[Gamester17]

as far as effecting the .xbe size goes, yes it does increase the size quite considerably actually, currently our .xbe with latest xbmc cvs is right around 10.8mb, to me this is unacceptable

yes that sounds way to much, our devs are continuously doing everything they can to make xbmc more memory efficiant (thus the .xbe smaller in size + making other things modular, eg dll's) 

one more thing, everything is still in library format, darkie mentioned converting the libs to dll's in the very beginning...

linkboks devs might want to have a look at xbmc's cdda-player and/orpython, also the visualization and screensavers are all dll-based (ex. see here (link) and here (link) for some technical-info.

ps! off-topic and kind-of a request; ysbox should maybe also start to look into tying/linking linkboks somehow into python because python-devs/scripts will probebely have most use of it?

[Nickman]

rino, thanks for the support, im not programming this, the thanks for that goes to ysbox and gemini.  once they get the gui stuff done and ready to be skinned, britneyspairs will be skinning it

not be rude to britneyspairs or anything but if it gets put into the cvs tree why doesn't chokemaniac do the skinning bit ? after all he would be the best candidate as he made the default skin right ?

[BritneysPAIRS]

he probably will id say but no one was helping at start so i did. i think i will opt out soon adding any help here is impossible. ive allready helped in many ways that most people will be unable to know. anyway i hope he does come on board and skin it that would be great and i could start work on other stuff

ps i was asked and others that were didnt respond, also pm3 is pretty easy to skin will only take an hour or so to do skin when all gui is in, and of coarse he can reskin it if it gets into cvs, also if you or someone else would like to help come to channel cause stuff like this will make it take longer to get to cvs not quicker.

[BritneysPAIRS]

gamester17 nice to see you here you should come on to irc channel sometime with a bit of help from proper developers this could be a great feature its nearly there and surfs the net nicely (not as good as pc but pretty well). you can see gemi and ys on irc and talk to them and if directed from you it could be designed for gui and interface properly from start. and stop all manner of problems with direction and lock project to what it should be.

this will be added to tommorrow its just a photoshop mockup of full screenbrowser. it has video overlay on and context selected but both can set off. remember its a mock up
----redone down page---

[Gamester17]

gamester17 nice to see you here you should come on to irc channel sometime...

i would but i 'just' moved back to my native country 2-months ago, the move and new job is quite hectic so barely got time to stop by here in the forums, (after 6-years in scotland i moved back to sweden), ...got all my stuff (and gf) this weekend, plus i don't even have internet at home yet.

anyway, back on topic, i have to admit i'm personaly againts implementing anything nativly into xbmc if it is not directly audio/video-media related, (you can read most arguments againts here), because xbmc is not an operating-system (nor software that should be runned as separate applications under an operating-system) and i don't think we should ever aim to be/become one either, ...however a webbrowser could be a nice feature in xbmc if tied into audio/video-multimedia (at least then it's indirectly audio/video-media related) but it should and will only be implemented into xbmc if its code is not intrusive (or buggy) in any way nor should it restrict the true purpose of xbmc by hogging resourses (foremost random access memory), the true purpose again being playing audio and video files (ie, music and movies), rant over and out.

[BritneysPAIRS]

cheers i agree and we dont want it to look like its an add on to xbmc but intergrated into it. or eles id say it wasnt worth doing as well. ill read your rants and raves id say we all agree with you xbmc is so good at media cheers for the effort.

[Nickman]

this will be added to tommorrow its just a photoshop mockup of full screenbrowser. it has video overlay on and context selected but both can set off. remember its a mock up

it looks nice britneyspairs. the only thing that looks a bit wierd is the top browser buttons with the grayblue colored url field. the buttons look like they are floating abowe the skin. imho it would look better if they are together.

looking forward to the final version.

