Anime Library - Support Thread

[Ommina]

Something to think about.

For episode voting, I'm toying with a variation of Takkun's idea above. However, instead of the series of stars, I was thinking of using a gradient bar from red (poor rating) to green (good). Left / Right would used to move the bar down and up, in addition to the number keys jumping directly to their value, as they do now. This would also allow the user the ability to cast 'fractional' votes, although I think in the interests of sanity I'd still restrict it to increments of 0.25.

I'd then leave the stars as the global value, with the bar representing the local.

Thoughts?

[Takkun]

So, yeah. After being distracted by another project over the past couple of weeks, I'm poking at version two again.

Yeah, me too. The Crysis-Editor be a harsh mistress. Also, "work" is getting in the way a bit too

I've spent some very little amount of time looking to see how subtitle changing is done via directx, and will spend some more time later tonight...

Unless you're really interested in this, I hope you wont spend too much time on it. IMHO, we've got bigger fish to fry. Except for the occasional audio glitch, I'm very happy with Haali.

I was thinking of using a gradient bar from red (poor rating) to green (good). Left / Right would used to move the bar down and up, ....
Thoughts?

[SIZE="1"]Well, one computer crash later and I get to attempt at righting all this again . "Try not to sound disappointed," take two![/SIZE]

Inconsistency....
From a design perspective: You have two separate controls that indicate the same type of data and your thinking of making them look completely different? Whatever the design, I'll vote for a consistent-professional look.
From a functionality perspective:The left/right controlling some up/down movement seems disorientating and counter-intuitive. Sounds like the real problem is a lack of use for the proper directional keys. Perhaps (I don't recall if I already mentioned this or not) we could have the [enter] key toggle between an "active/inactive" selection? That way the arrow keys could be used differently when active and normally when inactive.

Also, I'm not fond of the f-ugly red/green color scheme. I have seen it used elsewhere tho; Within some forum but I can't place it right now (I can remember it clearly but fail to remember where it came from! Grrr!). I would be more open to it if you can fit a very nice transitional color in between to bring the two very-different colors together (good luck!). On another note: I would favor the icon-type visual over any solid bar any day. However, that doesn't mean we cant get the best of both worlds. I'll post some ideas on this later.

Oh, and are you sure up/down is the way to go?

I'm happily incompetent when it comes to anything graphics related.

I'm more of a "design" over "art" specialist myself. Still, I took the opportunity to create some of the icons we've been discussing. Honestly, I thought I'd look better then it actually does but still, not too bad. Email me if you want the originals. I used Paint Shop Pro, but I can easily separate the layers into PNGs if you wish. Oh, and Ted the Penguin: I made you a globe! I only thought it appropriate to center it on Asia; It's only right with Anime Library.

Why I created a "selected" globe Icon, I have no idea.
[SIZE="1"]* The example is simply meant as a visual, not a concept.[/SIZE]

----
Sorry if my writing sounded a bit silly. I'm fairly tired so my mind tends to wonder on its own.

[Ommina]

Unless you're really interested in this, I hope you wont spend too much time on it. IMHO, we've got bigger fish to fry. Except for the occasional audio glitch, I'm very happy with Haali.

Ha! I spent the rest of the evening and a good portion into the following morning researching what I could do. And while it was most certainly an educational experience, I'm exactly no closer than before to enabling subtitle stream switching.

But I do know a lot more about building graphs than I did before, so I guess that's something.

I may give it another try some evening, but it really is a bit of a learning cliff.

You have two separate controls that indicate the same type of data and your thinking of making them look completely different? Whatever the design, I'll vote for a consistent-professional look.

Oh sure. Put it THAT way and the whole idea just sounds silly.

OK, let's trash the bars and stick to the stars (there is a joke in there somewhere, but I can't make it work). This is why I ask for comments BEFORE writing anything.

So -- let me ensure that I'm understanding your idea correctly.

• User hits vote.
  
• Stars change from solid version, to "selected" version.
  
• Arrow keys are used to increase / decrease value, selected stars change to reflect values.
  
• User hits enter - vote it committed.
  
• Celebrations all around.

That roughly correct?

