Release PNDManager

[bzar]

First of all, thanks for all the positive feedback . I'm currently enjoying my holiday and summer so PNDManager development is in a crawl state . I could release the current beta as the stable version though, since it is quite a bit better than the current one and all major regressions seem to have been fixed (based on feedback).

One minor remark though: the startup time of PNDManager is quite substantial - could this be improved? What is causing this? If it cannot be improved, perhaps a "Loading..." progress bar could be added - that makes it at least psychologically faster to load.

The main contributors to the startup time are actually out of my hands. Once panorama code starts executing the UI is actually brought up fairly quickly (a couple of seconds). Most of the time is spent outside application code. If the firmware will at some point include a newer Qt (I think .next has a recent enough version) the load time will drop since the PND will be smaller (less mount time) and the libs can be loaded from the faster NAND instead of a compressed filesystem.

Oh and another thing: it should check for network connectivity before trying to download anything - I just forgot to switch on wifi before starting PNDManager, and I had to kill it because it became unresponsive while trying to download something (I assume at some point some timeout would happen, but I didn't want to wait for that).

Yeah, I'd need to do a network plugin for panorama to get the connectivity state. Might do at some point, but not on my current todo list. Contributions are welcome!

After all the the '100 star' ratings were deleted, PNDManager still showed them until the database was cleared, even after Sync.

Cloudef, any ideas on this?

 

[milkshake]

thats probably because of the way the db works, it basically adds new details to the existing DB is doesn't currently replace any old data (unless an app is updated of course at this point the rating will also be refreshed).

 

[Cloudef]

Cloudef, any ideas on this?

If the sync wasn't a merge, this should not happen.

 

[bzar]

WIP:

 

[fusion_power]

Oh, here are beta builds? I totaly missed that, because I use the repo and the PND Manager to much!


Nice to see the progress, I'm already pretty happy with the current PND Manager, except for the slow loading times maybe.


I would suggest to use a bigger Icon for the update button bottom right, left besides the update circle arrow. The button Icon is to tiny I think.


I also still suggest an overscreen "UPDATING LISTS..." message, where the 3 dots are animated in a way like this : . .. ... and so on. ^^


It is just cosmetic stuff but I guess this will improve the user experience even more.

 

[bzar]

Yay, comment input field

Fusion_Power: the sync icon will change when I get to it, but it's planned. I could make a full screen spinner an option, but since it actually stops you from doing anythin else at the same time, I won't make it a default.

 

[sebt3]

the guihints icons are hots

 

[milkshake]

Looking good B-Zar

 

[bzar]

Any good ideas on how the user should get from the package view to the comment view? There's not much real estate to play with. In my current dev setup you get there by pressing "c" in the package view, but that's not very elegant nor does it have any alternative for touch users.

 

[milkshake]

You could have tabs in the package view to swap between game info and comments, not sure what buttons though

 

[Christoph.Krn]

I could make a full screen spinner an option, but since it actually stops you from doing anythin else at the same time, I won't make it a default.

I'd leave it out. The problem is with the current icon that doesn't do something eye-catching when sync is complete. It just stops turning, which is not exactly eye-catching. With an update button that's a bit better in this regard, something like a full-screen spinner would probably be a useless increase in complexity.

Any good ideas on how the user should get from the package view to the comment view?

What about scrolling? As in, comments are appended 'below' what's in the package view right now, as if package infos and comments were on one 'page'.

 

[bzar]

You could have tabs in the package view to swap between game info and comments, not sure what buttons though

Since the different "modes" are already kind of tabs, I think it could be confusing to have nested tabs.

I'd leave it out. The problem is with the current icon that doesn't do something eye-catching when sync is complete. It just stops turning, which is not exactly eye-catching. With an update button that's a bit better in this regard, something like a full-screen spinner would probably be a useless increase in complexity.

True. We'll see what the updated one will feel like.

What about scrolling? As in, comments are appended 'below' what's in the package view right now, as if package infos and comments were on one 'page'.

I thought about doing it like this, since it's how the same thing is implemented in Android. I'd need to change the layout quite a bit for that, since the scrolling with the d-pad currently affects the left pane with description and whatnot. Also there would be some problems with the dual controls scheme. Some controls would be invisible because of the scrolling, which would lead to user being able to interact with controls that are outside the visible area using game controls/keyboard. That sounds confusing, and I've been trying to avoid it if at all possible.

 

[_wb_]

Nice, typing comments from within PNDManager!


Also setting ratings?


Keep up the good work!

 

[ekianjo]

For comments why don't you separate in two vertical parts the description and previous comments on one side, and a text field for input on the other side? you could switch left/right with the d-pad or use touch to activate or on the other.


Description | Text field for comment


Comments |


|


|

 

[Christoph.Krn]

Some controls would be invisible because of the scrolling, which would lead to user being able to interact with controls that are outside the visible area using game controls/keyboard.

What controls could/would that be? There should be ways to make this work...

For comments why don't you separate in two vertical parts the description and previous comments on one side, and a text field for input on the other side?

Unless I'm missing something, such a layout either has way less space for the description, or induces the same problem (as soon as the user scrolls down, some controls are out of sight). If that problem has to be solved anyway, then going for an everything-comments-below-description layout is probably more elegant (unless you had more considerations that you didn't share yet).

 

[bzar]

Also setting ratings?

Coming. I have added support for it in qtpndman, so it's just a matter of wiring it through to panorama and making a UI element for it.

For comments why don't you separate in two vertical parts the description and previous comments on one side, and a text field for input on the other side? you could switch left/right with the d-pad or use touch to activate or on the other.

The package view is currently already divided in half. One for the textual information and the other for a screenshot. Dividing it further would make the text very hard to read.

What controls could/would that be? There should be ways to make this work...

The current active elements are the buttons at the top and the screenshot. If the entire view is scrollable, they'd scroll out of view.

Unless I'm missing something, such a layout either has way less space for the description, or induces the same problem (as soon as the user scrolls down, some controls are out of sight). If that problem has to be solved anyway, then going for an everything-comments-below-description layout is probably more elegant (unless you had more considerations that you didn't share yet).

Possibly.


Currently the comments are in a separate view for three reasons:

1. I didn't want to think about how they should fit into the UI before getting them working
   
2. Getting the comments requires separate API calls to the repo server, and I didn't want that to happen every time a user goes to view a package
   
3. All the space and freedom to make the comment interface simple
   

I actually wouldn't toss the idea of having the comments in a separate view, accessible through the package's view. As long as the path to the view from the pacakge view is obvious enough, it shouldn't be that much more inconvenient than having to scroll the entire view. The only problem here would be where to put the button to view the comments.

 

[_wb_]

Comments in a separate view is best. The PNDManager should be useable when offline or on a very slow connection (e.g. to remove PNDs), so keep network traffic low.


I would replace the "Show more" button (that currently shows the screenshot(s) in a bigger separate screen) with two small buttons, "Comments" and "Previews". The "Y" action button seems most logical as a shortcut.

 

[bzar]

Y is reserved for install/upgrade. The only game control not used is select, and I'd like to reserve that one for the off chance I absolutely need to do a context menu at some point (for settings etc)

 

[_wb_]

Right. In that case, "C" will do. Or make action button B show the comments, and use e.g. "P" or "S" for the previews/screenshots.

 

[milkshake]

make it a button that u can scroll to with the dpad then select with a game button. U could also have a little number on the icon to show the number of comments.