[Nickman]

he probably will id say but no one was helping at start so i did. i think i will opt out soon adding any help here is impossible. ive allready helped in many ways that most people will be unable to know. anyway i hope he does come on board and skin it that would be great and i could start work on other stuff

ps i was asked and others that were didnt respond, also pm3 is pretty easy to skin will only take an hour or so to do skin when all gui is in, and of coarse he can reskin it if it gets into cvs, also if you or someone else would like to help come to channel cause stuff like this will make it take longer to get to cvs not quicker.

as i said i didn't mean to discredit your work in anyway. just thought that maybe it wouldn't look like it was made by the same person. and as it's the default skin maybe original author (choke) should do the skinning.

i like your mockup btw. so if it's not included in the cvs tree your version will not bring any shame to the patch :d

[los93sol]

just to clear things up, we contacted choke for his opinions and to see about helping us with the skinning portion of the project along with britneyspairs, but he is too busy. we have been going through versions of the mock ups left and right trying to get it right, we finally have the layout nailed so we can go ahead with the gui portion of the code, it's all skinning from that point. please keep in mind the last pic posted by britneyspairs is only a mock-up, it is not a final design, the layout will stay the same, but the rest of the page is subject to changes. i personally like the context menu the way it is and the videoplayer window, i think the browser function buttons can use a little tweaking, but overall, i think we are almost there with the overall layout, look, and feel of the project.

gamester, no worries, your concerns are being addressed, we spoke with several official dev's in the beginning who all had the same issues and concerns as you, we will continue to do everything we can to make sure these issues are addressed and dealt with as effectively as possible.

regards,
los93sol

[Livin]

will there be an option for a true full screen mode? basically only a bar at the top (or bottom) for the browser buttons and address bar? this would maximize screen real estate.

[ysbox]

i don't like full screen because of overscan; it varies depending on your tv set and you can't calibrate the gui size.

i did a quick memory check:
- 40026112 free bytes on main screen right after boot with the browser compiled in (release mode)
- 40763392 without the browser compiled in

that's 700k but it includes 2 additional xbmc "windows" and some code that can't be sectioned. it currently crashes when the http server starts unless i don't suppress the preloading of one of the sections. hope to fix that soon, runs fine without the http server though.

the browser virtually doesn't leak memory.

the fonts are currently in the .xbe as a section -it's quite convenient- but can probably be loaded from an external file without a lot of work. however, getting rid of those fonts and rewriting the fonts system from scratch *is* a lot of work (if even possible) and is not on my short term todo list... i don't have much free time these days anyway.

the biggest issue is when we switch windows (that includes the screensaver), everything is unloaded so we lose the page we're on when we get back. i'm still thinking of a elegant solution for this.

the linksboks api already provides the framework to make xbmc handle certain file types or protocols. we should be careful with the memory though, probably free all caches before launching a video, because we're quite tight on memory with both linksboks and mplayer running...

for the record, everything browser related is enclosed with "#ifdef with_links_browser ... #endif" so if you don't want it in your build, you simply don't "#define with_links_browser".

that's it for the news on my part. i did some gui and skinning ( http://ysbox.online.fr/_xbmc/osd.jpg ) but others will be taking care of that now.

[BritneysPAIRS]

that ones a bit better

[rinocom]

do you think that you guys could add a screenshot of the browser opening a media (video, mpg or avi) from a page and executing it? everything up until now looks like you're watching a dvd while surfing. the best functionality imo would be to navigate to a page with, say .ram links, click on one and it come up in a (resize optional) window.

how close am i to what you guys have as a product? or am i way off?

[Gamester17]

the fonts are currently in the .xbe as a section -it's quite convenient- but can probably be loaded from an external file without a lot of work. however, getting rid of those fonts and rewriting the fonts system from scratch *is* a lot of work (if even possible)

what about using/linking xbmc's existing ttf font loader and using those (with anti-alising) as a shared library instead?, would that not take up less memory?

[Nickman]

that ones a bit better

yep that looks much better.