Update notification

[McBainUK]

As the Community Skin tends to have a number of minor updates, with tweaks and/or edits for new plugin or GB-PVR versions it would be nice to include some sort of update notification. My questions is what form should the notification take? These are my ideas below, feel free to comment or add your own.

• SkinPlugin popup - same as the Weather plugin but not as suitable here because people tend to choose a skin/theme and then stick with it for a while.
  
• Icon on the main menu screen and then a new option on the SkinPlugin to view the change log. The icon would have to small and unobtrusive.
  
• A new Update plugin which will look for updates for GB-PVR, Community Skin 3 and, possibly, other plugins.

[roy]

An update plugin would be cool. But also, you could use this thread, for example, as an announcement thread that we could subscribe to for notification of updates (for those who don't visit every day :eek

[kayak4ever]

I have been thinking about the wiki generally and if I could, I would like to make a "help" plugin. It would simply be an plugin that would pop up the Wiki while running GBPVR and allow you to nagivate to find the relevant portion of the WIKI. The reason I make the suggestion here is that it could also be used to access the status of any update for any plugin including the skin. My thought is that whether it is your initial install of gbpvr or a plugin, you read about it, decide you want to try it, and then use it. It may take 1 week, 2 months or 10 months before you really need to know how to fine tune the program or plugin to your specifications. For something like the navigation tools, you remember that you can change the priority of your recurring recordings but you can't remember how. A plugin that would allow me to push a button to create a WIKI popup menu would let you find out quickly. Even if you need to go back to the main menu and select the plugin "help", you would be more likely to do it if you could access it through your remote control.

Regardless of what option is chosen, one of the problems is remembering what version you have. Someone had posted this as an issue with plugins generally some time ago (nothing on screen to let you know what version you are using) but just recently, JavaWiz pointed out that you can get the version of your plugin by right-clicking file in Windows Explorer directory and selecting the version tab. In my imaginary version of this Help plugin in that I don't know how to program, there would be an option that would allow you to access this information to compare it to the plugin\skin currently described on the WIKI.

[McBainUK]

I have been thinking about the wiki generally and if I could, I would like to make a "help" plugin. It would simply be an plugin that would pop up the Wiki while running GBPVR and allow you to nagivate to find the relevant portion of the WIKI.

This sounds like a web browser. Are there any that work well in a PVR environment?

[Fatman_do]

"A new Update plugin which will look for updates for GB-PVR, Community Skin 3 and, possibly, other plugins."

....sounds like the one that could be used by a broader scope of users.

[cginzel]

Does the wiki support an RSS news feed of the changes? that seems like the easiest implementation as there is an RSS plugin already i thought...