InsideMicrosoft

Windows Media Player 11 (XP): Impressions And Screenshots

Microsoft is releasing Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP either today or Wednesday. Thankfully, it leaked over the weekend, and I’ve had plenty of time to familiarize myself with it. First, 16 screenshots! And with them, a tour of the new features and experience.

Installation was fairly straightforward, virtually identical to WMP 10:

The new music library is the big feature:

(click to enlarge)

You see the main “Songs” view, with titles arranged into sections. First, all artists are seperated, then into segments of each artist’s albums. Within those sections, they are split up by song. This is the ideal experience, akin to browsing a physical music library. You run down your bookshelf alphabetically, finding the artist you want, then see all the albums you own, then double-click to instantly play the song. You can still sort, and still see the hyper detailed “details view with a single click.

There are other views, which reveal, in stacks, all the songs arranged by either year:

… artist, album, genre, ratings, or other criteria:

In each of these views, items are seperated into stacks, and thanks to the heavy use of album art, you get a quick idea what is in those stacks.

With the exception of the styling the Now Playing view is very familiar:

Unlike Media Player 11, those big tab buttons do more than just switch views; they are now menus. The bottom section of each button has an arrow. Click it, and you get a bunch of options related to those tabs:

This means you don’t have to dig into the classic menus all that often anymore, and the tabs have actual utility. More on that in a second.

The Enhancements panel hasn’t changed at all. I hope they don’t plan on keeping it that way, because there’s no excuse for not improving on this feature. You can’t just redesign the player, improve the UI, but not add some new advanced features.

Now, back to the classic menus. Hitting ALT reveals them:

But not in the way done in previous versions. Now, Media Player isn’t using a trick to hide the frame, a trick which falls apart when you try to get the menus. This time, the frame isn’t there at all, and the menus appear from nowhere. Trust me, this is a huge improvement.

However, if you like the frame, and the classic menus, and want them on all the time, hit Show Classic Menus, and they are put in:

WMP 11 includes a cool new skin: Revert. It has a styling not unlike the old Media Player, with a twist: it is super tiny, and transparent. You can’t resize it, and it seems to refuse to play videos, but if you need a tiny player just for music, turn this and the always on top option on, and enjoy.

If you liked the mini player, which is where the UI dissapeared when you shrunk the player, that option is still there:

And, of course, the taskbar player is still with us:

It still stinks for vertical taskbars.

Finally, anjoy the About properties page:

So, thoughts? The new player styling is an improvement, in my opinion, but that is a design thing, and some people will love it, others will hate it, and I think that doesn’t matter. I like iTunes’ style, but I hate the program. The real differences will come in the music library. I think the image-heavy, but very flexible library will be very popular, and a lot of people will like it and use it. The use of album art and white space results in a much better user experience than what every other player uses: a spreadsheet. And if you don’t like it, every other type of view is also available.

The real problem is that, as more people use portable media players and online music services, it is compatibility that matters more than software. It isn’t crazy to say that iTunes would be nowhere near as popular if not for the iPod, and that more iPod users hate iTunes than Apple would like to admit. Windows Media Player basically works with every single music service, except iTunes, although none of those services are popular.

Microsoft is launching MTV’s Urge music store along with WMP 11, and banking on its success to beat Apple on all fronts. I’m waiting on access to it to open up, to see if they’ve got a shot at succeeding here. Still, no matter how good Urge is, people usually buy music based on their player, not the other way around, and until something other than the iPod starts selling real well, that is going to be very difficult.

I’m glad to see more good software come out of Microsoft. Whether than translates into real success against the iPod, we’ll have to wait and see.

Also, PC Mag has a review, and an overview of URGE.

May 15th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Apple, Media Player, Applications, General | one comment