It’s a volume applet, please keep it’s features centered around that.

I appreciate all the hard work that goes into making Ubuntu an amazing Linux distribution and my rant there is in no way intended to devalue that work. =p

A language note: rather than verbizing the noun and making up the word “ellipsize”, you might want to note that the verb “elide” already means what you want to say.

As for the originally posted design, don’t left alight if no album art and right align if album art – it’s not consistent! Choose either Left or Right aligned. Don’t like the pause, rewind, fastforward buttons, esp because the middle is so much bigger – consistent sizes please!

If song title is too wide to fit, don’t elipse it, expand the menu vertically or horizontally.

Since I rarely use playlists, why do I have to have a playlist entry on the sound menu? – to be honest, I’d much rather have the old Rhythmbox icon back with it’s old functionality.

Since

As you said before, horizontal space is cheap. I am not sure why you don’t apply it here. That looks more like the form factor of a smartphone app. You would need more horizontal space to:
1 – make more room for the title of the track
2 – extend the ‘track navigation bar’ or whatever it s called so that people can scan through a track more accurately.

Extending horizontally would also make some space to place the ‘mute all’ besides the volume control.

my 2 cent…

For the windicators, I think it’s a pretty bad idea. It would be too much clutter to my eyes. Also each window having its own special icons… Is this OLPC or something? All in all they’re really not necessary, and even when done, the file/edit menu would still be necessary since these indicators will just cover a small functionality (thus having to add vertical space in the window).
If you’re really persistent about this “feature” you can make it have the same behavior as the overlay status bar, or better, making those indicators viewable when the mouse actually points to the lower/upper right of the window in question (or something in this direction).

Also for what’s _in_ those indicators, I think you’re just trying too hard to put anything just to convince yourselves.
The cart/basket? you know I’ve never bought anything from the web, and mostly, I don’t think anything else than a browser would make use of that.
Oh, and the activity-thing, isn’t the mouse pointer not sufficient to make you see that the app is working on the action? but you really want to be more ‘graphic’ or ‘cool.’
Also I’d never share any file with anybody. Simply attaching files on e-mail.

For the position of the wincontrols: I’m against placing the mon the left. It’s teh worse design idea. Making them easier to reach? More noticeable? Why in the first place! it’s not like I close my windows just after opening them. In fact making them be on the right side makes them visible only when necessary, and that’s the whole point I believe.

I think that by this new design ideas you’re just trying to make ubuntu distinguishable from any other system without real gain in functionality or usability.
You’re actually pushing the titlebar concept in even worse direction than where it already is.
I’m sure I understand the excitement that some people already have in regards to these windicators. Reminds me of the hype of just the “web2.0″ name.

You really ought to review your design choices with more regards to the future.
As for me if this will be forced onto the user without choice to disable, then I would definitely not make the switch to ubuntu but to a more reasonable distro.

The UI looks great..but as everyone is pointing out that ellipses don’t look good. I will suggest to show scrolling text.