As a long-time user of P2P and torrents just trying out Tribler, this one is rough around the edges, and I’ve a few comments. In no particular order:
The entire idea of a video player embedded in a torrent client is kind of silly, in my opinion. It’s not small and is questionably necessary. More-or-less all users will have a media player from their OS, browser, or a dedicated program, so there’s little reason to jam one into the torrent client too.
The general window state, sorting orders, column sizes, and the like, should be remembered, and seems not to be at current.
The entire UX/UI surrounding tokens, the token balance, market, mining, and all their details, is very unfriendly. The entire concept of tokens needs explanation within the program, as does the ‘trust map’ and the reason clients exchange non-trivial amounts of data without incrementing any counters visible outside of the tokens and the debug screen, the last part of which is likely to concern or confuse traditional torrent users.
Similarly, the UX around channels is terribly unclear. The meaning/definition of a channel isn’t explained, much less that of “my channel” or of subscribing. Even the method by which to subscribe is effectively hidden, by virtue of an interactive area - the rating column - with no hint as to its existence as interactive or function. The whole channel concept needs a tutorial and some UI rework. The nature of ‘downloading’ a channel could also use some clarification and a separate element to indicate its status and completion, without having to open the channel in question.
I would strongly suggest tool-tips for the buttons present and overall making interactive areas much more obvious. For specific examples, a separate column with an obvious ‘heart’ icon for subscribing, rather than mixing it in with a ‘rating’ column, and making the token balance more obviously an interactive element. The UI just lacks clarity on what can be interacted with and what it does, in some places; for another example, it’s not even clear what initiates a health check on a torrent until trial-and-error discovers it to be selecting the torrent in question.
The entire ‘trust graph’ tab looks to be largely a cosmetic feature, and as such, also looks like an ideal place to shrink the cosmetic element and jam in a variety of status and diagnostic data for the system and the network, in an easily user-readable format. In general, the program needs easily-accessible readouts for system and connection info, such as the current hops, UL/DL speeds and limits, connections currently active, exit node status, health of connections (for cases of firewalls, for example), and some of the basics would also do well in something like a status bar, or a lower section of the existing left-side panel. It’s extremely subpar to have to poke through either a debug screen or the multiple tabs of the options to get an idea of what’s going on.
As the token balance is kind of a big thing, why isn’t there a Tokens tab in the left panel? That would be a more intuitive method of accessing it than by clicking the token balance, though both could be used.
The warning around being an exit node could use additional info and clarification, in my opinion.
The entirety of how Tribler differs from other, more common torrent clients, and how it interacts with its own kind and external torrents, could use a chunk of first-run tutorial, too.