Bug and Problem Reports (1 Viewer)

[Lehmden]

Hi.
Don't know if this is a skin specific bug but I think i show it here as it is a minor one and visible in WMC skin:
The play percentage when playing music is not reset after a song is finished:

358% played is not really a valid value...

 

[ge2301]

The play percentage when playing music is not reset after a song is finished:

It's not skin specific, just in other skins the value is not shown. The source is the same in all skins.
Did you play a single track or a playlist? What I could assume is, that the player has the current song duration as target and compares it with the length of all songs played from the play list. But it's only an assumption, that needs to be debugged I fear.

 

[Lehmden]

Did you play a single track or a playlist?

It was a playlist and this was the 4th song on it... So I think your assumption seems to be right...

 

[ge2301]

It was a playlist and this was the 4th song on it... So I think your assumption seems to be right...

Thanks, then it's a bug I think, small one though. We just need to agree, if the progress should always show the percentage progress of the current song or playlist?
I think, if makes more sense to show the percentage progress of the current song, so you can see, when the next song will come. But I'm sure, that opinions will differ here

 

[HTPCSourcer]

I think, if makes more sense to show the percentage progress of the current song, so you can see, when the next song will come. But I'm sure, that opinions will differ here

Opinions always differ.

Displaying a play percentage of a long playlist is not giving much meaningful information. So showing the currently played media item looks like the better choice even for playlists. It remains a compromise though.

Imagine breese doing an "Add all to playlist" of his 130,000 tracks - you would then need to play music for about three days before the progress indicator would display 1%...

 

[astronaut]

Hi,

The WMC skin is so far the best skin for MP2 from a usability point of view, my girlfriend thinks so too. I also like the design. Thank you very much for the work!

However, there are some usability issues that I would like to give feedback on. I use MP2 on a HTPC on a 60" FullHD screen at about 4 m distance with a Microsoft MCE remote and keyboard. I really like the Titan-skin for MP1, by the way. It has a pretty good usability (without being error free and could serve as a good example.

1. Generally, the text and background colors have often too little contrast. Light blue text on darker blue background isn't well readable (see the text area on the bottom of TV.png for example). This is also the case for the titles in the upper right area of the screen. Either the text should be lighter or the background darker.
2. The TV station icons are too small to have any use (see TV.png), the "icon real estate" should be used more efficiently to make them bigger and more readable.
3. Descriptions for TV programs are cut off when too long for the designated area (see TV.png), the text should scroll in this case.
4. In EPG, selecting an ongoing program and pressing OK leads to a submenu (see TV2.png). From my point of view, the default action should be to start the program directly, as the current behavior makes channel hopping very tedious. The recording submenu should appear by pressing the info-button on the remote.
5. In the video view, there is text missing in the left box (see Video.png).
6. When searching in Online Videos, I couldn't find a way to select the OK button with my remote after entering text, I have to use the mouse in order to do this (see OV.png).
7. When scrolling through the items, a shortcut by going from the leftmost icon to the rightmost by pressing left should be made possible (see OV2.png as an example).
8. When entering text with my remote and the mobile phone keyboard type, the first character is always the figure, not the letter (e. g. "2", not "a"). This makes no sense to me, I think the first character should be the first letter for this button (e. g. "a").
9.The function to close MP or shut down the PC is very important to me. In WMC, it is complicated to reach via the submenus (see Close.png). In the home screen, pressing the left arrow key does nothing when you are in the leftmost submenu. I think it would make sense to make the close menu accessible by then pressing the left arrow key. In this case, a small icon on the left side of the home screen would be useful in order to show that you can do this.
10. The screen saver clock irritates me very much with the bullet points revolving around the clock. I think it would be much nicer without these bullet points...

I hope this helps. Keep up the good work! If you have questions, let me know!

 

[ge2301]

The WMC skin is so far the best skin for MP2 from a usability point of view, my girlfriend thinks so too. I also like the design. Thank you very much for the work!

Thanks. Glad, that you like the skin. Also thanks for making the effort to give feedbacks.

1. Generally, the text and background colors have often too little contrast. Light blue text on darker blue background isn't well readable (see the text area on the bottom of TV.png for example). This is also the case for the titles in the upper right area of the screen. Either the text should be lighter or the background darker.

Intention is to clearly seperate different contents. This is the behaviour from WMC. The contrast is fairly enough on both TV's and my PC I have.
Perhaps you can increase the contrast of your TV a bit or modify the appearance by yourself. Just locate following position in your installation of MP2 and modify the color hexcode. The first 2 numbers after # characterize the opacity from 00 (transparent) to FF (Fully visible) the remaining 6 numbers the color value. You can find your desired value from photoshop or google for "hex color code table" to find matrixes with colors codes.

2. The TV station icons are too small to have any use (see TV.png), the "icon real estate" should be used more efficiently to make them bigger and more readable.

You have only 7 rows in your EPG, most people use 9 rows and currently the height is not that flexible. I take a look, if I can modify this, but I would also need to consider, that the width is also increasing. You can also modify this by yourself by finding this position. Set for example this Margin="5,-5,0,-5". The 2nd value is the top margin and the 4th is the bottom margin.

3. Descriptions for TV programs are cut off when too long for the designated area (see TV.png), the text should scroll in this case.

This is desired and is same in WMC. Moving texts are intentionally avoided because of confusion. The skin is not finished yet. There will be a details screen with all details for each program in future.

4. In EPG, selecting an ongoing program and pressing OK leads to a submenu (see TV2.png). From my point of view, the default action should be to start the program directly, as the current behavior makes channel hopping very tedious. The recording submenu should appear by pressing the info-button on the remote.

