Help make new default skin

[reven]

i just think its a little redundant to show it on every screen, at all times. once you learn them (which shouldnt take that long) theres no longer a need for them (unless a non regular using is using the system, but if they arent a regular user why bother making the interface look ugly, and it does (well every time i seen the colour buttons added theyve looked ugly), just for them?).

[dottore]

i agree. i think, every option, you can access with the color-buttons can be accessed via menu-buttons, at least it should be this way (except va and osd, but who wants to have a blue button on live tv? )

tipstir: that's exactly the problem, every pvr uses a blue background (well nearly every). why? we don't need another blue mce-clone.

[MaBo]

Though I'm not a skin-designer, I like to give a few thoughts on this matter. I'm a BIG gbpvr fan (nearly from the beginning), so it is in no way meant as criticism, just ideas to improve:

I do think that the color buttons on the screen are very handy. True, there are only four and to learn those is easy. However the functions they perform can be very different between plugins, or even within a plugin. For instance the video A/V plugin has several functions for the green button. A short reminder is in place.

I also think that *every* screen should have an exit button that brings the user back to the previous menu, not the main-menu.

The long existing inconsistency of play/pause between video (pause both pauses and resumes) and audio (pause only pauses, play resumes) should be cleared.

I've made a Dutch translation and that pointed me to interesting incosistencies. The word "Cancel" is both used to exit a screen and to cancel a recording. Maybe "Exit" is a better word in the first case. Also, in English "Recording" can be used both as a verb and a substantive, the Dutch translation cannot be used both ways. Now I get "Neemt op"(= in the progress of recording) both as a status report and when selecting that one recording has to be kept for a season recording.

I do agree with several people above, that the default skin should not be too fancy. Just nice. All the bells and whistles can be added by the skin-engineers.
Greetz,
MaBo

[jrockintuitive]

In most cases I agree that the color buttons on the screen are not needed and ugly... except jeff do a good job with va. The color buttons work on that plugin.

What would be helpful is, if every plugin would have a screen descrbing what functions can be performed and how they can be performed.

All we would have to do is standardize on the "menu function" button to display the popup screen of buttons that can do something.

[reven]

All we would have to do is standardize on the "menu function" button to display the popup screen of buttons that can do something.

with the key mappings now available this is needed as much, it just comes down to the plugin developers personal task. i prefer the "home" button on the 45 button remote to return to home, ie the main menu, and "menu" to show the popup menu, it makes more sense to me, but not every plugin has a popup menu. it might be better (and a little more work, but not that much) if there were remote profiles (just a collection of the .xml remote files) for specific remotes, since the remote layout would have a huge impact on the best key configuration.

[jrockintuitive]

I don't think I was clear... or I don't understand what reven is saying.

Let's take Xrecord as an example (great plugin Jorm)
There is a feature to lookup suggested shows based on your recording habits. I always forget what button I need to press to view the suggested show list. If I pressed a menu (or something else) button, it would be nice if a popup dialog with all available functions and how to exectue that function would appear. In xguide if you hit the menu button one of the items on the list would show: yellow button - change guide layout.

[nkh]

Maybe one of the plugin developers could make a Help plugin that checks which plugins / screens the user have selected in the config app, and then shows a screen with information about how to use it for each?

What's showen on the help screen for each plugin could be defined in something like help.xml in each plugins skin dir, it should just be the text and some tags for "Blue", "Menu" and so on so the skins for the Help plugin would be easy to make.

I don't know if that could even be called from any plugin/screen, like, assign an unused button on your remote to always show the Help plugin?

That way all screens would be clean, it would be fast to get the help you need (if the Help plugin knows what plugin it's being called it could show that screen = only one button press). If all the help screens are showed by the same plugin then that would make it easy for the skinners to make a uniform help layout.

[dottore]

the easiest way would be to expand the keymappings-xml-file with a description. the problem is, the key mappings can change from user to user, so a basic help would not "help"....the keymappings must be explained.

a plugin could do this. but i think, it's not worth the effort....

[nkh]

the easiest way would be to expand the keymappings-xml-file with a description. the problem is, the key mappings can change from user to user, so a basic help would not "help"....the keymappings must be explained.

a plugin could do this. but i think, it's not worth the effort....

If the user changes the key mappings then they should be able to change the help.xml file for the plugin too, if they feel they won't remember what they've done

[dottore]

the user would have to change two entries. let's say, the user forgets to change the help.xml....

i still think, the best way would be to parse the keymappings.xml.