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ge2301

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    Generally MP2 has a very clean, simple and beautiful interface in the main menue.
    Just one thing I really do not like much.

    1) The scroll bar on the right side doesn't look nice
    2) Even with the scroll bar you are easily lost when pressing the up/down button. Since there are 3 columns it makes sense to have a horizontal scrolling w/o aditional scroll bar instead. Only the 2 middle elements can be directly selected by up/down button, by pressing right/left button everything is just shifted with focus on the centre again. Since you can see the right and left column before pressing right/left it's easily to keep the overview and deciding where to scroll.
    MP2_hor_scroll.png
    Another idea could be to have only 1 row, they the horizontal scroll would be really easy (I think same is available in MP1 with titanium skin already. The bottons were a little smaller in this case.
    MP1_example.png


    What do others think about it? I would appreciate a trial very much.
     
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    MJGraf

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    Hi ge2301 - and thanks for trying MP2 and posting all your suggestions, which are much appreciated!
    Unfortunately, I cannot be of much help for your suggestions as I have not enough knowledge of the MP2 front end. I mostly take care of MP2 Server (i.e. back end) questions. The right person for your requests is certainly @morpheus_xx as he is currently (unfortunately) the only one taking care of front end programming and skinning (yes, we DO need skinners for MP2 :p). Morpheus currently has only limited internet access, but I'm sure in a week or two he will get back to your suggestions.
    As to your particular proposal above, the scroll-bar on the right hand side was just freshly introduces because we had a lot of complaints from people who did not realize that there are additional buttons if you scroll down (they thought there are only these 6 buttons and e.g. didn't find the settings button below).
    I, personally, would also prefer to have a single horizontal row with buttons (also use this layout in MP1). But this is of course a matter of taste and to satisfy more different tastes we need skinners.
    But I'm sure all this will get better once MP2 becomes more mature and more people start using it regularly. This usually means that we automatically get more people help us design more skins and themes and I'm sure someone will also implement your single-line-horizontal layout :)
    If you happen to have some experience with skinning, just give it a try with MP2 - we need everyone to help us ;)
    Michael
     

    ge2301

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    Hi MJGraf,
    Thanks for your feedback. I'm glad that you also prefer the horizontal scroll with one row as used in MP1 Titan Skin. It would be more natural and user friendly. But I'm also open for something "new". For example I like the Windows Media Center surface very much. A combination of horizontal and vertical scroll has a lot of potential to reach everywhere quickly without getting lost.
    I know that Morpheus is very busy, there is a new build end of the month planned and there are many things to improve as for example TVE3.5. I understand that the visual appearance has not the highest prio. However there must be also something that makes MP2 more attractive to people, because to develop it further you need more user. Most people don't understand the code, but can be easily attracted by outstanding visual features :)

    Also I'd like to help more actively, but there are problems.
    • After university I lost my program skills stepwise
    • I'm in management in automotive industry and usually have a 12h working day :sick:
    • I have a one year old daughter and my wife after work :rolleyes:
    All I can offer is to sketch new skins and work on them in photoshop. For more I'd need too much assistance and time I think :)
     

    morpheus_xx

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    If you like you can change this by one line. I'm on smartphone only, so I can't post a detailed link.
    But you can find it yourself: inside Titanium/default/themes there is a OtherControlsOverride.xaml. Look for "WrapPanel", you should find only one inside ...Home...Style.
    Add/change there an attribute Orientation="Horizontal". (Or vertical, see MSDN docs for WrapPanel)
     

    ge2301

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    • at first i added the attribute Orientation="Horizontal" -> nothing happened in Mp2
    • in next step i tried Orientation="Vertical" and MP2 looks like in below screenshot. Its really vertical, but not as expected o_O
    Problem: After changing back to Orientation="Horizontal" or even restoring the original axml file, MP2 keeps the layout as on the screen shot

    1. how can i restore the original layout?
    2. Where can I find the mentioned MSDN docs?

    Screenshot.png
     

    morpheus_xx

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    If there are syntax errors in xaml, MP2 tries to fallback to "default skin"'s files. If none is available, it switches the full skin back to default one (this is where your screenshot comes from).
    You can switch skins in settings, appearance, skin.

    Look for documentation by googling for: msdn wrappanel ;-)
     

    morpheus_xx

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    wizard123

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    The problem is not needing skinners per se but needing coders to write the xaml after us skinner have designed a skin, the move away from xml means skins will be far fewer than they are now until more coders with xaml experience jump on board and the skin will need to be a team effect if they are to be any good.
     

    morpheus_xx

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    @ge2301 for a much more flexible arrangement of menu items please take a look at the WiP skin https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/apollo-one.121706/. It already contains a configuration to place menu items in any size at any position.

    @wizard123 as xaml is only a special kind of xml, skinners "only" need to learn about all the new possibilities. I know there are many, but there are also good WPF tutorials that cover the main architectural aspects.

    I also hope to be able to continue on Apollo One skin soon, because I really like the design and current progress is quite good already...
     

    ge2301

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    Thanks for the hints. I could easily restore Titanium skin by MP2 settings.
    To achieve a horizontal scroll with only 1 row following needs to be changed from
    <WrapPanel x:Name="ListItemsHost" IsItemsHost="True" />
    to
    <StackPanel x:Name="ListItemsHost" IsItemsHost="True" Orientation="Horizontal"/>


    WrapPanel wraps the content (buttons) with constant width, while StackPanel keeps 1 row in which one can scroll horizontally (or vertically, depends on setting). Open is how I can fix selection focus on center button and scrolling is just moving all buttons to right or left side, as also used with MP1.

    I had not much time and gonna try to find more infos in the docs.
     

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