I love MP mostly because of all the cool community additions. These additions make MP capable of more than the competition. To be honest... without the community additions I would probably have installed XBMC. :sorry: The community additions do have one major drawback: they're not always as stable as they should and could be.
Because of this Team-MP is faced with a difficult situation: MP's success is for a large part dependent on the quality of additions they have very little control over. In order to improve this situation Team-MP could exert some influence by putting up incentives for the community to develop high quality additions.
My suggestion:
* Use MP2 development as a starting point and make MP2 as community-friendly as possible.
* Create documentation while developing and keep it up to date. Make sure there are references, guidelines and checklists for skin and plugin developers. This will help standardize MP plugins and skins. Some examples of hurdles faced by the community in MP1 are:
- - It is very difficult for community skin designers to keep their MP1 skins up to date. There is no documentation of how this can be attained.
- - Plugin developers sometimes use different <id>'s for buttons that do exactly the same (eg the "view" button). Because of these differences the common.xml files cannot be used the way they should be.
* Create an auditing system. Plugin and skin developers may ask a Team-MP auditor to test their creations. If the plugin or skin complies with the guidelines (<id> numbers, up to date, etc) a seal of quality can be given. This is not mandatory but just a way for developers to show they have made a quality addition. It does not infringe on the free and open nature of MP.
I feel that recognizing the importance of community additions AND putting up some form of quality assurance would help MP's popularity a great deal. "Mediaportal 2.0 compliant"... has a nice ring to it.
Because of this Team-MP is faced with a difficult situation: MP's success is for a large part dependent on the quality of additions they have very little control over. In order to improve this situation Team-MP could exert some influence by putting up incentives for the community to develop high quality additions.
My suggestion:
* Use MP2 development as a starting point and make MP2 as community-friendly as possible.
* Create documentation while developing and keep it up to date. Make sure there are references, guidelines and checklists for skin and plugin developers. This will help standardize MP plugins and skins. Some examples of hurdles faced by the community in MP1 are:
- - It is very difficult for community skin designers to keep their MP1 skins up to date. There is no documentation of how this can be attained.
- - Plugin developers sometimes use different <id>'s for buttons that do exactly the same (eg the "view" button). Because of these differences the common.xml files cannot be used the way they should be.
* Create an auditing system. Plugin and skin developers may ask a Team-MP auditor to test their creations. If the plugin or skin complies with the guidelines (<id> numbers, up to date, etc) a seal of quality can be given. This is not mandatory but just a way for developers to show they have made a quality addition. It does not infringe on the free and open nature of MP.
I feel that recognizing the importance of community additions AND putting up some form of quality assurance would help MP's popularity a great deal. "Mediaportal 2.0 compliant"... has a nice ring to it.