Roku Developer Program

[RokuKevin]

The 9-button remote does not have a free button..... All buttons are handled by roGridScreen directly and the only 9-button way out of the roGridScreen is the "home" button.

--Kevin

[renojim]

evilmax17,

It may be a bit of a kludge, but you could add a poster to your Grid that when clicked on exits the screen.

-JT

[renojim]

"renojim" wrote:

"RokuChris" wrote:
2.8 adds PNG support to roGridScreen

Is there any reason GIFs were left out?

I just downloaded the 2.8 SDK and it states that PNGs and GIFs are now supported, but GIFs are not working for me (PNGs do).

-JT

[evilmax17]

Thanks for the responses all.

"RokuKevin" wrote:
The 9-button remote does not have a free button..... All buttons are handled by roGridScreen directly and the only 9-button way out of the roGridScreen is the "home" button.

Dang. I'd really love to use roGridScreen, but that's a pretty big roadblock for me.

Enhancement request: If you guys could figure out a solution to this for the next SDK release, I'd definitely utilize it.

"renojim" wrote:
It may be a bit of a kludge, but you could add a poster to your Grid that when clicked on exits the screen.

I think I'll stick with good ol' roPosterScreen for now, and hope that they address it in the future. Good thinking though.

[TheEndless]

"evilmax17" wrote:
Thanks for the responses all.

"RokuKevin" wrote:
The 9-button remote does not have a free button..... All buttons are handled by roGridScreen directly and the only 9-button way out of the roGridScreen is the "home" button.

Dang. I'd really love to use roGridScreen, but that's a pretty big roadblock for me.

Enhancement request: If you guys could figure out a solution to this for the next SDK release, I'd definitely utilize it.

Since the roGridScreen doesn't allow for wrapping around from the top to the bottom, or vice versa, I don't see why they couldn't allow exiting when up is pressed on the top row. I assume they prevented it initially, because of the smooth scrolling and didn't want folks to accidentally exit the screen, but I would think they could detect a press and hold vs. a single press... If they made it an option that's off by default, then current channels wouldn't be affected.

[kbenson]

"evilmax17" wrote:
Thanks for the responses all.

"RokuKevin" wrote:
The 9-button remote does not have a free button..... All buttons are handled by roGridScreen directly and the only 9-button way out of the roGridScreen is the "home" button.

Dang. I'd really love to use roGridScreen, but that's a pretty big roadblock for me.

Hmm, now you've got me wondering what kind of navigation model you're planning that has you going from some other screen, into a gridscreen, and then needing to come back out again.

Not that I've done anything with the gridscreen yet, but couldn't you just make the top row a single icon (or set of icons for more functions) to close the gridscreen? Depending on your layout and content it may or may not look hokey, but it might work.

[TheEndless]

"kbenson" wrote:
Hmm, now you've got me wondering what kind of navigation model you're planning that has you going from some other screen, into a gridscreen, and then needing to come back out again.

Not that I've done anything with the gridscreen yet, but couldn't you just make the top row a single icon (or set of icons for more functions) to close the gridscreen? Depending on your layout and content it may or may not look hokey, but it might work.

I don't know if it's the case with what evilmax is trying to do, but I've got a situation where I'd like to display a list of top level genres, each with a series of sub-genres. While the sub-genres would make sense in a grid screen, the top level genres do not, so my home screen would ideally be a more traditional single line poster screen that opens a grid screen when one is selected. Even if I made the home screen a grid with a single line on it, there's no intuitive way to return to that from the sub-genre grid screen.

[kbenson]

"TheEndless" wrote:

I don't know if it's the case with what evilmax is trying to do, but I've got a situation where I'd like to display a list of top level genres, each with a series of sub-genres. While the sub-genres would make sense in a grid screen, the top level genres do not, so my home screen would ideally be a more traditional single line poster screen that opens a grid screen when one is selected. Even if I made the home screen a grid with a single line on it, there's no intuitive way to return to that from the sub-genre grid screen.

I haven't used the roGridScreen yet (man, I HATE trying to weigh in on a discussion with limited knowledge of the facts, but there's thoughts I want to get out), but if you can modify the screen itself while it's displayed, or redisplay without having to reload portions that haven't changed, possibly each element of the first row could be the the top level category, and as you selected one, it could add and auto-populate the next row down in the GridScreen, repeat as needed?

[TheEndless]

"kbenson" wrote:
I haven't used the roGridScreen yet (man, I HATE trying to weigh in on a discussion with limited knowledge of the facts, but there's thoughts I want to get out), but if you can modify the screen itself while it's displayed, or redisplay without having to reload portions that haven't changed, possibly each element of the first row could be the the top level category, and as you selected one, it could add and auto-populate the next row down in the GridScreen, repeat as needed?

Great minds.. 😉
That's actually one of the routes I was considering heading down (and I almost described in my last thread). The problem I see with that is that it won't be familiar to the end user. That's a pretty significant change to what people have become used to with the Roku UI, and I imagine it would result in A LOT of support requests. There's also no way to differentiate between rows in the grid (i.e., have a different background color for a "genre" row) aside from the row title, so making the grid somewhat intuitive visually would be difficult, too.

[kbenson]

"TheEndless" wrote:

Great minds.. 😉

Hehe, not going to get any objections here. 😉

That's actually one of the routes I was considering heading down (and I almost described in my last thread). The problem I see with that is that it won't be familiar to the end user. That's a pretty significant change to what people have become used to with the Roku UI, and I imagine it would result in A LOT of support requests. There's also no way to differentiate between rows in the grid (i.e., have a different background color for a "genre" row) aside from the row title, so making the grid somewhat intuitive visually would be difficult, too.

I imagine if it's mostly empty when first loaded until someone selects an item, it will be fairly obvious from that point on. Images that indicate it expands into a new row might help, if they can be simple and intuitive.