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rcoops · (This post was last modified: 2009-12-15, 19:52 by rcoops.)

I was wondering is there a way to make a panel where say the middle item is selected. And where moving up, down, left or right, the selected item remains the middle one while the panel items shift.

So something like this:

Code:
a  b  c 

d >e< f 

g  h  i

Moving down the panel would look like:

Code:
d  e  f 

g >h< i 

j  k  l

I have seen a few different concepts that all seem to hint at wanting to do this but I have not seen a single actual implementation of this. Which leads me to believe that it might just not be possible at the moment. Confused

mcborzu · 2009-12-15, 20:02

Dont know if you stumble onto this thread but it explains alot about what you are after...

rcoops · 2009-12-15, 20:19

Thanks, I just did find on my own and wanted to update this thread it is exactly what I am after and it seems it is being looked into (at least it was being looked into last summer Big Grin

).

Could it be that this sneaked into the code and the wiki is simply missing an update?
I'll check the code to see if I can find any reference to anything that looks liek this...

rcoops · 2009-12-15, 20:39

rcoops Wrote:Could it be that this sneaked into the code and the wiki is simply missing an update?
I'll check the code to see if I can find any reference to anything that looks liek this...

Nope no such luck no control that even remotely looks like this, I guess that if this control is or has been worked on it is somewhere on a dev's computer or maybe in some branch on SVN but not yet in the normal builds. Sad

Jezz_X · 2009-12-15, 23:21

The problem was you get stuck in it with no way to get out.
Unless we go and change the whole way that xbmc interacts with the options buttons (make them a popup menu, which would trash all current skins probably) you have no way to get to things like View: , Sort: and so on because your always stuck in the middle on the panel

rcoops · (This post was last modified: 2009-12-16, 22:34 by rcoops.)

What about the simple back button? It works to get back from most screens why not from a control?
The back button would take focus away from the panel so there should always be a part of the control (regardless of this part of the control being visible to an end user (up to the skinner I would say)) that could take the focus if the panel is exited by pressing the back button.

I agree that backwards compatibility is important but since this would be a new control none of the skins without this control would be hurt in anyway. (I don't mean escape "when I say back" but I mean backspace (when working with a keyboard, as I do not own a xbox anymore, sold it before I knew about XBMC Blush

) I never had the pleasure of running XBMC on one of those)
Sure it is a way of working that is not currently used in XBMC but it is not so far out of the commonsense/intuitive way of controlling that people would get shocked and run away screaming in fear of their lives.

As I said before there are quite a few skinners and concept artists that have tried to create something like this or have ideas for very pretty views that could be created if only....

Jezz_X · 2009-12-16, 23:23

so if you make back go to the menu how do you go up one directory level..... no matter how you do it you are going to need a new button mapped to get out of the panel and what happens when you only have 1 or 2 items in a folder. these things work and look great for many many items. but they fall down for just a couple

rcoops · 2009-12-16, 23:55

Jezz_X Wrote:so if you make back go to the menu how do you go up one directory level.....

No not really... back leaves the panel navigation and returns to normal navigation, so up does what ever up would do when not focused on the panel, down the same, left, right well you guessed it, the same goes for all other normal navigation.

Basically the wrap panel would consist of two parts the panel it self and an escape element that is used to always have an element to focus on when not focused on the panel. This part would adhere to all normal navigation rules but would not have to be visible if the skinner would not want to show it that is fine but focus it would still get when pressing back on the panel, thus always providing the user with a natural way of escaping the all capturing panel.

Jezz_X · 2009-12-17, 00:15

so basically once a user changes to that view you are forcing them to be stuck with it forever in that folder because they have no way of changing it (naving to change view button) and also have no way to change the sort order and stuff. Unless they go up one folder which then of course changes the view for the wrong folder.

This what I mean by you would need an extra dialog and button to open it to change these things because they only effect the current visible folder not every folder

rcoops · 2009-12-17, 17:15

So something like this would not work?

PHP Code:
<control type="button" id="99">
 ....
</control>
<control type="wraplist" id="98">
 ......
 <returnfocus>99</returnfocus>
</control> 

Basically when a user lands on the wrappanel pressing backspace lands him/her on the control specified by the skinner. From there all returns to normal interaction, including the backspace button to go one level up.

Code wise this "special" control should catch the backspace if it has focus rather then leaving the rest of XBMC to deal with it, once it looses focus XBMC can deal with backspace in the same way it always does.
I know that it sounds so easy when one writes this down (I do from time to time write code just not using any form of C)

If I was able to code it I would certainly do it unfortunately my C(anything) skills don't go much beyond hello world. I would likely spend weeks working on it and still end up with a half baked none working bit of code.

jmarshall · 2009-12-17, 23:36

That sounds completely unintuitive to me to be honest. Consider you navigating 5 levels deep using this view. You'd just click select 5 times to get there, now how do you get back? 10 hits of backspace?

CiXel · 2010-01-02, 17:58

I appreciate y'all chiming in. I do have one newb question that I can't seem to locate an answer to in the wiki or on the forums. How do you 'bind a key' on a PC to a particular function ie. reloading the skin to check the changes?

**Hitcher** · 2010-01-02, 18:07

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=List_of_Built_In_Functions

CiXel · 2010-01-02, 18:35

Ah-
I didn't think of doing it via that route.
Thanks for the heads up.

**Hitcher** · 2010-01-02, 19:20

I've simply mapped F5 to reload the skin.