[NotShorty]

Hopefully this is self-explanatory enough, I didn't have time to do a mock-up.

I have tons of buttons on my MCE Remote control. Play, stop, ok, etc. are all pretty intuitive, but I've mapped out many functions to keys and it's not really obvious what each one does - often the function is totally unrelated to the label on the button. When roommates, house guests, parents, etc. go to use my XBMC, I'd love to be able to hand the remote to them and say "if you have any questions about what a button does, just press this one button, then press the button in question."

I imagine a pop-up showing the name of the function, as well as a brief description. For example [press button]
This button is: Party Mode
Description: The Party Mode option randomly queues music or music videos from your Library.

Anyway, I could ramble more but I think you get the point. Thoughts?

NS

[Flomaster]

sorry but a universal remote with a LCD screen is where its at

being able to type what ever text you want and have the button do what ever you want is money

yeah the MCE remote is cheaper, but a Monster cable AVL-300s is the hot ticket or Harmony if you swing that way


-=Jason=-

[joebrady]

+1

[spiff]

the keymapping in xbmc is WAY too flexible for us to be able to have a chance at having descriptions for all actions. if you want something silly like this, write a script for your own setup. or the good ol' way; just give em a cheat sheet.

[NotShorty]

the keymapping in xbmc is WAY too flexible for us to be able to have a chance at having descriptions for all actions. if you want something silly like this, write a script for your own setup. or the good ol' way; just give em a cheat sheet.

I'm imagining there would be an .xml that would have all of these actions and descriptions, with the ability to manually edit for the more "flexible" actions (possibly via GUI eventually). Cheat sheets are a reliable and totally viable option, I was just suggesting a less "analog" solution. This is the Suggestions forum after all...

sorry but a universal remote with a LCD screen is where its at

And that's a great idea too. I have a Harmony with an LCD screen, but wouldn't it be great if everyone could have similar functionality, not just those of us with greater financial security?

I'm not a coder, just a user who had an idea, so please don't flame me with "code it yourself" comments. If anyone likes my idea and wants to code it, it's all yours! If not, God bless and have a wonderful day :p

NS

[TugboatBill]

How do I find out what buttons do what in each screen? I searched the Wiki but couldn't seem to get the right terms to bring up anything useful.

[TugboatBill]

So to determine what each button does in each screen/menu I have to just start pushing them all?

[ubuntuf4n]

You may use IRSuite for configuring, its also self-explanatory.

[davilla]

So to determine what each button does in each screen/menu I have to just start pushing them all?

Stay away from the one that looks like a computer exploding

[AaronD]

+1 great idea.

To spiff - not sure what you mean? XBMC can figure out the button pressed and the context, then knows what action is meant. Wouldn't it be possible to have text descriptions for each action that could be displayed instead?

[spiff]

would you mum really get much out of 'runs the script foo' ? 'send the action 5' 'sends onclick to control 30'

[EGOvoruhk]

would you mum really get much out of 'runs the script foo' ? 'send the action 5' 'sends onclick to control 30'

Maybe if it was a little more detailed than that. I just found out I have a bunch of shortcut buttons to certain libraries

It would have been nice to go into a remote settings menu, and have a demo button or something, so I could press all the buttons and have it say "Shortcut to 'Videos'", "Up button", "Pop up menu", etc...

[MrCrispy]

I like this idea and hope something comes of it, but in the meantime a low tech solution is maybe the best Print out a picture of the remote and write down all the actions with arrows pointing to the buttons. Nothing beats a simple cheat sheet! I also have the XBMC keyboard shortcuts printed out for this reason.

[migueld]

I think many of us recognize the same issue, that there are lots of buttons in XBMC and usually it can be a challenge in usage when dealing casually, with friends and family.

Personally I would go a different route in trying to solve this issue. There should be a minimum set of keys to operate XBMC, directional keys, select, back, option. That's it. Casual users should not have to worry about secondary buttons like subtitles, audio, etc. You point your friends/family to the basic buttons, and navigation should be straight forward.

In fact most users are generally familiar with standard navigation buttons. I think that XBMC just needs some more fine-tuning for basic navigation to work better and then we won't have to worry about casual users getting lost