Ideas/suggestions for the new button bar

personally i was hoping for this feature to eliminate the need for a popup subpanel.
which is a very awkward ui design in my opinion.
(selecting a random icon pops up more menu items?)

if the number of buttons was limited we would kinda be back where we started from.
the users would still have no way to easily add buttons for all of their favorite features and scripts.

anyways, that's just my opinion.
obviously it is up to you to decide if implementing it would be worthwhile. you are doing all of the work...

allow the user to place as many button on the screen as they want.
allow any button to launch items directly, like scripts, music playlists, whatever.
allow placement of the buttons anywhere on the screen and in any order.

i figured all of this would be available being that xml is very flexible.

i have not tried skinning xbmc becasue there is no skinning app for it but it seems to me that there are several other apps (media portal, xlobby, etc) that use xml and the skins seem much more 'diverse' in the gui layouts and much more flexible.

is this a limitation of the xbmc design or are the skin designers just not being as creative (no insult intended to the skinners)?

hi

i want to see this button bar with a possibility for the skinner to choose between diffrent scroll types. my english is not very good, so i made a pic with some types of scrolling:

*click*

1. fixed cursor at the first or last position - with fading
2. fixed cursor in the middle, or the skinner can choose the postion of the cursor - fading, too
3. the number of buttons is limited and the user can only change them, no add or delete; possile to loop jump from last pos to first pos.
4. "unlimited" menu items, the bar only scrolls if you are at first or last position an press left or right key; possile to loop jump from last pos to first pos.

i think that's it so far from my side..

mfg lixx

sorry for my bad english ^^

looks good lixx - thanks for the pics - makes it easy to explain stuff!

i'm personally in favour of numbers 3 and 4 (combined).

the bar will be like number 3 if the number of buttons fits, or like number 4 if there's more buttons than slots.

with this sort of system it allows the user the most customization (ie they can add/remove as many buttons as they like).

the problems i see with numbers 1 and 2 is that they don't work very well for small numbers of buttons. eg in number 2 what would happen in the case of just 2 buttons?

although i like the idea of the alpha fade out, it causes problems with small numbers of buttons.

i'm gonna start implementing this once i finish doing the context menu for my pictures (ie tomorrow). i will initially implement the combined 3 and 4 design.

once again, the more comments the better system we can come up with!

cheers,
jonathan

jmarshall:
can you explain the problem with the two button bar? i don't understand it in my opinion this works fine for example in evox
small animation:

*click*

mfg lixx

true, it does work. i guess i was thinking that it'd look best centered within the total number of slots, but that animation doesn't look too bad at all. once again, a picture speaks 1000 words!

so it looks like any of the above methods would work ok. i guess the difference between them is the highlight method and the alpha shading. obviously alpha shading only works with the first 2 methods.

either of the above would be valid, and i can pretty easily implement them all i think.

i'll be starting on this tomorrow.

i definitly don't think you should scrap the scrolling button bar. from what i can tell, like pin87a said that basically just brings us back to what we had from the beginning. right?
a sub-menu in the home screen doesn't really work well as i see it... it will have a tendency to clog up with all the custom stuff people will want to have. i think the one in the current default skin is an example of just that. as a context menu tho its perfect. i thought your idea of using it for settings was a great implementation of it. as settings migth grow even bigger adding buttons wouldn't be a problem. and also for the future i'd like to be able to have a button scroller slide in/out of view in the filelists. which then would leave more space for viewing files...

i'd might like to be able to have two buttonscroller next to each other in the home screen (or in the new filemanager?). then there could be one with main stuff in it and a second with less used stuff in it. also if just one buttonscroller is used with lets say 7 buttons visible i'd say its just a matter of placing important stuff 'near' the center. so to select the 'most' comonly used functions would always be less or equal to 3 moves and one select away

to give you an answer to the alpha-blending stuff it's pretty simple (if you just give us the scrolling part ) it's just a matter of placing a gradually alpha blended png on top of the buttonscroller. then you'll have the notion of  blended fonts _and_ buttons.

as for showing whats selected i'd like to have the focus move either up or down one step depending on direction of scrolling. that would give the user a clearer indication on whats going on (i believe). maybe this could be an option in the xml code?
<focus>static</focus> jmarshall suggestion
<focus>onestep</focus> my suggestion
<focus>lastpos</focus> lixxs' suggestion 4

as for other stuff to be controlable:
1. number of buttons to show in the scroller (must be at least as big as the total number of buttons): <visiblebuttons>7</visiblebuttons>
2. wrapping on or off: <wrap>yes</wrap>
3. if there is <buttonheight> there has to be button spacing: <buttonspacing>15</buttonspacing>
4.

i'm not sure if i got it right but with your buttonscroller it would still be possible to have an associated 'big' image with the selected button, right?

thanks for the post, floink,

yeah - i realize you can alpha blend with a png over the top, however i'm not sure how accurate you can get it to sync in with the background for all the different resolutions etc. assuming an intelligent placing is done, i think it'd be doable to have it line up perfectly.

yes - i could do the "one step" type thing no problem.

i don't see a reason for setting a maximum number of buttons - the user could add as many as they like as far as i'm concerned. number of visible buttons would be determined by the height/width of the control, or we could define the width/height/gap of a button and then have the number of buttons. whichever method is easier for you guys to do is fine by me.

and yes, button spacing + some method of displaying a background icon etc. as there is at the moment will be there. it'll probably be based on the type of window the button links to.

cheers,
jonathan

can the different home layouts be for different profiles and can profiles be password protected
cheers

hi jonathan, just one thing,
i prefer the dash, reboot, and poweroff buttons to be not included in the scroll menu or in a sub menu but i think they are much more comfortable as standalone buttons.

cheers

 :thumbsup: