[mythtv-users] CVS UI Questions

[Donavan Stanley]

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 08:41:59 -0500, Nathan Ziarek <nziarek at gmail.com> wrote:
> > J. Donavan Stanley:
> > Or create a new menu theme.  If enough people like the new menu theme
> > then perhaps the "new" menus can be moved to a menu theme.  After all
> > the current "new" menus started as a menu theme that a lot of people
> > liked. Personally I don't care for the proposed menu from this thread but to
> > each his own.
> 
> Another double pointer - what don't you like about my proposed layout?

With the current menus, all of my media is grouped nicely under one
section.  Under yours I'd have no less than three top level menus in
order to get to my media.  The menus group things by function. 
Watching a video from MythVideo isn't really any different than
wtaching a recording for example.

Grouping the VideoCD, DVD and MythVideo library in one section doesn't
make a lot of sense to me, especially given that luanching a DVD or
VideoCD player is done automagicly by the media monitor, leaving you
with a menu with only one truely usefull option that you MUST go to in
order see you videos.

The other menus aren't too bad, but given that MythPhone is the only
real communication plugin it doesn't make sense to have it in it's own
catagory.


> Once again, I am not saying it is the best, but I want to aggregate
> people's suggestions and incorporate them into a menu structure that
> the entire (or a large percentage thereof) MythCommunity can agree on.
>  Maybe that isn't possible, but I'd still like to continue the
> discussion about it. If you have particular dislikes, I'd like to
> know. Same thing about personal likes in the current layout. Every
> little bit of feedback rounds the project into a better whole.

That's why I added the "menu theme" feature in the first place.  I
didn't like the menus, and I was certain others felt the same way, so
I came up with a solution that could satify everyone namely: If you
don't like the menus, create your own theme.

 
> How do you know that a lot of people liked the current menus? 

Because they'd been released as the "AltMenus" menu theme which had
been announced on the list.  The feedback from them as all positive
and had been attributed to increasing the all important WAF for many
folks.

> As I said, I figured that this would have been covered before, but I
> haven't seen any mention on the lists. Is there a place where these UI
> discussions are already going on? 

There are discussions in the developer chat room from time to time. 
As I recall this dicussion went something like:

me: Hey Isaac, any objections to me commiting my "AltMenus"  to CVS as
a menu theme.
isaac: Actually I'm thinking of making them the default.

Then after my adding the ability to have menu items depend on mutliple plugins..

Isaac: Go ahead and change them over.


> I think the new layout is completely counter-intuitive and would love to see the
> discussion that brought it to that point. If it was on the list and I
> missed it, I apologize.

I'm a little baffled how you find them counter-intuitive?  Everything
is grouped into functional categories.

 
> Hopefully we can keep the discussion going. I've worked on themes in
> the past, and am working on one now, but I think this goes deeper than
> on Iulius it (will) look[s] like this. On Titivillus it looks like
> this. On Purple Galaxy yet another layout. Maybe you disagree...but
> that is what I want to hear.

Don't confuse theme with menu-theme.  They're two different beasts
comepletly.  My best advice is to implement your idea as a menu theme,
gather feedback from the user base and the developers on it and see
where it goes.  No one menu layout is going to please everyone 100%. 
It just so happens that the menu layout *I* liked struck a cord with a
lot of people, including the project lead.