The future of MPI - we need your opinion! (2 Viewers)

[tourettes]

I think the more you isolate users from needing to be aware of those things the better. If needed, you could expose the news items...etc on the first page of plugin/skin configuration (ideally, within the "Setup" pages through the UI). A good example of this model would be the way firefox handles plugins. The power users will always be coming to the site regardless, but "consumer" users should just be able to install the app, and do everything necessary within the provided interface.

I also see it as an pro when HTPC user doesn't need to use web browser to browse plugins. If they have no issues then they don't need to visit the forums / home page. We can always create a RSS stream about the latest news (maybe based on the installed plugins?).

 

[Dadeo]

Can't there just be a button if you want to check the home page and/or repository for latest news? But then I'm the kind that always hits that button!

 

[alank]

I would like it to keep track of # of downloads and be able to sort on this so that the most popular ones can be sorted to the top.

 

[PrplHaz4]

Aso, this may be a bit divergent, but has any thought been given to using the same technology as most open source package managers? The intelligent dependency recognition and complex installation tasks features are already included, and there are windows clients for these repositories as well. If not actual re-use, I think the package manager model is a good one to follow. Couple that with a skinned MP GUI, and you're in pretty good shape.

 

[Harley]

...my idea to get all together:

Rework of the mpi installer in this way:

- adding screenshot to the menue
- adding a link to the skin- or pluginhomepage for more informations
- adding short discription field
- new and better layout to hold all that stuff nice in a window
- sorting by downloadrate, biggest download first

..for better explain see my screenshot:


Greetings Harley

 

[framug]

I have one question, please.
I wonder if the existing MPI is on the right way.
Users side :
What about having a dynamic process update inside MP ? (GUI plugin)
- Automaticaly prevent users if installed plugins are outdated. (Frequency given in config) (Process plugin).
- Propose to update it.
- If so, download, extract, configure it again (if needed) close and restart MP (or launch plugins load treats).

- The same way could be applyed for MP dynamic update.
Some MediaCenter already have this functionality.

What about ?

 

[infinite.loop]

MPI Intstaller packages
What is not good on MPI:

it´s only one thing.....

the posibility to load new and updated version from our homepgae without visit them.
That´s a realy bad thing, because with that the users will load the skins and plugins from the installer without visit our homepage
and we lost here the contact with them.

By downloading manual a Skin or plugin from the homepage, all users see important new news, discribtions we give for the skins or plugins,links to the forumthreads, informations over download counts, ratings and so on and so on.
With that we hold a close contact to the community and the community to us.
That´s the key to success from MP and that the biggest point for me, why i have never use the mpi stuff for my skins.

Why not use MPI´s as package for selfextracting and installation, but without that online and download stuff.
So we can set a skin or plugin as mpi on the homepage, like we do it now with zip or rar and the community can load the stuff like they do it now from the downloadpage, by visiting our homepage. But without the possiblity to use the downloadmanager of mpi.

Greetings Harley

I think the more you isolate users from needing to be aware of those things the better. If needed, you could expose the news items...etc on the first page of plugin/skin configuration (ideally, within the "Setup" pages through the UI). A good example of this model would be the way firefox handles plugins. The power users will always be coming to the site regardless, but "consumer" users should just be able to install the app, and do everything necessary within the provided interface.

i allready placed the "post installation message" feature to the wishlist in the 2nd post.
skin designers should also take use of it and i.e. link to the thread of this skin.
ask for feedback, or whatever in this message.

 

[jameson_uk]

Also, if integrated in the main application, it would be nice to have an alert when any updates are available.

I agree. I think it is partly a matter of knowing it exists. I only really found it when searching around. I don't even think the plugin documentation mentions MPI??

Meedio did this particularly well and there was a much more active plugin community. You could just go to the setup screen and choose the plugins option. If would tell you if any you already had installed had been updated, what was new and allow you to browse. When you installed a plugin it downloaded the file, installed and then restarted Meedio. This worked really really well.

I think part of the reason for the more active plugin community in Meedio was down the MP API itself. The Meedio API was very well defined and documented and it would take an hour or so to create a reasonably complex plugin. I have a degree in computing and can quite happily code stuff up (although I don't really do this on a day to day basis) but I have been thinking about creating plugins for MP but have found it too much hard work to figure out what actualy needs coding more than anything else.

This is probably more of MP2 thing to consider but I think there would be far more plugins if the API was better structured and documented.

The other thing here is skins. Because of the need for seperate files for each screen and for each skin it is quite difficult to provide a package that just works. I think the downloads are there because people still need to hack around and copy xml skin files around for plugins.

Finally I don't think there is really any cohesion for plugins. The links from the home page are kind of dead and after a couple of visits I don't even bother looking there now I just look in the forums. Some stuff in the correct place is out of date or dead.

This is not having a go as I think MP is ace I just think that a standardised approach to plugins that is (a) known about, (b) user-friendly and (c) easy enough for developers to not have to waste time on is a winner. Without all three of these conditions being met any solution is no use.

 

[-Manfred-]

One thing comes to my mind. If you have several skins installed and the new plugin does not have support for any/some of those MPI tool still marks all of those skins as supported. This is actually a bug. It should detect inside the installer package what skins are included.

/M

 

[Bagal]

I personally think that the browsing of plugins and skins in the repository should be in the Configuration app rather than a separate application, I appreciate that actually installing them via the Config won't work due to the architecture of MP but once the plugin or skin is downloaded the Config should be closed, the extension installed and then the Config restarted, something like the following workflow:

• User chooses extension manager/plugin installer section in Config app
• User browses list of extensions and chooses one to install
• Extension downloaded
• Config quits
• Extension installed
• Config restarts
• Extension config shown if appropriate

This method would also for the most part work within MP itself:

• User browses list of extensions and chooses one to install
• Extension downloaded
• MP quits
• Extension installed
• MP restarts

For extensions that require lots of configuration it wouldn't be appropriate to restart MP, so you could perhaps start the Configuration instead, options like this could be set within the MPI itself by the extension developer.

Bagal.