Bannerplex navigation issues when Infopanel is visible
#1
In TV shows, in Bannerplex view, if I navigate up to make the Infopanel slide into view, I cannot then navigate through all banners without the Infopanel disappearing again.

This is because the banners are on multiple rows and in multiple columns, so you need to be able to navigate up/down/left and right to get to all banners.

But, if you have navigated up to make the Infopanel appear, you can then ONLY navigate left/right to switch banners, which means you can only navigate between banners in the top row of the Bannerplex view whilst keeping the Infopanel visible.

If you navigate down you end up selecting banner again and the Infopanel vanishes.

If you navigate up you slide out the menu on the left and again, the Infopanel vanishes.

In summary then, how do you activate the Infopanel while in Bannerplex mode and KEEP the Infopanel visible while you browse around between ALL banners / TV shows ?

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#2
by setting infopanel to "on" perhaps?
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#3
Sigh.

Always a sarcastic response.

Did you READ my post properly?

Yes, I can turn it "on" permanently ... gee, thanks for that pearl of wisdom.

I am TALKING ABOUT the "trigger" mode. There are 2 distinct modes for the Infopanel. Always on, which constantly obscures the fanart, or "trigger" mode, which allows you to slide the Infopanel into view when you want it there and then get rid of it ad-hoc.

If you actually bothered to go do some experimenting and LOOK at what I wrote and check it for yourself you would have seen that.

In "trigger" mode, if you navigate upwards enough such that you move off of the top row of banners in Bannerplex mode, you "trigger" the Infopanel and it slides into view. BUT, if you then navigate either up or down from that point you immediately lose the Infopanel again. It hides.

Normally, in "trigger" mode, you can bring it into view, then navigate around collection of media and it stays with you until YOU trigger a "hide" action.

The fact that Bannerplex has 3 rows and multiple columns of banners means you need up/down/left and right to navigate between all of them, and you can't do that because up/down will HIDE the Infopanel.

So again, can anybody who KNOWS what they are talking about and feels like being helpful and useful instead of sarcastic and assuming I'm an !diot when in fact I know exactly what I'm doing and I only post to the forums if I cannot solve a problem after considerable effort, please offer some insight?

Can I get confirmation that other people see the same behaviour please?

I'm looking for intelligent constructive input to troubleshoot a legitimate problem here.


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#4
@SiliconKid
I suggest you keep your head cool!
I've already seen you in other threads do be warned!


Phil65 is the one helping BigNoid coding this skin so he KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT!

Read/follow the forum rules.
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#5
(2012-05-13, 14:56)SiliconKid Wrote: In summary then, how do you activate the Infopanel while in Bannerplex mode and KEEP the Infopanel visible while you browse around between ALL banners / TV shows ?

that´s what I answered.

Since the banner area is a panel, it is not possible to achieve what you want without a keymap hack + seperate key on remote .
Keep cool. If you look around here you should be able to see that I´m willing to help everyone.
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#6
Sorry about that outburst.

I get carried away when I see what looks like sarcasm being directed at a perfectly valid question.

@phil65 : Your 2nd answer is what I was looking for. You've now confirmed what I suspected based on my exhaustive testing of that area this side and all the scenarios I've already cycled through to try and make it work.

@Martijn : He may know what he's talking about. So do I. I did a LOT of testing and investigation into this before I posted so I still maintain that a sarcastic response to what was a perfectly valid question that it now turns out DOES indentify an issue in that area as per phil65's own acknowledgement above, was unnecessary. I posted a very clear description of the issue right from the beginning and given that phil65 is as advanced as he is and knows what he's talking about you can't tell me he couldn't understand that I was talking about "trigger" mode in the first place and give me his 2nd useful response as his first response.

So the reality here is that phil65 initially gave a knee jerk reaction in this case and THEN answered my question properly. My original post and query was clear and valid.

You will recall that I have contributed to the community myself and asked several other valid questions on these forums and that I know what I'm doing and I have no time for sarcasm. I am only interested in intelligent constructive exchange and results.




