Making a touch screen skin (whats it need)

I'm making a touch screen skin (as a side project) and was wondering what people who actually have a touchscreen (since I don't) think a skin designed for one needs.

Here is what I come up with so far

• All needed things need to be on screen, so you can click em
• Easy access to Parent Dir Item
• Needs to be big items in selections (so your finger doesn't sit on 2 items)
• buttons need to have a selected background (not just text) so its easy to tell whats focused before click
• Needs to have "close window" buttons everywhere on anything that pops up
• Needs to have easy access to Playback controls (stop pause FF RW etc..)
• Needs to have page controls (scrollbars, arrows) visible on the screen so you can use them
  

Anything ELSE ?

P.S. try to keep it in normal XBMC stuff not stuff like multitouch for zoom and all that because xbmc doesn't have those sort of features.

P.P.S if people actually help I might post a couple of screenshots of what I have allready

Is this what THIS has turned into I'd really like to see that project come to fruition.

oh no thats completely unrelated but it does have the same color theme and some styles but its way too complicated for touchscreen

Ah well that's a bummer that other skin is definitely one of the better 'concepts' i have seen here.

As a suggestion for the touchscreen skin I'd say that larger BOLD fonts would really help.

Yeah maybe I guess it depends on if we are going for screens that people put in cars or screens that people would have in the kitchen or on the wall somewhere I'm thinking around 720p 15" and up myself.

And the bits I have done so far are readable at that and the buttons are big enough to click easy, (would probably work on 12" too)

I think of 2 sorts of touchscreen: Small touchscreen in case and big touchscreen as display. Both have different purposes.

From this topic:

3 Screen saver modes : http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=68936

* Diaporama : Rotation of images to use touch screen like a LCD Photo Frame.
* Dimming : If viewing a film the screen dim for better film confort.
* Currently : auto switch to Currently if listening music.

And also a clock screensaver would be great.

Bulkzooi Wrote:I think of 2 sorts of touchscreen: Small touchscreen in case and big touchscreen as display. Both have different purposes.

From this topic:

3 Screen saver modes : http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=68936

* Diaporama : Rotation of images to use touch screen like a LCD Photo Frame.
* Dimming : If viewing a film the screen dim for better film confort.
* Currently : auto switch to Currently if listening music.

And also a clock screensaver would be great.

Your kind of missing the point its not a touchscreen remote control for xbmc its a touchscreen version of a skin for xbmc and all the 3 screen savers you listed above are already part of xbmc

Jezz_X I was a long time xlobby touchscreen user and switched to xbmc once I found a touchscreen skin that worked. I have been using Touch! by virtualhours on my touchscreen (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=57940) the last couple of months which is in my kitchen running at 1080p being driven by a laptop sitting in the attic running windows 7. In general it works well and never ceases to impress visitors.

Some other functions to include would be;

-the ability to queue albums and tracks and save playlists via different touchable buttons.
-back buttons everywhere, never have to use the hold down for right click function via the computer. Although it does work with windows 7 if needed.
-scroll arrows buttons to scroll down and up.
-ability to control, watch and escape from movies.
-ability to get to all the menus via touchscreen, i.e. to get album information currently I have to hold finger down for 5 seconds to right mouse click.
-A halo on buttons once you touch, so you know you've touched them.
-Also, I don't think its possible in XBMC but the ability to scroll via dragging (like the iphone). Its supported in windows 7 but marginally works with xbmc.

Just some thoughts.

Thanks great reply my replys are under yours in bold

-the ability to queue albums and tracks and save playlists via different touchable buttons.
We get into troubles here because xbmc lacks the ability to put those sort of buttons into the list currently and when you leave the list to click then it no longer knows what one you mean. Might be something I can convince jmarshall to work on though

-back buttons everywhere, never have to use the hold down for right click function via the computer. Although it does work with windows 7 if needed.
Yep putting as many back/close buttons in as I can so you never have to right click for that

-scroll arrows buttons to scroll down and up.
indeed already planned

-ability to control, watch and escape from movies.
For the most part this is possible but one thing that needs to be added would be mouse input/jumping on progress bars (again a jmarshall thing)

-ability to get to all the menus via touchscreen, i.e. to get album information currently I have to hold finger down for 5 seconds to right mouse click.
Not a lot as a skinner I can currently do about that one

-A halo on buttons once you touch, so you know you've touched them.
You mean like a pulse effect to say its been clicked ? or just an area so you know its focused

-Also, I don't think its possible in XBMC but the ability to scroll via dragging (like the iphone). Its supported in windows 7 but marginally works with xbmc
I think jmarshall is working on that sort of thing with gestures, but again scrollbars should help to make scrolling easy even if its not as cool

Windows 7 gesture support for scrolling in lists is in the works, yes. I just need to find some time to clean it up and commit it.

Note that both queuing and album info could be handled via the same mechanism - we need a button in list style thing.

I suspect the queue could be hacked already using the multiselecttext control or whatever it is...