> I have to ask, do you use the UI on a television from across the room?<br><br>Yes, the size of the text is the about the same as the text in MythTV's EPG. I mentioned I first saw it at CES in Monster Cable's exhibit. It was on, I think, a 50" Plasma, and there was a room of something like 40 people, and in the middle of the room I was probably 20' away. I could read the text without a problem, and at least in my demo, nobody seemed to complain about it. Monster got a lot of press about it (google: Monster Einstein), and none of the reviewers mentioned readability as an issue.
<br><br>What I really want to do, though, to improve the readability is make it like the program bar at the bottom of Mac OS X where as you highlight an option, that option becomes 2x bigger and the other stuff smoothly glides to the side. If that could be done everywhere, like on the main menu, in the EPG, etc., and that anything on the screen would grow when you highlight it, then I think it would not only be nice to look at, but very practical as well. I think most people like the way that OS X bar works since you get a lot of stuff in a small space but without sacrificing usability.
<br><br>As far as integrating it in MythTV... My goal, which admittedly is an ambitious one, is to make it a desktop, so any media app can use it. Right now for 2' UI we have this commonality amongst menu and GUI objects. I don't think there's hardly anybody out there that thinks this is a bad thing and wants to go back to the old days, before Mac/Windows/X11, where every single app had it's own completely different UI and different menu, and some used F keys, others Ctrl keys, etc. Having one common UI really helps. A user can browse the web in Firefox, or type a document in OpenOffice, and have a basic idea how to navigate the app and where to find the commands (ie pull-down menus), etc. And the software is better too since coders worry about the functionality and not the UI. And it leads to a better UI since everybody across all projects contributes ideas for how to make the UI better.
<br><br>That doesn't exist for the media / 10' UI. It's a free for all, like it was 15 years ago with desktop apps. Everybody does their own UI. On the 2' UI there is one common method that all apps share for letting the user pick a file to open. Nobody writes their own, you just call up the standard 'open file' dialog. This is good for both the coder (less work) and the user (consistent). I think that as the PC becomes more commonly used in a 10' setting it's a natural evolution that this same thing should happen there too.
<br><br>That's why I like merging LinuxMCE into the KDE project, because that's really what I would like to see LinuxMCE become some day. A common set of UI's and widgets that was integrated into the desktop, and that any media application, like MythTV or MPlayer, could use that UI rather than each writing their own.
<br><br>I'm not saying the current LinuxMCE UI is 'the one'. Pluto didn't design it as a desktop environment, but rather as a closed system. And the GUI, Orbiter, doesn't have the design tools and isn't integrated into an IDE or desktop. But hopefully if other people like the idea of offering standard UI tools for the 10' UI like we do for the 2' then a lot of great minds would contribute ideas for the UI paradigm and come up with one with universal appeal. And then all the 10' apps would have the option of using the 'stock' UI like the 2' apps do, and if someone comes up with a great skin/theme/UI, a user could pick that and then have all their 10' apps appear with that theme.
<br><br>Anyway, this is not to suggest LinuxMCE is that destination, or that the current UI is the right one. But conceptually I think it's the only project out there that attempts to offer one common UI that works for Myth, Xine, Asterisk, and any other apps used on the home 10' UI.
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