Videolan is so good, but don't do things like this please.

[Threep]

I have been a huge fan of VLC for years, its on my top lists of things to recommend to anyone, and the very first application I snag for any computer I'm working on. However Its been some time since I had to reformat my computer and figured well, clean new slate, how about a new version of VLC. Nothing was wrong with my old version mind you, I just assumed things had gotten better...they had not.

To start off here is the problem that led me down the rabbit hhole: the new interface is all sorts of bad. I have a separate program skinning windows, and that has to be messing with VLCs skin or something because what I am given to interface with media is neigh unusable. This in itself is not the problem though. The problem lies in the way you skin VLC, which as far as I can tell from the forums, involves fresh bled goats blood, a full moon on a Sunday at 9am, 3 priests, 6 rabbis and a partridge in a pear tree, then you have to be naturally lucky for anything to ever change. I've yet to find anything that will change the players skin. Even changing the 3rd party windows skinning application has no effect on returning VLC to a usable state.

However there is hope! its called VLC .80 and Its all I wanted in the first place. See with .8 my 3rd party skinning application doesn't affect how it looks, and the skin it comes with by default is as easy to use as crayons. Its a shame I had to scour some grungy hole of the internet to find such a gem.

There isn't much to ask of a media player if I'm going to be honest. It should play the songs and movies you find in all the common media types. It should not lag. Thats it. There is a reason that people use VLC instead of WMP, WMP is bloated and slow, it plays jack all of squat, and its ugly like a duckling in a woodchipper.

Honestly I cant tell the difference between .8 and .98a for what I use it for, its hard for me personally to see where all the new versions came from. In fact the only problems I find with vlc are in .98a which is a shame, cause its the only one posted openly on your website. Prior to .98a I couldn't point to anything specific that eneded changing, or any possible functionality that needed adding. However, now you've got something that a new version would fix. All I can point to specifically is that you need to fix the skinning for the player, its bad. The player looks very very bad, and is as fun to play with as bleach, couple that with the inability to easily (key word easily) change skins, makes it the rubiks cube of projects just to set properly.

I cant say that there isn't more functionality in .98a, I damn near read every line on the forums trying to change your basic UI and I know that you can do more things with it in theory. However, I don't care and neither does anyone I know. In fact almost every single person I know uses VLC, and none of them have used anything beyond the basic drag and drop play anything functionality. Its good cause its simple, and reliable, please, don't mess that up by cramming more crap in it, especially if the stuff you put in is anything like the skinning interface. If you must add new stuff to it, at least post the previous versions for us mortals who can live without streaming-integrated-hyperbolic-graphic functionality, on your own web site.

This is a complicated thought and one that eternally bothers my computer programming friends, but there is a possibility that a program does all it needs to do. You can reach a point where you don't need to do anything more. The scissors haven't been altered for quite some time and very few people are whining about that. The last VLC I had prior to my reformat was scissors, the new VLC seems to be growing a tweezer, and a bottle opener, neither of which I require when making collages.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

The 0.9 interface is bigger in size than the 0.8 one but is not slower.
The 1.0 version of VLC is faster in many ways than 0.9 or 0.8 in terms of speed on Windows.

But yes, the new interface, based on Qt, doesn't seem to be compatible with some skinning themes of Windows and I am afraid we cannot do much about it.

[ctothej]

Hello,

I've been a user of VLC for several years, since I've discovered it, and subsequently introduced it to and converted several friends and family members. I came across this topic and registered because I too am extremely disappointed with the new version. I was similarly cleaning up my computer, uninstalling and upgrading programs. When I first launched VLC 0.9.8 I was very put off by the interface. I don’t use any custom skinning applications so I was put off by the new interface as it is supposedly meant to be.
The classic interface was simple, intuitive, and reliable. The functions were much more straight-forward than they are now. Because it used standard Windows controls, the buttons and the sliders looked and behaved as they were expected to. The new interface travels down the road of iTunes and Windows Media Player: reinventing basic ubiquitous controls like buttons and sliders. The result is a product that looks off, like it doesn’t belong.

If it were simply aesthetically unpleasing that would be a significant, but not show-stopping problem. Unfortunately that is not the case. When looking through the VLC options to try and re-enable the classic interface, I switched to skinned mode. At that point, as usually happens when you attempt to reinvent the wheel, things got much worse. I couldn’t easily find how to get back into the preferences, as the menu bar disappeared. The buttons were unclear, and when I hovered over them it took me a while to notice that the tooltips were showing up on my primary monitor, although VLC was located in the middle of my secondary monitor. When I finally clicked the preferences button, VLC crashed and burned. Every time thereafter I opened VLC, it would crash with the standard illegal operation dialog. The only way I was able to get VLC functional again was to uninstall and reinstall it.

