Replacement Interface

[DaveC]

rockd: Love the look, primarily because you used some sweeto icons But otherwise, functionally speaking, looks nice. One thing I am worried about these new 'easy menus' is the lack of a proper file browser. For instance, if you go into Games, will you be able to see all folders, how will this work in relation to fixed paths for certain games/emus, will the menu app scan the entire SD card and display all GPE's in that list? There's something missing from this POV.

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If you look in my example there are both folders and executables shown. Executables show first folders after. Config can be made to change to folders first, GPEs second, or strict alphabetical order.

 

[Nickmon]

I like to default one (no flames please), but it needs some help

Remove the nand option for every where but file manager.
Link the Gui Icon to a directory name via a config file/gui options app
IE game icon opens up 'game' folder only
etc
Add a filter, search, and file details for the file manager to make navigation quicker
Add ability to have a png file for a folder
Have it remember yout most used GUI icons and have them listed first


my 2 cents worth

 

[chris_r]

just for fun, my ideal menu:

its not unlike mocca or davec's. the options listed are obviously folders and once selected you drop down to another set of icons laid out the same way.

also i have to say the idea of having a separate horizontal list on the top or bottom, controlled by L&R seems very appealing.

the most important things to me in terms of ui are key-repeat (hold down the joystick as opposed to clicking it once per item), lack of clutter, and cool clicky sounds.

​

I love the look of that one. I'd really like it if it was animated, as in just a little smotth scrolling inbetween choosing options and selecting screens. But I put my vote down for something like this being the new launcher. DaveC's looks a little bit cluttered and tedious, this one has a sense of stylish symplicity.

 

[Hanz™]

Okay this probably looks a little shoddy but bare with me on its purpose. This is an interface not a skin.

I haven't as of yet put any icons in, and this is a very very 2D look done on paint. I would probably go for a look like rokdcasbah has.

I stole one or two ideas from DaveC.
Okay. You can slide the vertical bar up and down (it is continuous, and loops once it gets to the end). The selector does not move the bar does!
Idealy I would not have a selector but would instead expand the item that is selected like on OSX, at the point that the vertical bar collides with the horizontal bar.
The vertical bar would be basically a filter bar. And you would but filters in there such as DaveC drew, i.e. Games, System, Applications, Music, Videos.
While the horizontal bar would store the items inside those filters.

Up and down to scroll the vertical bar up and down, and left and right to scroll the horizontal bar left and right.

My idea is to have panels that resize themselves depending on what is happening.
For instance. As you can see on the top there is a panel with a batterymeter in, you could choose in the system settings whether that panel should show the batterylife, or the CPU settings, or if it expanded both, perhaps you might want it to have a little icon in there if the USB was connected.
On the lower right side there is a panel with metadata in - perhaps when using the file browser it could change when you select a file to a panel of buttons: copy, paste, delete, cancel etc...
On the top right is a panel with a preview image, I stole the idea from Craig, and think that it would be quite a good feature if you were scrolling through very quickly.
The main panel I have an Idea for, I think that it could be used to display the output from a script when it is run, and also when the filemanager is selected in System.

Does anyone wanna make a nicer looking copy on photoshop, or to disagree.

 

[parag0n]

Okay this probably looks a little shoddy but bare with me on its purpose. This is an interface not a skin.

Now that i LIKE

It gives room for blurb and text, without taking up any screenspace that could be used for something else.

I'd think for navigating it, joy up / down would move the left bar, in a smooth "accelerating" fashion, and joy left/right the bottom bar. L and R could move a whole screen at a time left and right, for if you have large lists of games.

I'd like to see some settable default folders, for example "videos" that were scanned when thet option is selected, and shown under that menu option ("play redvsblue71.avi"), and maybe thumbnailed?

The battery indicator, i'd llike to see a percentage, an estimated time remaining, and maybe a raw voltage reading selectable, as different people like different readings.

Anyway, i'd better go now, have to be at work in 10 mins and i'm not dressed yet :/

 

[saboteur]

How does the current GUI work ??

Cos I don't know my suggestion follows :

Run a low overhead web server and browser and just have web pages for the menus. Then anyone can skin it whichever way they choose by just using HTML and the GIMP. Probably talking out me arse but it's my p.o.v

Failing that RokD's effort looks good and simple followed by DaveC's

cheers

 

[techFreak]

Standard menu should be replaced. As Turkish scene we are working on it. anhanguerra is designing a very simple and higlly configurable PSP like menu. It should be easy to use for normal users and also very configurable for GP2X manias. It should be attractive with animated background and a background music. Oh yea...

 

[Hanz™]

Okay this probably looks a little shoddy but bare with me on its purpose. This is an interface not a skin.

Now that i LIKE

It gives room for blurb and text, without taking up any screenspace that could be used for something else.

I'd think for navigating it, joy up / down would move the left bar, in a smooth "accelerating" fashion, and joy left/right the bottom bar. L and R could move a whole screen at a time left and right, for if you have large lists of games.