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#7
(2012-05-13, 14:56)SiliconKid Wrote: In summary then, how do you activate the Infopanel while in Bannerplex mode and KEEP the Infopanel visible while you browse around between ALL banners / TV shows ?

look at the words you put in uppercase. and then think about your answers again. i perfectly answered your question.
it should be logical that the panel cannot be deactivated when in middle of panel. how should we achieve that? it´s just not possible without dirty hacks.
if you find my answers sarcastic, ignore them. perhaps you´ll find other persons who help you.
who´s givin a jerk reaction definitely depends on perspective.
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#8
That paragraph was a summation of the rest of the post, which in it's entirety gave full context to what my meaning was.

I thought you might take that one paragraph out of context and then try to use that to explain yourself.

Your original answer was sarcastic and that was unnecessary. It's that simple.

I don't need to think about my answers again. I know exactly what I said, what the context was, and how it was phrased. You chose to ignore the context and respond to that one paragraph taken out of context.

I asked a relatively complex question and involved question but you chose to give a short, sarcastic response because you immediately assumed I was just another stupid end user who doesn't have a clue.

I'm actually a software developer myself, for over 20 years and I'm technical lead who is the head of an entire software development team in my professional capacity. I know a few things about a few things when it comes to software.

I happen to think that XBMC is a fantasic system and also happen to particularly like the Aeon Nox skin.

I have a great deal of appreciation for the hard work that people like yourself put into projects like this and I really do understand what is involved in the work you do.

I just don't appreciate being handled like I'm stupid.

You read your original answer to my query and you try tell me honestly that you weren't being sarcastic. You were.

But then after that you did answer my question with a technical response, properly, and I appreciate THAT response.


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#9
(2012-05-13, 19:46)SiliconKid Wrote: That paragraph was a summation of the rest of the post, which in it's entirety gave full context to what my meaning was.

I thought you might take that one paragraph out of context and then try to use that to explain yourself.

Your original answer was sarcastic and that was unnecessary. It's that simple.

I don't need to think about my answers again. I know exactly what I said, what the context was, and how it was phrased. You chose to ignore the context and respond to that one paragraph taken out of context.

I asked a relatively complex question and involved question but you chose to give a short, sarcastic response because you immediately assumed I was just another stupid end user who doesn't have a clue.

I'm actually a software developer myself, for over 20 years and I'm technical lead who is the head of an entire software development team in my professional capacity. I know a few things about a few things when it comes to software.

I happen to think that XBMC is a fantasic system and also happen to particularly like the Aeon Nox skin.

I have a great deal of appreciation for the hard work that people like yourself put into projects like this and I really do understand what is involved in the work you do.

I just don't appreciate being handled like I'm stupid.

You read your original answer to my query and you try tell me honestly that you weren't being sarcastic. You were.

But then after that you did answer my question with a technical response, properly, and I appreciate THAT response.

then your summation was completelty wrong and you should have just specified your question.
I´m answering x questions here a day, so if someone writes a summation i suspect that it is really a summation.
almost funny how someone can rant around like that just because of the word "perhaps".. you´re really thin-skinned.
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#10
What's funny is how you can't just admit that you were being sarcastic when it's blatantly obvious.

Your very first response could have been:

"I'm not sure if you are specifically referring to "trigger" mode here. In that mode you won't be able to do what you are talking about because of the inherent problems with navigation. But you can, however, turn the Infopanel on permanently to work around this."

Instead you CHOSE to be sarcastic. And guess what? I'm tired of sarcastic responses to people on forums. I respect what you do and I DO appreciate the work and effort you put into this but that does NOT mean that it's acceptable to dismiss a legitimate question with a sarcastic response like that.

I haven't let this go on principle because too often someone like yourself who IS knowledgeable and does know what they are talking about forgets that most of the rest of the world don't know anywhere close to what you know and NEED your constructive input and help. Being knowledgeable and skillful does not give you the right to treat other people like they are stupid when they ask legitimate questions and are trying to learn.

