Making a touch screen skin (whats it need)

I would deffinatly be interested in seeing a touch screen skin, but taking it out of the normal XBMC box so to speak.

Having something which resembles a pub jukebox modern style would be nice.

I play my music via http://www.zenpoint.org but unless you want to mess around a lot with the video files, then movies are reasonably a no no.

It would be nice if you could use the touchscreen interface obviously on the touchscreen, but then it has the option of outputting to a second monitor.

So you would still have the touchscreen interface on Monitor A and then the movie etc playing on Monitor/TV B.

Regards

Mark

Remember there is both Single touch and multi touch. Single touch is the most common at the moment. A good guide would be that you should be able to do every thing in the skin with the left mouse button - if you can test on a touch screen. Things needs to be a bit more "bold" - like the scrollbar on your screenshots...'i think that needs to be a bit wider. The buttons on the bottom and the sides - dont place them to close together and make them bigger. Menus and dialogs (like settings in the dvd palyer) needs to be closeable (it is not on Rapier which my kids are using a single touch screen with today)

/needtotest

I guess the size of things really all comes down to how big the screen is.
And xbmc won't be supporting multi touch for quite some time if ever

Jezz_X Wrote:Well since some nice ideas have come as promised here are some screen shots of the test/ideas I have done allready (click em all for bigger)

Hi Jezz,

the screenshots looks nice, but i think the buttons for controlling should be bigger for smaller touchs.

what about removing the scrollbars and using an area on the right and lower edge for scrolling without visible scrollbars (eventually the same method for controlling volume and rewind/forward-wind?

Ok giving this a sly bump but with a related question.

I am confused as to the single and multi touch conversation going on currently.

I double tap which I suppose is multi if I want to run something, or I press and hold for my right mouse click.

Touchscreen software is the way to go and the next generation, let's have one small step for touch screen, and one final nail in the coffin for xbox owners (not the 360 though).

XBMC was an excellent project for modded boxes, but it has evolved a lot since then, and may it continue to do so.

Hi Jezz

Here are my suggestions :

Like REI51 wrote : -the ability to queue albums and tracks and save playlists via different touchable buttons. please see here

- A picture viewer which does not keep you blocked. Please see here

-make sure that pressing the screen will not pause the playing song/video Please see here

- A radio button to hide/show mouse cursor in the settings


- Idea from SpiffBB : Smart jump - a neat solution would be a bar there you can see how mutch is played of the video and a posibility to press and drag the bar to go to desired position in the video. Hovever as i understand it this is not possible in XBMC right now?!

A place to download the preview of this nice skin

MarkTaunton Wrote:Ok giving this a sly bump but with a related question.

I am confused as to the single and multi touch conversation going on currently.

I double tap which I suppose is multi if I want to run something, or I press and hold for my right mouse click.

Touchscreen software is the way to go and the next generation, let's have one small step for touch screen, and one final nail in the coffin for xbox owners (not the 360 though).

XBMC was an excellent project for modded boxes, but it has evolved a lot since then, and may it continue to do so.

Multi touch is putting 2 fingers on the screen at the same time and doing things like moving them together and apart to zoom in and out images ot moving in a circle to rotate images

On the screenshots the tiny buttons on the edges are useless. They will do nothing but aggravate users.

I use a 15" touchscreen, and I don't have big fingers, and I can't stand when apps have tiny buttons like that, all clustered together. Not to mention buttons on the very edge, which are difficult to touch accurately because of the screen bezel.

I don't think you can design a touchscreen skin without owning and using a touchscreen day-to-day. I use multiple different-sized touchscreen devices and none of them really go far enough with using BIG buttons with LOTS of separation between them. Having 3 small buttons all clustered together is just about the worst thing you can do for the users. You should avoid putting ANY button near any edge. The scrollbars need to be about 3x that size to be easily used.

It may sound like I'm being unreasonable, but I watch as my guests and family use our touchscreen. It is a professional quality 3M 5 wire touchpanel, it should be about as accurate as it gets, and at 15", about as big as you'll commonly see. EVERYONE has difficulty using it.

I don't see any reason for multi-touch in this environment.

just my 2 cents

you must have fat fingers at 15inch I can clearly touch all of the buttons by themselves on the screen without hitting another (scrollbar is just a place holder). That being said I do indeed not have the hardware required to actually test it. But hopefully that might change soon then I can use one on a daily basis (while making it)

Everything and anything is up for change this is just the current concept if it fails totally on its arse on real hardware then I'll try another layout

Jezz_x screen shots look good.

I would agree with a larger scroll bar and be careful with getting buttons too close to one another. However, I have the acer t230h which is a 21" touchscreen running at 1080p so small buttons don't bother me as much (they aren't so small with a 21" touchscreen).

One thing I like about the virtualhours touch! skin is the accessibility of information on the homepage. For instance, its nice to have the weather forecast for the day and the week as I walk out the door. It might be nice to implement the weather forecast plugin which changes the backdrop to match the weather outside. Just a thought.