know about your progress, and we'll be waiting for your questions.

Banshee is not under active development anymore and had its last code changes more than three years ago. Its codebase has been archived.

Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect
reality. Please feel free to reopen this ticket (or rather transfer the project
to GNOME Gitlab, as GNOME Bugzilla is being shut down) if anyone takes the
responsibility for active development again.
See https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Infrastructure/issues/264 for more info.