by mynci on Wed Jun 02, 2004 8:42 am hi,
i have been watching xlobbys progress for some time now, had a few goes at editing some skins (so they look right at my res, and to get 'odd' features i look for). it occurs to me that xlobby could do with a really intuitive user interface (please dont misunderstand me by thinking i dont apreciate the efforts put in so far, i do, they are all far far better than anything i could ever hope to realise).
However, currently the skin designs are all a little cumbersome to navigate (IMHO), partly this is because the keyboard shortcuts arnt working (I think) and therefore it is necessary to control even the play/stop and volume etc with buttons, rather than a remote/keyboard. i think it is also partly due to the 'arrow key and return' policy for navigation. for example, i have looked at the demo of sage tv, and while it will not do what i want of it, it does have a reasonably intuitive user interface, with up and down moving between menu items, left always going back a screen and right selecting a menu option. if this form of navigaton was incorperated into, say, the menu system of the xtuned skin it would (to me anyway) be a lot more intutive.
i also feel that the issues that the visual xlobby skin has tried to address are very important, but for a really slick interface it could use a little polishing both visually and from a design point of view.
there are then several features that could be of interest. i suspect that people (mostly) will be operating xlobby via a remote, my remote basically emulates keyboard commands so i can combine the shortcut key abilities with this to aceive most of my shortcut goals, and others are using girder to achieve a similar thing. it would, perhaps be possible o agree on a set of keys which all remotes tedn to have, play, pause, stop, vol up, vol down, channel up(use as track skip), channel down, fast fwd, rew, a menu button of some type, an exit button and mute. and these functions could always be excluded from the skins interfaces (or perhaps tucked out of sight on a floating menu).
this could make for a less cluttered skin capable of more functions.
i woudl also like to see a greater ability to control play lists, allowing users to select songs or albums and either, add to playlist (as next song), add to playlist(at the end), or play now(and clear playlist).
but i suspect these features are relatively simple to implement in any skin, we just need to rigt ui.
most of my focus is on the audio playing aspects of xlobby as this is the one area im yet to find a truely good media player (i use zoom at the moment as its navigaton menus and 'play all files in this directory' option let me aproximate the funtionality i want).
i am not sure if this is useful to anyone, i may have just stated a load of things that no one cares about, or indeed stated the obvious. if these features could be incorperated into xlobby then it would certanly become my htpc media player front end and as soon as i had some money, there would be a donation going the apropriate way.
i would like to state very clearly that i am not tryng to belittle the efforts of the skinners, merely trying to point out the things that i, as an end user, would like to see. so please dont take any offence.
many thanks
mynci.
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). I needed extra buttons on the main screen etc. So what I did was I downloaded the skin and modified it. It is very easy and jowaldo was willing to help, he even mailed a photoshop file of his buttons to me (In his latest release, no need to modify buttons in photoshop anymore).
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