You first response was neither constructive, nor helpful. And unlike the 95% of other users who might be prepared to just ignore this kind of thing and keep searching the entire internet in the hope they get a decent answer, I WILL take issue with it.

These forums are here so people can learn things and be helped by the senior members who are more knowledgeable and understand what's going on. No so that people who are having issues and battling to understand things can be berated and spoken down to.

It's not a question of having a thin skin, it's a question of principle and standing my ground.

And you effectively just admitted that you didn't read my entire 1st post properly and based your sarcastic response on the summary only.

The reason my summary wasn't perfectly phrased was because I was having trouble understanding the expected behaviour and I actually wasn't sure how to phrase it, which was precisely why I posted that involved explanation on this forum in the first place which you evidently didn't bother to read properly.

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#11
Anyway, enough debate.

In the interests of practicing what I've been preaching and making constructive and valuable contributions to these forums lets talk technical.

So given what we have now established concerning this particular issue, I propose that 1 of 2 things needs to happen to improve the situation:

1. Standard Usability testing tells us that if a feature doesn't work 100% correctly in any given area in your UI then that feature should not be visible or active in that area at all. So in this particular case, if the "trigger" mode doesn't work correctly with the Bannerplex view then I would suggest that it should be completely removed as an option.

This is entirely for the benefit of end users who will come in there, like I did, see the feature, turn it on, and then try to figure out what they are doing wrong because it doesn't seem to work 100% correctly.

In my case, I assumed that there was a keyboard button that hides/unhides the Infopanel, or some combination of key presses, and I spent quite some time trying to figure out how to make that Infopanel become visible and stay visible while I navigated but with "trigger mode" on.

Now, I realise that there may be technical hurdles involved in getting rid of that feature altogether because of tight integration with things this skin may be dependent on.

Which brings me to option 2:

2. The other solution is to introduce a specific shortcut key that hides/unhides the Infopanel anywhere where the Infopanel is relevant and "trigger" mode is active. This would apply for all relevant views for both movies and TV shows. That shortcut key could then be mapped to a dedicated button on a programmable remote control too.

This would be very nice change and would solve the problem entirely.

But here again, I don't know what would be involved in doing this at a technical level and how generic the underlying code is or how much of that code is shared across all views where the Infopanel is relevant. I'm assuming that some form of inheritance is in play in the base code for those views so hopefully it would only require changes to base classes, in one place, and it would propagate upwards from there.

Based on the reading and research I've been doing with regards to TV show management in XBMC, it seems like the Bannerplex view is quite popular for TV shows so some work to fix this issue seems justifiable.

Again, this is a very much an end user focused issue because it's the kind of thing the normal average person out there will assume SHOULD be working purely because it's available to turn on. Then when it doesn't work they will get horribly confused and won't understand why not.

I hope that adds a bit more insight into the issue as a whole and where my frustrations were coming form yesterday.
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#12
I´m sarcastic here. And I´m sarcastic in real life, too. I have no problem admitting that.
and i would quit if i people here would forbid me to be sarcastic.
And yes, I do not always read the whole text (god forgive me), because experience tells me that when someone writes a summation then it is really a summation.
yours wasn´t.
All other people here just give a sarcastic answer back to me (which is totally fine for me) or see that they wrote a wrong question and specifiy it. your reaction is laughable.

btw naming your profession to understate your "credibility" is one of the poorest things people can do. i really give a shit about for who you work for or what you do in private life.

I hope you won´t get into contact with spiff for example, he´s twice the calibre than I am in that aspect Big Grin

and concerning your suggestion for my "most optimal" anwer... i´m posting a bit more here than you so forgive me that I cannot write such long texts in every answer.
i want to help everybody here, that wouldn´t be possible if i would answer all questions in the way you suggested. simple as that.
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#13
You amuse me.

Greatly.
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#14
perhaps your "entire software development team" in your "professional capacity" will help you with your problems.
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#15
LOL

I have a lot of testers here who can do stability and usability testing on your UI for you if you like.
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