Pandora Interface Design Concept(s).

[God Ginrai]

I completely agree.

Another question, you said that your interface would be very customizable. How easy would the scripting language, or whatever you use to bring about new features, be to understand?

-God Ginrai

Python


You wouldn't be able to make it support PHP, as well, would you? ^_^;

-God Ginrai

 

[DaveC]

DaveC the "My media" tab is not like a media tab you'll put on "My software". On "My software" you only have a row of icons. On "My media" you have something like Xbox media center or similar.

Still for me that top row is not even needed. Please make it configurable so it can be eliminated completely.

I can always just make a tab on the second row where "games" "emulators" are called "Media" and have a media app icon in there. The top row of tabs are redundant. I seriously hope that the number of tabs is not hardcoded and limited to only 4, that is silly. That should be configurable as well. If you have more tabs than what can be shown it can scroll (like Gmenu2X). Also the font shown is enormous. You show less tabs there on a 800 pixel wide screen than what I have now on my GP2X with Gmenu2X at only 320 pixels. Font size tab size and number of tabs should all be configurable. Also you should be able to put icons on the tabs if we want. Text is rather boring. Again look at Gmenu 2X and "borrow" some of the ideas from that. Notice how there can be both text and icons there? Now that we have all of this extra screen resolution it should at least match what we can do on the "lowly" GP2X.

 

[OMars]

DaveC the "My media" tab is not like a media tab you'll put on "My software". On "My software" you only have a row of icons. On "My media" you have something like Xbox media center or similar.

Still for me that top row is not even needed. Please make it configurable so it can be eliminated completely.

I can always just make a tab on the second row where "games" "emulators" are called "Media" and have a media app icon in there. The top row of tabs are redundant. I seriously hope that the number of tabs is not hardcoded and limited to only 4, that is silly. That should be configurable as well. If you have more tabs than what can be shown it can scroll (like Gmenu2X). Also the font shown is enormous. You show less tabs there on a 800 pixel wide screen than what I have now on my GP2X with Gmenu2X at only 320 pixels. Font size tab size and number of tabs should all be configurable. Also you should be able to put icons on the tabs if we want. Text is rather boring. Again look at Gmenu 2X and "borrow" some of the ideas from that. Notice how there can be both text and icons there? Now that we have all of this extra screen resolution it should at least match what we can do on the "lowly" GP2X.

You know what? Let's just go with this. Seriously, why waste time making a new gui when we've got one. Devs can have more time to work on fun games, emus, and apps instead of worrying about it.

 

[efegea]

QUOTE
Also the font shown is enormous. You show less tabs there on a 800 pixel wide screen than what I have now on my GP2X with Gmenu2X at only 320 pixels


And you know why? Because people criticized the small fonts on the first mockup. And now people are complaining about big fonts. Don't you (all the people complaining, not only DaveC) realize that these are only mockups made in the gimp and not the definitive interface?

QUOTE
Also you should be able to put icons on the tabs if we want. Text is rather boring. Again look at Gmenu 2X and "borrow" some of the ideas from that. Notice how there can be both text and icons there? Now that we have all of this extra screen resolution it should at least match what we can do on the "lowly" GP2X.


If I put icons on the tabs, people will complain about the wasted space. Me at least see a waste of space putting icons on the tabs. But if you want you can configure it.

Althought I say you are complaining and so, that doens't mean that I don't like your ideas, because the more configurable, the better. This way I know more things that can be configurable. Thanks

 

[javaJake]

To fingerprints fingers lead,
Styluses are what we need!

Huzzah!

 

[Zarneth]

Will this include a full media indexing and integrated player?
What do you mean with full media indexing? I want to know what kind of media indexind are you talking. It should be a nice addition (or not only a simple addition but a major feature) but I want to talk about it.
Like a library of media tags for managing and searching for music. as opposed to the gp2x's retarded default menu system which just filters for different file types.

Personally I hate both the above methods and just make sure all my files are named and foldered carefully. I was just wondering exactically what kind of interface music/video/whatever buttons will link to. If they just link to completely separate programs then it's kind of overkill. I'd just have a music player on the home or software page.

I completely agree.

Another question, you said that your interface would be very customizable. How easy would the scripting language, or whatever you use to bring about new features, be to understand?

