Make it possible to use a button to call different events depending on some criteria.
I suggest that this can be accomplished in either of the following two ways:
1. By allowing button events to be enabled/disabled dynamically similar to button show/hide using buttonIDs - (But it should be a separate "EventID" since it is often desireable to have "hidden" buttons with working events.)
This way, several buttons (like volume controls) can be "stacked", and only only have the "enabled" button respond to a "press".
2. By allowing button events to be assigned to buttons dynamically.
Without this functionality, when the Xlobby server touchscreens are used to control volume for multiple TVs and Sources, far too many screens are needed.
In my case, I've got an install with about 30 TVs and projectors, and there are 8 sources in the media closet and a few "local" Bluray players. With only 2 control pages per device, 480 screens are required to accomplish descrete room/source volume control.
Suggestion A:
Make a set of events called "button events enable" and "button events disable" a variable that's tied to "buttonid" and that that can be modified dynamically just like "button show" and "button hide".
If you can create these events, then I can achieve full control from the server with 16 screens with 30 stacked volume control buttons on each screen.
Suggestion B:
Make it possible to assign an click enter and exit events to an element dynamically so that a "ButtonEventClickID" can be used to change the associated event.
For Example:
You could through a pop-up "set ButtonEventClickID" to "receiver 1 volume up",
"receiver 2 volume up".."receiver n volume up", and the same for the rest of the commands on a page, and this way, you'll have only one page that can control everything in the house.
I think that where it is desireable to have a "uniform" interface that is used for all rooms, like the DirecTV Page(s), dynamically changing event associated with the button may be the cleanest way to do this.
It would certainly be a lot easier to skin 2 pages where each TV and/or receiver's volume up, down, and mute, and power on and off button has 30 EventIds, than to skin 60 pages where each page has a single volume up, down, and mute, and power on and off button for the receiver/TV.
Doing it this way would require the following:
Make 5 buttons and program the 30 descrete events to them for a total of 150 "button events" plus the 50 or so DirecTV remote commands and favorite channels, and then paste the 5 "common" buttons to the second DirecTV page if there is one.
The way things are now, to get the same functionality, you need to do the following:
Make 5 buttons and program 1 descrete event to each of them for a total of 5 events plus the 50 or so DirecTV remote commands and favorite channels, and then paste the 5 "common" buttons to the second DirecTV page if there is one... And then do this whole process 30 more times. for a total of... ...wait for it... ...1,650 "button events"!!! Oh, and remember that if you put a button in the wrong spot, or if you want to change a favorite channel, or when you realize that the play and pause buttons need to be switched, - guess what, you'll have to fix it on 30 screens! - What a nightmare.
So if this isn't too much of a programing nightmare of its own, we'd love to see some kind of solution for dynamically changing button events either with "enable/disable events", or with "dynamically assignable events", or with whatever way you think of that would be the best solution for this.
Perhaps some combination of both methods can be used so that "sliders" and other "active" elements can also be "assigned"
Thanks.