[removed151214]

I've been thinking recently about creating a touch-screen skin for XBMC, but haven't been able to progress past the 'thinking about it' stage because it seems that the general interactions for XBMC simply aren't appropriate for touch screen devices.

The problem is that when accessing anything via a touch screen, there are some fundamental differences in the way people interact with devices when compared to a more traditional method - primarily remote or keyboard, though also including mouse.

When using a traditional input, the interaction is that a user will highlight an item first, before selecting it. With a keyboard or a remote, the user will navigate to the item. With a mouse, the user will position the cursor over it.

Once the item is selected, most skins then use the highlighted item to provide information (such as description, media flags and so on) about the item as well as artwork. The user will then select the item to perform the default action for it (often, to play the item).

However, on a touch device, such highlighting is unnecessary - if the item is onscreen, the user will tap on it directly, without highlighting it first, which will then perform the default action without providing information or artwork.

I would suggest that the initial interactions need to be reconsidered for users on a touch screen. Two possibilities occur to me:

1. When using a touch screen, a secondary click becomes necessary - one tap selects an item (so displaying any information and artwork), a second performs the default action.

2. Allow skinners to override the "Default Select Action" when using a touch screen device to always "Show Information" (where the information and artwork that is skipped by directly selecting the item without highlighting it first can be displayed).

Without one of these options, or something similar, I question how suitable XBMC will be for touch devices.

[Montellese]

I can see the problem at hand but the solution is not as simple.

The first problem is that XBMC doesn't really know if the device it is being used on has a touch screen or if touch input is the only possible input method. On android there are lots of settop boxes which don't even have touch support so using the OS to determine the input method won't fly.

Concerning "Default Select Action" IMO this is still something that should be controlled by the user. Maybe a user doesn't care about additional information at all and it would just disturb him if the skin changed it to something else than "Play or Resume".

[removed151214]

I presumed that XBMC would know where the input came from (keyboard, mouse, remote or touch) rather than knowing what inputs the system had. With that not being the case, I agree the solution becomes much harder. I notice from the Team Members forum that there's a discussion on skins detailing what inputs they support in their addon.xml file. Could touch-appropriate interactions be enabled (probably only really needed for lists...) when a skin says it only supports touch?

Otherwise it looks like any solution will have to be implemented entirely skin-side. With a touch-only skin I can see some ways forward - removing all info from the nav's and putting it all on the info's, removing highlighting from lists, for example. But I need to find some time to play around with it to see how it could work.

Whilst I disagree about not overriding user defaults, I fully respect where you're coming from. From my perspective, sometimes some options may simply not provide an optimal experience which should be a primary concern. I get that this isn't something that'll change, though

Thanks for the feedback.

[bobbintb]

There have already been attempts at this. Maybe you could glean ideas from those.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add-on:Touched

[removed151214]

Actually I'm a big fan of re-Touched. It provides a good interface compatible with both touch screen and mouse, indeed probably the best that's possible (in terms of interaction.)

But even then, some of the interactions aren't natural on a touch screen. For example, when scrolling a list, the item under your finger highlights. The highlighting is great for remote controls, but isn't natural for a touch screen where you're not going to highlight items, you're just going to select them directly (as you're going to do with mouse too, in fact). Indeed, it's arguably less natural within touched/retouched than other skins, because these skins don't display any extra information or artwork when an item is highlighted and aren't remote compatible.

And of course, they're not compatible with keyboard or remote which to me is the holy grail, especially with the increasing numbers of multi-function devices.

[Ned Scott]

I see where you're going on this, and if it's technically possible, I like and support both ideas.