This is the default behaviour in MP2, I can not change this.

5. In the video view, there is text missing in the left box (see Video.png).

This seems to be a bug. As I have no uncategorized video (I have all in Movies and Series) I can not check it right now. After I can confirm it I'll fix it.

6. When searching in Online Videos, I couldn't find a way to select the OK button with my remote after entering text, I have to use the mouse in order to do this (see OV.png).

I need to check that. I don't use online videos, so never faced this problem. Could be a skin bug, but also something else.

9.The function to close MP or shut down the PC is very important to me. In WMC, it is complicated to reach via the submenus (see Close.png). In the home screen, pressing the left arrow key does nothing when you are in the leftmost submenu. I think it would make sense to make the close menu accessible by then pressing the left arrow key. In this case, a small icon on the left side of the home screen would be useful in order to show that you can do this.

It's same as in WMC. Target of this skin is to imitate WMC as much as possible. Your idea won't work anyway. What if you are in the rightmost submenu. Then you need to scroll through all submenu items until you could reach the power menu. If things like slide menus are used, they need to be directly accessable.

10. The screen saver clock irritates me very much with the bullet points revolving around the clock. I think it would be much nicer without these bullet points...

It was just a try with the animated clock. It's a matter of taste. As more important things are waiting on my list, I might touch this at a later point.

 

[Lehmden]

In EPG, selecting an ongoing program and pressing OK leads to a submenu (see TV2.png). From my point of view, the default action should be to start the program directly, as the current behavior makes channel hopping very tedious. The recording submenu should appear by pressing the info-button on the remote.

As told this is the default and wanted! behavior. For "zapping" there is the "TV" or Mini EPG guide where the LiveTv playback starts instantly when you are pressing "OK". The Multi EPG is meant for planing your scheduled recordings and to see what will come up later today. Your "channel hopping" better is done here:

 

[ge2301]

You have only 7 rows in your EPG, most people use 9 rows and currently the height is not that flexible. I take a look, if I can modify this, but I would also need to consider, that the width is also increasing. You can also modify this by yourself by finding this position. Set for example this Margin="5,-5,0,-5". The 2nd value is the top margin and the 4th is the bottom margin.

I made the height flexible to ensure, that the TVChannel logos use the available height. You'll see the changes with MP2.1 Final.

Btw. you can also remove the logo backgrounds (see my screenshot), shadows etc. Just check the WIKI for further details.

In MP2.1 Final you are also able to configure the EPG. You can choose all, but at least one from below

• Channel Number
• Channel Image
• Channel Name

 

[astronaut]

Thank you for the fast replies! I only reply to your replies where I feel a comment is necessary.

Generally, I understand that your approach is to make WMC as similar to the original as possible. However, I suggest to go beyond the original if the user interface can be made better. I don't see a point in sticking to a bad solution once we know it can be done better. (Yes, this would make it perhaps a little bit harder for people switching from WMC to MP2, but there are also other people using the WMC skin who don't come from WMC, like me.)

1. Colors: In ergonomics and usability, you normally try to identify the users with the biggest problems, because if you make things work for those people, everybody else profits as well. If you take older people who have problems with low contrast text and make the text readable for them, everybody else can read it easier as well. But anyway, thank you for the hint with the hex codes.

2. TV station icons: I had another look at it, and I too think that it could help a lot if the icons themselves were designed differently. The grey background and the grey horizontal overlay could be removed, which probably would make the icons much better recognizable. It's great that this will be implemented!

3. TV text descriptions: I agree, moving text is not ideal. I was not aware that the skin is not complete yet, if getting the full description is possible (e. g. via pressing the info button on my remote) in another way, then I'm fine without scrolling text.

4. EPG submenu (@ge2301 and @Lehmden): My shortcut to the EPG usually is the physical EPG button on my remote. I prefer using this button to enter the TV context, it bate having to press several buttons in order to reach something similar in MP1 Titan. That's why I start with the EPG guide, and that's why I don't like the submenu.

Coming to think of it, what is the benefit of having two different TV entry points that are quite similar to each other like EPG and MiniEPG? More specifically, what is the benefit of MiniEPG? In regular EPG, more information is visible. In MiniEPG, I don't see what show comes up when I start one. So why should anybody use MiniEPG at all? Or am I missing something?

It is a general rule in UI design that all users profit from removing unnecessary complexity. Hence I would now even go so far and suggest to remove MiniEPG completely if it has no real benefit, and that in EPG, the "start recording" submenu should appear when pressing the info button on the remote, and that in EPG the OK button should directly start the highlighted program. I understand that I should post this in the MP2 development forum, right?

(BTW: Having intended something does not mean it is right. I myself have made this experience often when designing interaction. In the end, the user is right, not the developer. Most UI issues come from a mismatch between mental models of the developer and the user. Problem is, the developer usually loses his or her ability to see things as the user does. That's why it is so important to get feedback on UIs from users to the developers. And that is part of my current job description... )

9. Close menu: I agree that my suggestion is not ideal, but I still think it would be worth a try and see if it works. It's easier to remember that you have to go all the way left to close MP (you can do this blindly, simply press left until no more sound comes!) than to move to a certain submenu. Another suggestion that is perhaps easier to implement is to simply make the close menu the first submenu in the settings section, this way, you spare one press (the press to the right to select the close menu. And once settings are done, you don't need to change them often anymore, so having settings on the second position does only hurt in the beginning, if at all.)

Please understand my comments as an attempt to help you improve your work. Again, I think WMC is the best skin so far for MP2.

Have a nice weekend!

Edit: Typos.