Community Design (3 Viewers)

[infinite.loop]

Coming back to this old thread, could everyone post 5 design points they think should be in a gui going forward. Try to forget legacy homescreens or referring to xbmc skins etc and think of a skin design going forward something modern.

What makes a GUI feel modern to me these days is less about the "looks" and became more about the "feel". This means how I interact with the application, the way navigation works, the way I manipulate the view and the content.

Too feel modern, the UI is required to be really fast and responsive, otherwise the most modern "looking" GUI will end up feeling clunky and old.
And this brings us back to an ancient issue of MP - the speed (and overall limitations) of the engine.

Concepts like dynamically altering a list by fluidly "swiping" an item out of a list and things like this which make the GUI feel fresh and modern are just not possible in the current state.

 

[wizard123]

i completely agree with that and unfortunately the neglect of the skin engine over the years mean MP1 is end of life design wise, dont get me wrong its a solid piece of software but its feeling very old and outdated now. For me gui wise i see a future where there is just one main screen and everything is accessible right there no seperate windows for every single screen or plugin.

 

[infinite.loop]

For me gui wise i see a future where there is just one main screen and everything is accessible right there no seperate windows for every single screen or plugin.

At least not in the way it is done now. At lot could be faked to create the impression of always be in the same window.

It's pretty old now, but I always loved this menu. Sure, it can't be 1:1 ported as an mediacenter UI, but I love how fluid it is and the feel it creates to navigate through it (i own the game).

 

[wizard123]

yea a lot of faking can be done but its still clunky, i like that its very fluid.

 

[emphatic]

I only the plugins would allow access directly to the media like how LatestMediaHandler does, the you could have a Basic Home like this:



Emph

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

Basic Home like this:

I don't want a "Basic Home" at all. What I would prefer is a navigation that can pop up on every screen by pressing the "green button" The item in this menu needs to be highly configurable by the user. This way you don't need to navigate all the way back if you want to change the active plugin. Imagine you are listening to music with full screen visualisation. Then it's time for your favourite TV Show so you press green button while music still is playing, navigate to TV - EPG - channel which airs the show - TV Playback without changing the screen in between.

The former home screen could/should be transformed into an "Info Screen" where you can see weather, news, latest additions to your library, next scheduled recordings, emails, facebook, twitter,... you can see which other PC are up and running in the local network what phone calls you've missed, who has birthday the next days, what movie is played tonite in your local cinema, what's new in your favourite sports, when will your amazon/ebay parcel arrives.. All this floating around the pictures of the day smoothly (as there is soo much space to fill on a 100" 4k screen )...

 

[emphatic]

If I play music full screen and want to watch a show, I'll just hit the Guide button and my remote and I'm there. I just wish I could map all plugins on my remote.

Emph

 

[infinite.loop]

I don't want a "Basic Home" at all.

You might not want/need a "classic" homescreen, but you need an entrypoint of some sort from where you go ahead.
When you start your MediaCenter, what should it show?

How would you like to go/navigate from that entry point to TV/series/pictures/movies/music/games/weather/etc. and from one to the other?

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

what should it show?

Whatever the user wants as "entry screen". Maybe this new "Info screen" (as long as nothing else is configured), TV Guide, Online Videos or (for me this would probably be) TV Series...

I'll just hit the Guide

OK, but what if you want to watch a YouTube video, a MediaSite presentation... No matter what. You can't map a button to every plugin available. The remote needs to be usable so you can't add 20 layers to every button...

Edit:

How would you like to go/navigate from that entry point to TV/series/pictures/movies/music/games/weather/etc. and from one to the other?

No matter where I am, I press the Green Button and I have an overlay with the "Basic Home" menu showing up. So I can navigate directly from one plugin to another (this includes the "entry" plugin) without the way back to home.I think this will be much faster, smoother as no need to load a new page, just a simple overlay.

And excuse me, I'm kind of a MP2 guy where "everything is a plugin", that's why I call this "plugin" also it may be part of "core" program...

 

[Lehmden]

A quick and dirty mockup to show what I mean:
Screen you're viewing:

Then press the "Green Button":