Germany
Hi.
I was thinking about all the pros and cons about skin design and I'm wondering if we can make things totally different here. The common way a "home" screen was build is really similar on all HTPC applications, no matter if it's WMC or MP2. But only because it's always done this way, this did not have the best way to do...
Inspired from the very flexible way Android does I was thinking about a completely free layout as only the user can decide what the user personally needs the best. I believe this will give an enormous extra amount on usability.
So let's start with this idea. Every plugin that needs some kind of user interaction must come with lets call "widgets". In easiest case this only is a link to the main plugin screen like it is now. But it should be possible that those widgets can provide informations, gimmicks or other things to the home screen itself. As example the weather widget that gives current information about the local (or any other place on the world) weather. Videos plugin can give information about the last added movies, series- episodes,... SlimTV can provide information about ongoing and/or scheduled recordings,... Another plugin can add a picture of the fellow who has birthday today to the screen...
A plugin should be able to provide more than one "widget" as it is with Videos plugin right now (Videos, Movies and Series are three Buttons that leads to different parts of the video plugin if I understand this right).
And those widgets should be freely placeable on and removable from home screen. If I like the weather on top left corner, I put the weather widget on top left corner... If I want the RSS feeds on top, I put them there, and so on... But If I don't want weather at all (because I can see through the window) I can remove it completely, leaving only a simple button with a hyperlink somewhere.
Widgets should not be limited to a fixed size. Some (like RSS) has to be a long and small rectangle, others may be round,... And if the user can not add all wanted widgets to the screen it should be possible to add a second (and third,...) home screen.
I really did not know if this is technically possible inside MP2 at all, but I think it's worth a thought...
This way the home screen is a fully personalized information and navigation central.
What do you think about this?
I was thinking about all the pros and cons about skin design and I'm wondering if we can make things totally different here. The common way a "home" screen was build is really similar on all HTPC applications, no matter if it's WMC or MP2. But only because it's always done this way, this did not have the best way to do...
Inspired from the very flexible way Android does I was thinking about a completely free layout as only the user can decide what the user personally needs the best. I believe this will give an enormous extra amount on usability.
So let's start with this idea. Every plugin that needs some kind of user interaction must come with lets call "widgets". In easiest case this only is a link to the main plugin screen like it is now. But it should be possible that those widgets can provide informations, gimmicks or other things to the home screen itself. As example the weather widget that gives current information about the local (or any other place on the world) weather. Videos plugin can give information about the last added movies, series- episodes,... SlimTV can provide information about ongoing and/or scheduled recordings,... Another plugin can add a picture of the fellow who has birthday today to the screen...
A plugin should be able to provide more than one "widget" as it is with Videos plugin right now (Videos, Movies and Series are three Buttons that leads to different parts of the video plugin if I understand this right).
And those widgets should be freely placeable on and removable from home screen. If I like the weather on top left corner, I put the weather widget on top left corner... If I want the RSS feeds on top, I put them there, and so on... But If I don't want weather at all (because I can see through the window) I can remove it completely, leaving only a simple button with a hyperlink somewhere.
Widgets should not be limited to a fixed size. Some (like RSS) has to be a long and small rectangle, others may be round,... And if the user can not add all wanted widgets to the screen it should be possible to add a second (and third,...) home screen.
I really did not know if this is technically possible inside MP2 at all, but I think it's worth a thought...
This way the home screen is a fully personalized information and navigation central.
What do you think about this?
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