-God Ginrai

Python
Will the whole thing be written in python? or just the widgets and stuff.
If so this means I've got competition... good thing for you I'm so lazy.

 

[Javacat]

I'm liking your designs so far efegea. Out of interest (and not in any way meaning to put you down), but do you feel that you are capable of writing this interface that you have been designing? It sounds really cool from what you've said so far so I'm hoping that you will be able to make it

How customisable do you think you would be able to make the whole thing? Awhile ago I was playing with Foobar2000, messing around with the layout and I loved the way you could break the screen into 'panels' and then assign different modules to the different panels, meaning that you could place what you wanted, where you wanted at the size you wanted. Do you think you would be able to do something like that for this, or would it be far too much work to code and too system intensive?

 

[efegea]

I was just wondering exactically what kind of interface music/video/whatever buttons will link to. If they just link to completely separate programs then it's kind of overkill. I'd just have a music player on the home or software page.

I understand that is a bit overkill to have a full tab for only three or four buttons (let's add a generic file manager) but I don't see why it would be a bad idea.

I was thinking that the entire interface should consist of two elements: tabs and widgets. You can have so many tabs you want and arrange them as you want. In each tab you can have one or more widgets and arrange as you want. A widget can be a generic grid of icons (generic as in you can put there whatever you want), a news feed reader, a weather widget, and so..

Will the whole thing be written in python? or just the widgets and stuff.
If so this means I've got competition... good thing for you I'm so lazy.

Only the widgets. The whole thing is written in C++
I'm a noobie on python itself but I've already coded, and will use on my pandora interface, a system for running from a C++ application a few python scripts running concurrently in parallel while the C++ code is also running in parallel. Python and C++ multistaking thanks to Stackless Python

 

[pkostrze]

DaveC the "My media" tab is not like a media tab you'll put on "My software". On "My software" you only have a row of icons. On "My media" you have something like Xbox media center or similar.

Still for me that top row is not even needed. Please make it configurable so it can be eliminated completely.

I can always just make a tab on the second row where "games" "emulators" are called "Media" and have a media app icon in there. The top row of tabs are redundant. I seriously hope that the number of tabs is not hardcoded and limited to only 4, that is silly. That should be configurable as well. If you have more tabs than what can be shown it can scroll (like Gmenu2X). Also the font shown is enormous. You show less tabs there on a 800 pixel wide screen than what I have now on my GP2X with Gmenu2X at only 320 pixels. Font size tab size and number of tabs should all be configurable. Also you should be able to put icons on the tabs if we want. Text is rather boring. Again look at Gmenu 2X and "borrow" some of the ideas from that. Notice how there can be both text and icons there? Now that we have all of this extra screen resolution it should at least match what we can do on the "lowly" GP2X.

You know what? Let's just go with this. Seriously, why waste time making a new gui when we've got one. Devs can have more time to work on fun games, emus, and apps instead of worrying about it.


I second this... where is Ryo when we need him? Gmenu2x should just be ported to GmenuPandora. Of course I've been skinning the heck out of Gmenu lately so maybe I'm a little biased but I think it's simple, elegant, and does everything we need.

"Help me Obi-Ryo, you're my only hope."

 

[AnonymousTipster]

Over the past couple of days I've become quite excited about Pandora, and thought I'd give my thoughts on the UI.

There are definite advantages to having a simple, clean grid layout which can be easily selected with the dpad, but the potential of Pandora makes me think we could do something extra.

The first idea that strikes me is the fact that we have dual analogs, which could possibly be used to select items on a radial field. I started to design one of these for the PSP, but people didn't seem to like the idea,as there tends to be wasted space, as the screen is square but the selection method is circular.

The second idea is that most of the time, when you're looking to launch an application, you know it's name, and we have a full keyboard on Pandora, so maybe we could have an iTunes like search function which searches a pre-indexed list of the application names and when you get to a unique entry, it automatically launches.
I expect that idea is getting too windows-like for most people's tastes, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

With regards to the Gmenu2x style interface, it might be nice to allow a custom folder naming convention below those tabs. Some users may have a hundred different homebrew apps, and flicking through pages of them would be tedious. If they could order them into different folders, such as (Apps, Racing, Platformers, FPS, Strategy), then it could cut search time to a minimum.

