United Kingdom
@catavolt,
I did a quick test with Horizon Up! and have some observations.
1) It (and Modern) could really do with an option to access the Shutdown Menu (maybe under Root Menu) so that we don't have to have Topbar enabled, which then pops up when not really wanted when pressing up when at the top of the submenus. Without needing to have Topbar, pressing up could instead cycle down to the end of the submenu, or close the submenu and return to the Category menu.
2) When navigating left with the submenu open, going from TV to Video is fine but then pressing left goes onto the Recently Added list and when on Music onto Last Played and it's rather fiddly to then move onto the next category (either pressing left several times or up to get back to the submenu, then down 5 times to close the submenu). Even if the user doesn't go onto Recently Added/Last Played, he still has to press down 5 times to close the submenu and move to the next category. One idea might be to have the submenu open with the bottom item highlighted (obviously reversing the order of the list to have the most commonly used item at the bottom) as then at least it's only one down press to close the submenu. Another idea would be to have it move onto the next category (i.e from Videos to Music and from Music to Pictures) when on the right-most Recently Added/Last Played item and pressing right again. I just did a quick compare with Horizon and that definitely has the advantage in being easier to navigate in this respect.
3) Whilst the categories text is large enough (although it wouldn't hurt to make it a bit bigger and bolder), I find the submenu text a bit small. You've centered the submenu over the category but I see no harm in letting the box extend more to the right, over the next category, which would give you more horizontal space to use a larger font and there's plenty of vertical space free to make the characters taller. This obviously won't work for the last item, Games but I think there you could just have the box extend more to the left to make space for a larger font.
Hope that's helpful. Back to Modern for me for now anyway, I still love that
I did a quick test with Horizon Up! and have some observations.
1) It (and Modern) could really do with an option to access the Shutdown Menu (maybe under Root Menu) so that we don't have to have Topbar enabled, which then pops up when not really wanted when pressing up when at the top of the submenus. Without needing to have Topbar, pressing up could instead cycle down to the end of the submenu, or close the submenu and return to the Category menu.
2) When navigating left with the submenu open, going from TV to Video is fine but then pressing left goes onto the Recently Added list and when on Music onto Last Played and it's rather fiddly to then move onto the next category (either pressing left several times or up to get back to the submenu, then down 5 times to close the submenu). Even if the user doesn't go onto Recently Added/Last Played, he still has to press down 5 times to close the submenu and move to the next category. One idea might be to have the submenu open with the bottom item highlighted (obviously reversing the order of the list to have the most commonly used item at the bottom) as then at least it's only one down press to close the submenu. Another idea would be to have it move onto the next category (i.e from Videos to Music and from Music to Pictures) when on the right-most Recently Added/Last Played item and pressing right again. I just did a quick compare with Horizon and that definitely has the advantage in being easier to navigate in this respect.
3) Whilst the categories text is large enough (although it wouldn't hurt to make it a bit bigger and bolder), I find the submenu text a bit small. You've centered the submenu over the category but I see no harm in letting the box extend more to the right, over the next category, which would give you more horizontal space to use a larger font and there's plenty of vertical space free to make the characters taller. This obviously won't work for the last item, Games but I think there you could just have the box extend more to the left to make space for a larger font.
Hope that's helpful. Back to Modern for me for now anyway, I still love that
