MP online (1 Viewer)

[BenderBoink]

Hi,

I am thinking about developing a plugin for MP that directs to a web page specifically designed to be MP/TV/remote friendly. From there, there would be a number of links to other pages that could take the form of anything that can be done in a web page.

I see a lot of plugins being developed and then I have to download them all and make sure they work with the latest SVN etc. I though it would be easier if they were developed/hosted centrally. Other content could be easily incoperated such as news feeds, bloggs, whatever...

I have a small test working with firefox and a plugin for the remote. If anyone thinks this would be worth pursuing, I'll keep developing.

Demo URL is :http://www.geocities.com/bendersboink/mp.htm I don't know how long this will be there for - so don't get too upset if it disappears... The menu is only for my testing - I am open to suggestions. It is only HTML, with CSS backend, so it can be easily modified for any purpose.

 

[mdsflyer]

G'day I just had a look and i think what you are suggesting is very interesting, particularly for a "living room" PC. Good luck with it and i for one will watch with interest.

Cheers
m

 

[tkortell]

Great idea yes, its worth pursuing.

Regards / Tomas

 

[LordMessi]

BenderBoink - pls contact me, and we can maybe work together.

 

[mcbelly]

Sound like a very interesting idea - after all, it is easier to code html then c#....

Keep it on !

mcbelly

 

[zswman]

BenderBoink - I would certainly use something like this as I have a number of pre-defined pages (e.g. callerid log, status of lights on in the home, static web camera image) produced by another program on my PC. This would be perfect for pulling them up with one click.

 

[magnuje2]

Google gadgets! Would love to have my personlized google home page in MP. Agenda, GMail gadget and so on

 

[cheetah05]

I am a little confused on the concept of the idea.

Would the web page be integrated into MP? or would it be totally external?

 

[BenderBoink]

Status

Hey - it's a long time since anyone replied to this....

I have been working on it and basically it is a dedicated plugin that just fires up IE7 (you can't see IE, it just uses the rendering engine). That's the simple bit... the browser is directed at a web site that has been designed to look the same as MP. Only BlueTwo skin currently, but I have designed it so other skins can easily be applied.

Currently it is XHTML and javascript front end with a PHP backend. It is all written using AJAX so pages transitions are seemless (ie no white pages) and a little animation is displayed during page downloads. Menus are XML and content can be either HTML or anything else.

Therefore the answer to your question is that it would be a hosted web site(s). If it proves successful I could see it expanding to be able to link to dedicated purpose sites such as online purchasing from your TV or pretty much anything. Currently I have a YouTube and some online TV stations on it but it is only running in dev.

My main goal is to provide a framework to be able to develop online TV content, that is appropriate for a TV rather than a computer monitor.

For all you FireFox fans - sorry I tried, but IE7's zoom function just work a whole lot better that anything I have found from FireFox (or any other browser). Recoding the whole thing to rescale everything just didn't work and made everything way to complex.

I have though of ways to provide personal pages but haven't really come up with a decent solution - if you have one....

Where am I up to:
1. I need a web server to dev/test/run off (PHP, apache) [hint].
2. Some bugs to sort out.
3. I need feeds (XML/RSS/etc).
4. Once I have a basic site going, I'll look at expanding to provide other services.
5. TV stations are a bit crappy unless you have pretty good bandwidth.
6. Some navigation issues.
7. Need some testers with different hardware - specifically remotes. I'm using HIP and it work pretty well - I didn't have to reprogram anything, but I don't know about others.

At the moment I am only developing for MP, but I can't see any reason I couldn't write a plugin for MCE.

 

[cheetah05]

1. I need a web server to dev/test/run off (PHP, apache) [hint].

Download Xampp (google it), its a local php server that you can easily install and manage.

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Also, once you have navigated to this plugin form MP, can you get back to MP?