I'd want the number keys to still jump directly to their value. And the reason I selected left/right (in contrast to up/down), is because, like the trashed-bar counterpart, we're adding to, or removing from, the row of stars. So right grows the row to the right. Left shrinks it to the left.

Which is not to say that we can't have it respond to both up/right and down/left, and let the user use whatever they happen to like.

I am a bit worried that the distinction between selected / unselected stars will be a bit fuzzy on low resolution displays. I've copied the graphics that you made, and will try them out on a 27" TV later to see how they work.

[Takkun]

Ha! I spent the rest of the evening and a good portion into the following morning researching what I could do. And while it was most certainly an educational experience, I'm exactly no closer than before to enabling subtitle stream switching.

But I do know a lot more about building graphs than I did before, so I guess that's something.

That's good to hear. A couple of years ago I sought to build my own graph-generator from scratch in php4. I found the experience a tad frustrating, to put it mildly.

I may give it another try some evening, but it really is a bit of a learning cliff.

The trick is in "finding the elevator".

Oh sure. Put it THAT way and the whole idea just sounds silly.

Don't forget the circus poodles!

OK, let's trash the bars and stick to the stars (there is a joke in there somewhere, but I can't make it work).

Hmm... Almost sounds like a quote from Bleach. No offense...

So -- let me ensure that I'm understanding your idea correctly.

• User hits vote.
  
• Stars change from solid version, to "selected" version.
  
• Arrow keys are used to increase / decrease value, selected stars change to reflect values.
  
• User hits enter - vote it committed.
  
• Celebrations all around.

That roughly correct?

As I understand it, yes. (Party at my place when Episode Votes become somewhat relevant!!!!)

I'd want the number keys to still jump directly to their value. And the reason I selected left/right (in contrast to up/down), is because, like the trashed-bar counterpart, we're adding to, or removing from, the row of stars. So right grows the row to the right. Left shrinks it to the left.

Which is not to say that we can't have it respond to both up/right and down/left, and let the user use whatever they happen to like.

Oh! More, Less, LOL. Absolutely the numbers should be used! If they're available, why not? Regarding a solid-bar: I thought you were shooting for a "single image" for the entire bar ("typically" easier to code). I'm ok with a solid bar as long as both are solid (and we get a good color scheme for them :p). Pretty == Better, Consistency == Easier .

I am a bit worried that the distinction between selected / unselected stars will be a bit fuzzy on low resolution displays. I've copied the graphics that you made, and will try them out on a 27" TV later to see how they work.

Yeah, the Globe looks practically like a blue ball w/out that highlighted whiteness. Perhaps we shouldn't change the icons at all. Would it be difficult to place a rectangle behind the icons? We could use a gray or white background. Additionally, we could add a white.black gradient to add the illusion of a white border (white-2-black border >> white background).

Also... While I was making those icons, I discovered that Paint Shop Pro cant create perfectly symmetrical stars. I'll try to grab the star used for Firefox's bookmarks tomorrow (oops, later today).

[Takkun]

Hi Ommina. I see AniDB has added a bunch of new features (instead of improving what it already has ~~~stare~~~), so I have little doubt your spare time has been on that. No worries.

While watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of the characters made a reference to a previous episode that I thought I'd skipped. A (rare) trip to AniDb cleared that up; but that sparked an idea (because it's happened to me more times then I'm comfortable with).

For the next version of AniLib: When viewing a Anime Title, why not list all episodes (including ones not yet hashed) for that title and if it's not in the users library, cross it out. That way they'll know when they're missing an episode and where that episode would go in the list.

~sigh~ As if the next version doesn't have enough on it's plate .

[Ommina]

For the next version of AniLib: When viewing a Anime Title, why not list all episodes (including ones not yet hashed) for that title and if it's not in the users library, cross it out. That way they'll know when they're missing an episode and where that episode would go in the list.

~sigh~ As if the next version doesn't have enough on it's plate .

Amusingly (well, amusing to me anyway), I was thinking about this very thing earlier in the week, and planned on seriously looking at putting it in this weekend.