I'd like to see some settable default folders, for example "videos" that were scanned when thet option is selected, and shown under that menu option ("play redvsblue71.avi"), and maybe thumbnailed?

The battery indicator, i'd llike to see a percentage, an estimated time remaining, and maybe a raw voltage reading selectable, as different people like different readings.

Anyway, i'd better go now, have to be at work in 10 mins and i'm not dressed yet :/

​

Wooo. Someone who actually liked my idea.
I like your ideas. Especially " L and R could move a whole screen at a time left and right, for if you have large lists of games." as that is really easy to implement. (Edit3: On this point why not make it so that when you tap a button it goes through sub filters of the orginal filter -- relatively easy to do as it would be basically the same functionality as was seen in the main filter).

Yep the idea is that you can have a configuration file that specifies all of the main filters. It all depends on who makes it how complex they want to make it. I would suggest that you should be able to filter by folder name and file extension, as that means you could have a folder called games, and only show the gpe files in it.
But Filters could get alot more complex, I see quite a lot in filtering by the first letter or if we are talking about mp3s by artists, etc...

I would like it if someone made their interface have some support for default actions too. That way we could in the System configuration specify *.gb as a gameboy extension that runs a specific gameboy emulator with the *.gb as an arguement (presuming support is added to the emulator for this - very very easy to do).
So then say we set up in our configuration file a filter:
eg.
FILTER gameboy:
name = "Gameboy games"
icon = "/mnt/sd/System/Icons/emulators/gameboy.png"
filterByFolder = "/mnt/sd/Roms/gameboy/"
filterByExtension = ".gb"
ENDFILTER

DEFAULTACTION gameboyRoms:
name = "A gameboy rom" // This might appear in the metadata
icon = "/mnt/sd/System/Icons/emulators/gameboyrom.png"
openWith = "/mnt/sd/Emulators/Gameboy.gpe" // Whatever arguements follow, I am not familiar with linux.
ENDDEFAULTACTION

Thumbnailed is a possibilty, personally if that was the case I would prefer that this was not on all the time (as it would slow this down -- perhaps you could force it to load the thumbnails by hitting select or something?), or perhaps mplayer could take a snapshot of the film where you left it, and then you can see in the interface top-right panel where the film will continue from. Too many possibilities with this interface.

Edit: There is really alot that can be done here, and I think we should be looking further than just a GUI lift.

 

[Guyfawkes]

I like Hanz™ idea, it looks like a nice and simple design and fairly quick to use. It reminds me of the PSP interface which is pretty good itself with the vertical and horizontal navigation.

 

[Hanz™]

Okay I have just fallen in love with the Idea that :: "perhaps mplayer could take a snapshot of the film where you left it".
As it can be expanded in a really cool way. Just imagine if the same idea was implemented into an emulator. Say everytime you made a savestate it automatically made a image file alongside it of the game screen, this could be displayed in the preview plane. You could then see on the menu where you got upto on a game before you even start it.

 

[parag0n]

I've been doing some playing in photoshop with Hanz's idea, heres what i have up to now

Any ideas where to put the TVout / battery power / other indicators?

 

[Hanz™]

I've been doing some playing in photoshop with Hanz's idea, heres what i have up to now

Any ideas where to put the TVout / battery power / other indicators?

​

If possible try and make the bars much thinner, as that will give more room for the panes. Otherwise that looks good. Much better than I can do, I am hopeless at photoshop.

My picture was 320*240 - the writing was too small, and the icons should have been bigger, but it shows it can be done.

 

[Rayek]

Am I the only one who dislikes the 'quick view' idea? I mean, I'm scared when I'm browsing my card and all the things that I thought were on my card... aren't there anymore. I like seeing everything on my card when I'm browsing. Some people call that inconvenience, I call it reassurance. I would rather my GP2X look like a computer than a PS2, I'd like to metaphorically right-click on a disc and click 'explore', rather than seeing a nice CD icon, select it, and let it run. That's why I like DaveC's idea rather than having these general 'games' or 'utilities' categories that magically know what I want them to do. Folder setup would be a pain, as well. What about games that have to be run in a specific location? If the menu scans your entire card every time you make a new selection, that will slow things down a bit. Even if the menu scans your card before initializing the UI, that takes hotswapping away. See where I feel shaky about this? Not only loading GPE location files into ram for the display, but also screenshots and a description? I may be blowing things up here, but if GPH purposefully underclocked the CPU in-menu to save battery life and suddenly they're presented with a menu that loads images, text, presreads the SD for file locations and allots them properly.

Am I crazy?

 

[Hanz™]

Am I the only one who dislikes the 'quick view' idea? I mean, I'm scared when I'm browsing my card and all the things that I thought were on my card... aren't there anymore. I like seeing everything on my card when I'm browsing. Some people call that inconvenience, I call it reassurance. I would rather my GP2X look like a computer than a PS2, I'd like to metaphorically right-click on a disc and click 'explore', rather than seeing a nice CD icon, select it, and let it run. That's why I like DaveC's idea rather than having these general 'games' or 'utilities' categories that magically know what I want them to do. Folder setup would be a pain, as well. What about games that have to be run in a specific location? If the menu scans your entire card every time you make a new selection, that will slow things down a bit. Even if the menu scans your card before initializing the UI, that takes hotswapping away. See where I feel shaky about this? Not only loading GPE location files into ram for the display, but also screenshots and a description? I may be blowing things up here, but if GPH purposefully underclocked the CPU in-menu to save battery life and suddenly they're presented with a menu that loads images, text, presreads the SD for file locations and allots them properly.