Now that I have VLC reinstalled and have learned not to switch to skinned mode, I want to watch a movie. That’s something VLC has always been superb at. However, when I double click the VLC interface in my secondary monitor, the movie goes full screen in my primary monitor. After messing with it for some time, I google and find that it is a known bug. The workaround is to deselect “Integrate video in interface”.

To summarize, since the switch of the interface, quality has dropped drastically. The clean, simple appearance has been replaced with a custom, faux look. The program is less stable, and the skinning system has managed to completely destroy an installation. Simple interface features like fullscreen are now broken, requiring obscure workarounds.

Please, please abandon the Qt interface. I know Nokia just released it to the world and that must be really exciting for people writing cross-platform interfaces, but that’s ruined by the fact that instead of having several amazing, clean, native interfaces, you now have one weird, unstable, buggy interface. Please abandon the Qt interface and restore VLCs reputation for quality and simplicity.

[LikeableGeek]

works fine together with WindowBlinds 6.3 (build 110 x86 - Vista Edition) - 64 bit OS

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Hello,

I've been a user of VLC for several years, since I've discovered it, and subsequently introduced it to and converted several friends and family members. I came across this topic and registered because I too am extremely disappointed with the new version. I was similarly cleaning up my computer, uninstalling and upgrading programs. When I first launched VLC 0.9.8 I was very put off by the interface. I don’t use any custom skinning applications so I was put off by the new interface as it is supposedly meant to be.
The classic interface was simple, intuitive, and reliable. The functions were much more straight-forward than they are now. Because it used standard Windows controls, the buttons and the sliders looked and behaved as they were expected to. The new interface travels down the road of iTunes and Windows Media Player: reinventing basic ubiquitous controls like buttons and sliders. The result is a product that looks off, like it doesn’t belong.

If it were simply aesthetically unpleasing that would be a significant, but not show-stopping problem. Unfortunately that is not the case. When looking through the VLC options to try and re-enable the classic interface, I switched to skinned mode. At that point, as usually happens when you attempt to reinvent the wheel, things got much worse. I couldn’t easily find how to get back into the preferences, as the menu bar disappeared. The buttons were unclear, and when I hovered over them it took me a while to notice that the tooltips were showing up on my primary monitor, although VLC was located in the middle of my secondary monitor. When I finally clicked the preferences button, VLC crashed and burned. Every time thereafter I opened VLC, it would crash with the standard illegal operation dialog. The only way I was able to get VLC functional again was to uninstall and reinstall it.

Now that I have VLC reinstalled and have learned not to switch to skinned mode, I want to watch a movie. That’s something VLC has always been superb at. However, when I double click the VLC interface in my secondary monitor, the movie goes full screen in my primary monitor. After messing with it for some time, I google and find that it is a known bug. The workaround is to deselect “Integrate video in interface”.

To summarize, since the switch of the interface, quality has dropped drastically. The clean, simple appearance has been replaced with a custom, faux look. The program is less stable, and the skinning system has managed to completely destroy an installation. Simple interface features like fullscreen are now broken, requiring obscure workarounds.

Please, please abandon the Qt interface. I know Nokia just released it to the world and that must be really exciting for people writing cross-platform interfaces, but that’s ruined by the fact that instead of having several amazing, clean, native interfaces, you now have one weird, unstable, buggy interface. Please abandon the Qt interface and restore VLCs reputation for quality and simplicity.

- VLC Qt interface has buttons the same way other application has. The only non-standard widget is the volume, and you can deactivate it. Moreover 0.8 had non-standard widget for volume too.

- Skins is in bad shape and this has NOTHING to do with Qt

- The fullscreen issue is only in 0.9.8a, not in 0.9.6 nor in 0.9.9 (soon to be released)

- 0.9 is faster than 0.8.6 and 1.0 is even faster.

[morespray]

fwiw I really like the new interface. I'm using the Royale Noir theme without skinned mode, looks spot on. Cheers!

[mh505]

Couldn't agree with you more. v0.8.6 works perfect; as soon as 0.9.x is installed, all sorts of problems pop up. What is worse, no one at development seems to be willing to do anything about it ...

[dynamo]

The VLC developers are gods.

The wider slider, the fact that it doesn't pop up every 10 minutes.

Seriously, these were my last pet peaves!

The VLC developers are gods among men.