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[gpvillamil]

I've noticed that when you select a Display Plugin in Playing Now, the wording is kind of confusing:

1) Selecting "Image" actually plays back any selected images, not the cover art. Note that the menu that manages Cover Art functions is the "Image" menu...
2) Selecting "None" actually plays back the associated Cover Art

As I've pointed out before, the wording for display modes is baffling: no-one can understand the wording Mega-Me and Mini-Me if they haven't seen the Austin Powers movies, and even then...

Hairstyle is a really bad description of what it is. When I let people use MC9, even quite sophisticated computer users will not be able to figure out what "Hairstyle" does from the menu item.

Seriously, a menu that says:

MEGA-ME
Mini-Me
Fullscreen
Hairstyle

is pretty counter-intuitive. I mean, if you've never seen this program before, what would you guess a "hairstyle" is?

How about:

Expanded mode (all controls)
Compact mode (few controls)
Full screen visualization
Home theater mode (or Jukebox mode, or something like that)

Note that the problem isn't the functions themselves - those are pretty clear. It is only the wording, that is really baffling to anyone that hasn't been immersed in MC9 for a while. When I show people the "hairstyle" and they're trying to find it later, they all assume that "party mode' is what will take them there - no-one has *ever* figured out that "Hairstyle" takes them to where they're trying to go. I really feel menus should contain a simple description of what they do, and not some weird in-joke.

[Doof]

Well sure... if you want to suck all of the fun out of it...
 
But in all seriousness, I can't say I completely disagree with you. I've often thought the same thing. A lot of the names have a history behind them, and if you weren't around when they were coined, you'll probably be confused by them.

For instance, Hairstyle came about because Microsoft had just released Windows Media Center Edition, which had previously been known as Freestyle. So Hairstyle was a spoof of that.

And for a while, the 3D Visualizations were going by the name of "w00t!"

But I guess in a way it depends on what your target audience is. Winamp seems to have a younger (hipper?) audience than MC does and so can get away with naming something the "Thinger". The core group of forum members here know what Hairstyle, mini-me, and w00t! are, so we have no problems with them. So then you have to wonder about the new users.

From a purely business-oriented point of view, I'd agree that these things should be renamed to better serve the new customers. But I'd hate to see the real names go away and "suck all the fun out of it".

[gpvillamil]

Yep, it's all about the new users. I hate to bring this up, but I have iTunes on the same PC. Everyone can figure out 100% of iTunes on their own, by just exploring and looking at menus.

The same is not true of MC9. Granted, there is a lot more functionality, but some pretty basic stuff is hard to discover, such as mega/mini/hair stuff. In effect, you can get 100% of iTunes basic functionality by mousing around, but you can only really find about 30% of the *equivalent* functions in MC9 by just exploring. If this were some mission critical business application, a user would *have* to make the effort, but for goodness sake this is a music/media player - they'll just get frustrated and try something else.

As for the 'fun', let's not let it get in the way of adding new users to the product! We can put the 'fun' into Easter Eggs, skins, graphics - not into basic navigation! Having to know about Austin Powers films and parodies of Microsoft code names to figure out how to change a display mode is a bit too much!

I point this out because I try to actively 'sell' this product to my friends, and this is one of the barriers I come up against.