Roku Developer Program

[stevelaw18]

"RokuJoel" wrote:
If your channel absolutely must have the same look and feel as your existing smartphone apps, then using roScreen is what you need to do. roImageCanvas is not really fast enough to be used seriously for a UI, although there have been a few channels based on it, it is essentially clunky and sluggish.

It isn't that difficult to build your own components in roScreen. Not knowing what your existing smartphone apps look like, of course there is a limit to the kind of advice we can give you. The best advice I can give you is just to start working on it, and ask questions if you run into trouble. roScreen is good for creating slick user interfaces with the kind of smooth motion you might find in an iPhone or Android app, especially if you use the double-buffering mode.

Joel

Thanks. This is exactly the kind of advice I was hoping for. We actually are planning a release of an app on a variety of connected TV platforms, so we are trying to stay consistent between all TV platforms, and not our smartphone apps.

[MSGreg]

Agreed with everything that has been said. When you develop your own interface, please remember the remote buttons available may be more limited than what you have on your just-purchased Roku box.

In particular, many roku remotes do not have the "back" button, nor the "*" (info) button, and you don't have general programmatic access to the "Home" button as that interrupts your channel and takes you to the Roku home screen. The least common denominator buttons available to applications are: UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT SELECT REVERSE FORWARD PLAY.

In particular "UP" is often used as "Back" on many screens. Having many "rows" of buttons where the user is at the bottom row of buttons occasionally makes navigating "back" to the previous screen more of a chore.

Oh and definitely go with double buffering on an roScreen if at all possible. Otherwise your screen will tear.

[RokuJoel]

One more suggestion in regard to creating user interfaces:

Robert Penner's easing functions:

http://www.robertpenner.com/easing/

allow you to create the effects that give objects a feeling of mechanistic weight on the screen and "snap back" effects. Many developers when they use roScreen to implement a UI leave out smooth motion, and everything just jumps in a stiff way when you move from one point item to another, as opposed to the kind of smooth slide you see in the roGridScreen (netflix, amazon etc).

- Joel