- 334
- IGN
- videogamesm12
VideoLAN's developers are changing the way the VLC Media Player looks on the desktop. The latest nightly builds of VLC Media Player 4.0 (available here) by default have a new look that seems to try to be a more modern take on the program's look and feel. This seems to have been in the works for several years now, as media outlets have been reporting on this new look since 2021, possibly even earlier.
Many long-time users of VLC will know right off the bat that this is a very drastic change, especially considering the application has had the same look for more than 15 years at this point. Some changes not shown in the screenshot include the introduction of a "play queue" sidebar, the ability to see the contents of albums in a drop down list, and (for now) a "classic" style that seems to be half-broken right now but includes some interesting changes like a menu bar with transparency and a reduced toolbar height. Quite frankly, I have no idea when this will hit the mainstream audience, as this was apparently supposed to come out back in 2021 but was apparently postponed for whatever reason.
What do you think about it? Visually, I dig the direction it's going. It's needed a visual refresh for a long time now, so this is a pleasant upgrade over the old, traditional look, though the transparency and dark mode could be applied more consistently. Ergonomically, it still needs some work. I needed to sort of fuck around with the menu a bit to get to the page shown above (I eventually found out you could access it by just double clicking the artist name), but hopefully these get smoothed out before release.
Many long-time users of VLC will know right off the bat that this is a very drastic change, especially considering the application has had the same look for more than 15 years at this point. Some changes not shown in the screenshot include the introduction of a "play queue" sidebar, the ability to see the contents of albums in a drop down list, and (for now) a "classic" style that seems to be half-broken right now but includes some interesting changes like a menu bar with transparency and a reduced toolbar height. Quite frankly, I have no idea when this will hit the mainstream audience, as this was apparently supposed to come out back in 2021 but was apparently postponed for whatever reason.
What do you think about it? Visually, I dig the direction it's going. It's needed a visual refresh for a long time now, so this is a pleasant upgrade over the old, traditional look, though the transparency and dark mode could be applied more consistently. Ergonomically, it still needs some work. I needed to sort of fuck around with the menu a bit to get to the page shown above (I eventually found out you could access it by just double clicking the artist name), but hopefully these get smoothed out before release.
Some people see me as a serial complainer when it comes to change, because I tend to reject a lot of modern design choices and get pretty sour whenever one gets shoved down my throat and forces me to swallow my pride and use it. In some cases it's definitely just me being miffed at the sight of change, but other times I genuinely just do not understand the mindset behind it.
Change for me tends to depend heavily on its execution. I was completely fine with Steam's UI change when that happened like 2 years ago because it kept the same overall layout but gave it a snazzy new coat of paint. On the other hand, I didn't like Discord's new layouts when they went mainstream and considered them to be so awful I actually installed third party themes or even older versions of the applications just to get an older look back because the newer looks felt inconsistent, slower, or just flat out clunky in several places. I vehemently despise Windows 11 due to some of its mind-numbingly retarded decisions both aesthetically and also deeper down, but I'll give them credit with some of the more welcome changes like the refined task manager design and the introduction of tabs in the Windows Explorer. Minecraft also has a bunch of changes that I liked, but that's going to be the subject for another thread.
I'm not sure why I'm so selective, but I'm guessing that part of it boils down to the state things were prior to the change. A lot of modern UI changes attempt to reinvent their wheels instead of attempting to actually innovate in their field through experimentation, and the end result is almost always visually inferior to the look it was before. There are exceptions to this, but they are unfortunately not the rule. The reason I'm not miffed about VLC's new look is because it's not reinventing its wheels, but rather replacing the ancient fucking wheels that have been on it since the age of The Flintstones that have absolutely aged poorly since then. I also always found VLC to be very clunky to use as a media browser, so I would usually just look for the thing I wanted in my file explorer of choice and then just open them in VLC directly. This change seems to try to address that to some extent.
Change for me tends to depend heavily on its execution. I was completely fine with Steam's UI change when that happened like 2 years ago because it kept the same overall layout but gave it a snazzy new coat of paint. On the other hand, I didn't like Discord's new layouts when they went mainstream and considered them to be so awful I actually installed third party themes or even older versions of the applications just to get an older look back because the newer looks felt inconsistent, slower, or just flat out clunky in several places. I vehemently despise Windows 11 due to some of its mind-numbingly retarded decisions both aesthetically and also deeper down, but I'll give them credit with some of the more welcome changes like the refined task manager design and the introduction of tabs in the Windows Explorer. Minecraft also has a bunch of changes that I liked, but that's going to be the subject for another thread.
I'm not sure why I'm so selective, but I'm guessing that part of it boils down to the state things were prior to the change. A lot of modern UI changes attempt to reinvent their wheels instead of attempting to actually innovate in their field through experimentation, and the end result is almost always visually inferior to the look it was before. There are exceptions to this, but they are unfortunately not the rule. The reason I'm not miffed about VLC's new look is because it's not reinventing its wheels, but rather replacing the ancient fucking wheels that have been on it since the age of The Flintstones that have absolutely aged poorly since then. I also always found VLC to be very clunky to use as a media browser, so I would usually just look for the thing I wanted in my file explorer of choice and then just open them in VLC directly. This change seems to try to address that to some extent.