To do properly it will take a number of database changes, but... oh well! SQLite needs to feel important too. Happily, I'm already retrieving the episode list anyway, so it is (mostly) just a matter of not discarding the titles for which there is not an associated file.

I am mildly worried about titles with an excessive number of episodes (/wave Doreamon!) but since they are so rare, and not thing kind of thing to be hanging out in most collections anyway, I'm not losing much sleep over them.

---

Side note.

How are you (or anybody else!) finding the performance of the anime title list, as the collection grows? Particularly over the network. I'm noticing some pauses here that are giving me some concern, and I wonder if it might be time to do some creative changes to speed it up. As such, I'm quite interested in hearing how it is behaving for others.

[Takkun]

/wave Doreamon? Huh, wow. It might be wise to allow user's to toggle off the capability. Or perhaps "missing episodes" should be completely un-selectable and skipped when navigating up/down (though when skipping, you would want the last item that was skipped on-screen so they can see where the gap ends in missing episodes. Its a GUI thing.).

No, I haven't been the least bit bothered from the generation of any listings in AniLib. However, I haven't been using GBPVR over the network at all in quite awhile (months). Although I haven't noticed any slowdowns anywhere, I'm unsure exactly which list your referring to.

You could create some benchmarking display (another adv-option for AniLib) and compare results for a standard 24 episode list to 200+ and optimize from their (if needed). Honestly, if its not a problem (or annoyance) for your impressive collection, then I wouldn't worry about it just yet.

BTW: Two miscellaneous thoughts...

1. Have you thought of creating a "settings" dialog? :p
   
2. Any interest in improving a user's ability to discover new anime titles that they'd like?

[Ommina]

/wave Doreamon? Huh, wow. It might be wise to allow user's to toggle off the capability. Or perhaps "missing episodes" should be completely un-selectable and skipped when navigating up/down (though when skipping, you would want the last item that was skipped on-screen so they can see where the gap ends in missing episodes. Its a GUI thing.).

My initial thoughts (subject to change as I work through the actual implementation) is to render the episode list as it is currently, and then redisplay it with missing episodes via a click from the remote - probably the * key again, since the key provides a similar behaviour from the "Watching" list.

I might, might render a single missing episode as part of the default list though, as long as I can make it visually distinctive enough to avoid confusing the user.

I would prefer to avoid disabling the list item entirely, since I would like to provide a list of files available for the selected missing episode.

No, I haven't been the least bit bothered from the generation of any listings in AniLib. However, I haven't been using GBPVR over the network at all in quite awhile (months). Although I haven't noticed any slowdowns anywhere, I'm unsure exactly which list your referring to.

The part that causes me concern is the creation of the anime title list - I'm quite happy with the performance of the episode list. On my previous workstation, creation of the anime list was taking around 0.75 seconds. Not glacial by any means, but perceptible.

Admittedly, it was pretty old hardware, so if nobody is actually bothered by the times, I'm not going to worry about it. I loathe to break db normalcy and all the problems that entails to solve a problem that isn't there.

1. Have you thought of creating a "settings" dialog? :p
   
2. Any interest in improving a user's ability to discover new anime titles that they'd like?

Settings: not really. Some things are just so much more appropriately done with a keyboard and a mouse. That said, if there are things that the user changes frequently, then I would consider moving them into the plugin proper. But I feel no guilt in leaving items that change one every two months (if that) in the config application.

Discovering new titles: I'd love to! I'm not sure how to do it though. The only strategy I have come up with is the "people who liked this title also liked these other titles..." kind of thing. But it always seemed to lead back to the most popular titles. Bleh.

[Ommina]

Hi folks!

Due to an upcoming change in the API used to retrieve anime data, I find myself in a position where I need to release an update, like, now. Ok, not now, but within a week or two.

Happily, the code is pretty stable. And although I've yet to finish off my "todo" list, it doesn't crash either.

Just the same, before packaging up a beta release, I would like to test out the database update code on a copy of a database different than my own. Database changes are significant, and I would feel better testing the updates against some fresh data.

As such, is there anybody willing to email me a copy of their current database? I would very much appreciate it, and sleep better at night.

ommina at gmail

Thanks!

[Takkun]

YEA!!! DB sent!