Roku Developer Program

[EnTerr]

http://developer.roku.com seems to have gotten a "refresh" of the web UI. Today. I don't see email or notification here, but the look&feel has changed... not necessarily for the better - at least for me is confusing and confusing is not what i was looking for today. All fonts have grown on the premise "bigger is better", usability going down. "Manage channels" page has some superfluous guidance text that nobody wants to read >1 time. One place i need a description though, it is missing:

Luckily i know from previous incarnation of the UI that the images between "description" box and "Preferred Category" ginormity must be the icons for the store. Labeling that section won't hurt. But which one is the HD and which one is the SD, hmm?

[squirreltown]

they probably still link to the the gatekeeper thingie that checks the sizes...Natch I would say HD on the left though.

I remember when Endless complained about the last format change because he had to scroll down though his bizzilion channels, he's gonna really hate it now.

[EnTerr]

After getting reversed to the "old UI" this Tuesday, site is back (forth?) to the new UI now.

But when i try to upload a package - right or wrong - now on save it always tells me
"Important Notice: An error has occurred. Please try again."

This behavior seems... uh, new. The old UI was acting differently depending on whether i uploaded acceptable bundle or (unsigned) garbage, it would have told me specifically if zip was not ok.

Also, on that "package submission" screen it shows the new, unpublished channel icon with a sticker "published" over it. (It's true a previous version was published but icon was different).

[EnTerr]

This just in, trying to provide "Support Information" for a channel gives a 404 error on save - in big, (ir)responsive design letters:

[EnTerr]

In the "old" UI, one can delete (or "reject" if you will) a package, once uploaded - not so in the "new" UI (apologies for the big snapshot, i tried to cut it small as i can):

See the green "Submit"? Yes, a new bundle was uploaded before and it remembers that.

Maybe if i press "Save Changes" (without file in "select...") it will get removed? A funny message pops:

Okay, so if i upload something, i get an error message. But if upload nothing, i am told my nothing was uploaded successfully. Hmm.

Regardless the message, the previous upload did not get dropped.

[squirreltown]

I'm wondering if the website "team" is aware you can use CSS to build different versions of the same page for different devices. This re-design looks like a giant iphone version, I'm sure glad they are doing this instead of, you know, fixing that six month old bug that stops devs getting paid after they update their channel.

I am getting the back and forth designs too, just grateful when the old one comes up.

Uploaded a pkg yesterday - got the "there was an error' twice and then "uploaded successfully " on the third try. In the previous two years and thousands of updates I got the error message exactly once.

[TheEndless]

"squirreltown" wrote:
I'm wondering if the website "team" is aware you can use CSS to build different versions of the same page for different devices. This re-design looks like a giant iphone version, I'm sure glad they are doing this instead of, you know, fixing that six month old bug that stops devs getting paid after they update their channel.

As a developer, you should know that's not a fair statement. It's very unlikely that the web team has anything to do with the billing issues. That's almost certainly a backend issue, that you almost certainly don't want a front-end developer working on!

[squirreltown]

"TheEndless" wrote:

"squirreltown" wrote:
I'm wondering if the website "team" is aware you can use CSS to build different versions of the same page for different devices. This re-design looks like a giant iphone version, I'm sure glad they are doing this instead of, you know, fixing that six month old bug that stops devs getting paid after they update their channel.

As a developer, you should know that's not a fair statement. It's very unlikely that the web team has anything to do with the billing issues. That's almost certainly a backend issue, that you almost certainly don't want a front-end developer working on!

You're right, my mistake.

[Romans_I_XVI]

Yeah I'm not a fan of the new UI. It seems like it's supposed to look better, but with the trade off of less functionality. I feel like this is done so much these days (I'm talking to you Windows 8!). I somewhat understand for general users, but us developers prefer functionality over aesthetics.

[EnTerr]

"squirreltown" wrote:
I'm wondering if the website "team" is aware you can use CSS to build different versions of the same page for different devices. This re-design looks like a giant iphone version, I'm sure glad they are doing this instead of, you know, fixing that six month old bug that stops devs getting paid after they update their channel.

The modern thing to do is responsive web design. They are already doing it here - try resizing the window and see how some elements change. Now, just because it has "responsive" in the name, does not mean it cannot be used in irresponsible ways - which is what happens in the Dev. web and in parts of the main site. Web designers tend to grab whatever is en vogue today and club you to death with it. Just like some developers will do with OOP or functional programming paradigms.
"You have been served and you are going to like it... Capisce?"

"TheEndless" wrote:
As a developer, you should know that's not a fair statement. It's very unlikely that the web team has anything to do with the billing issues. That's almost certainly a backend issue, that you almost certainly don't want a front-end developer working on!

But TheEndless... he is not a developer.
Not a full-stack developer that you are, or a "real" developer in the sense you imply. Rather, squirreltown is a talented visual artist who codes on Roku to create kinematic art. He does programming kinda like you do graphics design "on the side" (i presume). Looking up, I found his works at places like http://moca.virtual.museum/newmoca/photo.asp and http://www.digitalartscalifornia.com/?p=3590 .
(I started paying closer attention after noticing how much he knows on color profiles and contrasting that to at first not knowing "fundamentals" like binary numbers, bitwise operations, reference counts etc. And yet, whatever "barbaric" coding ways he might be using behind the scenes, the results speak for themselves - his channels are the best moving art i have seen on Roku, they should be a showcase of player's abilities - some non-pre-rendered animations i was like "hm, did not know Roku has the muscle to do that")