 

[Frogboy]

Sorry, I have to disagree with most of you. Certainly, I don't want the OS to take forever and a year to boot up but I do want as much functionality in the firmware OS as possible so that I can use Pandora as a UMPC in addition to gaming. I would make the OS resemble a small version of Windows, Mac and Linux. I don't want a super-stripped down OS like the GP2X has. All it is really good for is running programs. Here is what I have envisioned for Pandora's OS. Please note that this is just a mock up and not an actual design. It is just to get my point across. I'd hope that Pandora's OS is a little prettier than this, in fact, I made it at half scale so that I could rip off the Gmenu2x icons because I was too lazy to make my own.

This just shows a plain desktop with a standard UI that anyone who's use a computer in the last 10 years knows. I think that this will be easy enough for just about any Pandora user.

Have your standard categories in the OPEN menu. I would actually like this to be the folders on the root of your SD card with the ROOT option added but I'm not sure exactly how this would work since there are two SD slots. Installable programs might complicate this as well.

Could look something like this when you enter a folder with Large Icons on as opposed to a Details view.

Standard right-click functionality that we all know and love.

Details view for when we need to see more information and less pretty icons.

Drop shortcuts on the desktop for a Gmenu2X style experience.



Something like this is what I would want out of Pandora. Maybe I'm asking for too much. I don't know. I just think that anyone with appropriate skills to use a device such as this which doesn't just play games that you just pop in like a PSP or DS, doesn't need a super dumbed down OS to understand how to use it and I'll wait a few extra seconds here and there if my OS is a little more comprehensive. What do you all think? Do I have anyone in my corner on this one?

 

[prairiefire]

I like having an "Open" button.

 

[javaJake]

I think, if Frogboy's idea were to be used, it should use X11, only because it would make it a standard windowing system and thus allow us to run whatever we need. If we use a light windowing system, we gain functionality Frogboy suggested with little RAM usage.

 

[Alex.]

Pandora should have the GP2X's autorun feature, then the base frontend could cater to the lowest common denominator, leaving the alternatives with more diverse functionality up to each user to install. That way everyone will get exactly what they want

I do however also like Efegea's way of having a base core and Python widgets to extend it. That would work great too, and encourage more user-made extensions. Good luck Efegea!

 

[Javacat]

I just had a random thought, inspired by frogboys post. Maybe an interface similar to Windows 3.x would work. Have a few windows you can drag around and minimize to a main desktop which contained the different folders. Not really sure how to explain it

I believe that the amigaos workbench worked in a similar fashion...

It's been brought up before, but after coming across this screenshot, maybe something like the XBMC dashboard. Instead of having the filtering options down the left you could have different categories that you can specify like games, emulators, applications, wifi, etc...

 

[God Ginrai]

I think that as an option (obviously not as the default tho') We should have something like Microsoft Bob.

Also, there should be power-on key combinations that you can set different interfaces to start up with. That way, if you are holding L while powering up, it could boot you into efegea's, if you are holding R while powering up it could boot you into the Microsoft Bob-type one, if you are holding Select while powering up it would boot into a windowed interface, etc. That way you can easily switch between different interfaces on startup, kindof like how people Dual-boot Windows and Linux. This way, you wouldn't have to commit to one interface (you could still set one to default (power on without any buttons held))

-God Ginrai

 

[Sphinxter]

Seems odd to put the word, "Pandora", on the desktop, afraid of confusing it for a psp or forgetful and can't remember what it is, need a constant reminder. The amiga workbench combined with an autorun and a good grip on mime associations would seem ideal. Who ever needed more really?

 

[AnonymousTipster]

I disagree with a Windows-like interface because it would pretty much force a user to use the touch screen. You'd have to emulate a mouse pointer with the analog stick, which isn't very quick to use.

Ideally, we need an interface which is quick to use with analog/button controls, and add the touch screen controls on top, as they're likely to be just as fast even if the interface was designed for analog and buttons.

The reason I'd prefer not to use the touch screen a lot is that it requires you to remove a hand from the system to launch an application, but then you'll put your hand back on the system to play the game. Ideally you should be able to keep you hands on the console at all times, but use the touch screen if you choose.

 

[Shiny]

<snip>

I completely agree

 

[Karel Jansens]

I like Frogboy's suggestions. Especially the idea of having big icons in a tight grid is refreshingly original and sufficiently different from the desktops of the world.

Voted +1.