If all you see is "growing" the userbase by nuking and reworking the user interface what happens to us your existing users?
As a direct example -
I use VLC primarily as a music player for my jazz album collection. It handles many formats I throw at it. It has a simple playlist (I play albums from start to finish and do not value a lot of spazzy track selection features).
I have a nice useable interface that works well. I ignore the stuff I don't need, I know WHERE the stuff I do need is.
I use VLC because it doesn't change much year to year unlike the vast majority of flash in the pan music players that go in and out of fashion.
If you privilege growth of new users you don't care that I know where things are and how to make them work. You just reorganize things according to some "designer" that is entirely growth oriented and doesn't care about me.
> The unspoken "problem" you have is that your existing users are doing just fine with VLC.
Some of them yes, some are complaining. Quite many, in fact.
> If all you see is "growing" the userbase by nuking and reworking the user interface what happens to us your existing users?
We're just working so that it still works for our existing users, that's exactly the point of my previous comment. It will require, at some places, to have some options, for contradictory use-cases; but mostly, we will try to support everything that we did, just simplify some cases (changes of subtitles or audio for example, chromecast or access to video effect), and provide a media library to people who listen to a lot of audio.
> I use VLC primarily as a music player for my jazz album collection. It handles many formats I throw at it. It has a simple playlist (I play albums from start to finish and do not value a lot of spazzy track selection features).
It should absolutely still work. If it does not work as before, just tell us why and we will fix. I can even send you some early designs, if you are scared.
We are in no hurry, so we'll do well. It just requires more time, which is what we have :)
> If you privilege growth of new users you don't care
Who talked about growth? We're talking about VLC! We don't make any money by having more users, on the contrary.
We just want our users to be more happy.
I think it was a bit aggressive, though i sort of understand it: one of the most common (if not the most common) complains after a UX change in any semi-popular program is that the change was negative for some people's experience and i think everyone who has used computers for a while has experienced at least once what they perceived as unnecessary UX degradation of one of their favorite programs.
So whenever the topic of some program changing their UI (regardless of reasons) comes up, a kneejerk reaction that goes fully towards the negative side of possibilities is expected. The more time people invest in a program, the more painful it becomes when they feel that their investment becomes worthless.
(EDIT: FWIW personally i do not make any weird use of VLC, so as long as it keeps having the common minimal slider, play, pause, etc UI i doubt i'll have any problems with it :-P)
I love the fact that VLC seems to be able to play and use most any media I throw at it.
I love that I can edit the play/toolbar stuff. Awesome.
I like the fact that VLC still has menus instead of trying to mash everything into a single menu "hamburger" ie like the browsers and some others have done. I'm skilled with a mouse and even I find "hamburgers" onerous to use.
I love the fact that VLCs icons are very simple, clean and clear what they do. I really like that they haven't changed much over time.
Most things seem to be where they should be.
I don't really see anything I wish was gone.
If someone that watches a lot of anime (or whatever) or something needs a special button or context menu added somewhere so they can enjoy VLC more, I'm totally fine with that and I'll likely infer the sense of it if it appears.
I understood the comment fine. Even the way you're explaining yourself makes me nervous about the changes you may or not make.
Maybe I have just been burnt so many times.
Depending on usecase, it's quite possible that current users are successfully using it but could have a much easier time of things with some UI tweaks. It's dangerous, yes, but it can be favorable overall.