Am I crazy?

​

You should be able to see everything with my idea if you want to. I said earlier on that a file browser could easily be added in - and mentioned how it would fit in. The main panel could probably be expanded if needed as well.
Why not add an option in a config file to autoboot to something?

Folder setup would be a pain, as well.

Well I think it would be very easy to just supply 3 or 4 premade configurations - and then you just choose.

If the menu scans your entire card every time you make a new selection, that will slow things down a bit. Even if the menu scans your card before initializing the UI, that takes hotswapping away.

Hotswapping was already taken away for me when I realised I had to reboot for a change to be noticed on my SD card (endlessly recompiling a broken SDLapp and realising that the changes I was making to the SD card were not getting recongnised when I put it back in again).

Not only loading GPE location files into ram for the display, but also screenshots and a description?

As I said there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to switch off that sort of functionality. A description is not going to take long, maybe some ms. Nothing serious.

 

[Parkydr]

Personally I'd like some thing like Matchbox but everyone has their own preferences.

I don't think any one interface can please even most people (look at the number of Linux window managers/desktops). One of the main advantages of the GP2X is that GPH doesn't dictate what software you can use.

What I would find most useful is to be able override the default interface without having to overwrite its executable, with fallback to the default interface if the alternative interface does not run. It would then be relatively easy to use different interfaces without screwing up your GP2X.

 

[Turambar]

Personally id prefer a simple hierarchical file browser, why have a menu and icon for video/mp3/games if you dont have any? Of course for this to work effectively the GP2X would have to know that when i click on a movie or mp3 that i want to start the associated player and play them, perhaps a right click style context menu as well for copy/paste/delete/open/add to playlist etc.

 

[Hanz™]

Personally id prefer a simple hierarchical file browser, why have a menu and icon for video/mp3/games if you dont have any? Of course for this to work effectively the GP2X would have to know that when i click on a movie or mp3 that i want to start the associated player and play them, perhaps a right click style context menu as well for copy/paste/delete/open/add to playlist etc.

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Perhaps you can read my post?

 

[Turambar]

I did, then i stated what I would like. Wheres the problem?

 

[Rayek]

You should be able to see everything with my idea if you want to.

Tell me how, and my dissenting voice will be somewhat quelled

All I see is Emulators and a list of the emulators that the menu found on the SD. I like clicking on folders. I like running apps from folders. Imagine if, after this UI is implemented; devs will stop putting the extra effort into allowing directory trees for easy SD management, everything will be in root, and that's hell to manage, unless someone wants to write a GP2X SD program for Linux or Windows that tells you what each file does and where it is, much like what had to happen for the PSP. I see the benefit of such an interface, though, because SD directory trees will not even have to be managed or created at all, that is if the startup script scans the entire SD and puts things in their correct place.

Maybe it's my inherent hatred for the newer-gen consoles v. PC that fuels this whole argument.

but:

As of now, how things are coded, the GP2X doesn't know the difference between an Emulator and some homebrew. They're both in the 'Games' category, and their file extension reflects that. Are we all going to have to hand modify each one of the emulators' file extensions to make sure it doesn't get bumped in with homebrew? Will those who choose not to upgrade to the new firmware that implements the GUI be able to even see the new file extensions in the current browser? Will devs have to add some peice of code to their emu to distinguish it from homebrew? Loads of questions like this will pop up with accepting this new UI.

I'm with Parkydr in that I'd like to be able to choose without completely overwriting the file, a bootloader of some kind, but not even that. Perhaps a 'Skin Chooser'-like app that fixes the difference in preference. On my computer, I have the option of choosing several different UIs for Linux. One day I feel like using GNOME, but today's a KDE day, and perhaps I'll try something new out tomorrow. I like that, and I dig. Until that's possible, I gotta start asking questions.

And hanz, it's not your idea in particular, from the start I didn't enjoy seeing the absence of a directory tree and some competent way of navigating through the folders rather than circumventing them.

Edit; sorry, I didn't see you added a bunch as I was writing my novel of complaints -_- I do like the idea of having several different configurations, but those need to be fleshed out more.

 

[parag0n]

Is my latest

The gui would be configurable fully. It wouldn't auto-scan for new emulators unless told to rebuild its menu (which would probably be in the settigns menu), and software wouldn't need to be renamed, a simple text file in the same folder as the .gpe with the same name would work for sorting out what catagory to put the folder under and the information and screenshot displayed with it.


Dont worry about devs not making things easy to navigate, most devs would have things in sane folders anyway, as it gets impossible to manage a project if you have too many things in it's root folder!