Roku Developer Program

[TheEndless]

"kbenson" wrote:
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.

The most a grid screen can have onscreen at a time is three rows, so with genres and subgenres filling the first two rows, there's no way to leave it "mostly empty" 😉
As for intuitive graphics, the content is coming from site with dynamic content that I don't have control over, so the only way to make custom graphics for it, would be to hard-code the base list of genres, which I'd rather not do. I'm thinking I'll end up needing to draw my own UI, which I really don't want to do...

[kbenson]

"TheEndless" wrote:

"kbenson" wrote:
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.

The most a grid screen can have onscreen at a time is three rows, so with genres and subgenres filling the first two rows, there's no way to leave it "mostly empty" 😉

Oh, I meant just display the genres in the first row, nothing else. They'le have to click on something to piopulate the sub-genres for that genre in the second row, and at that point I would think it should be somewhat obvious what's going on. Selecting a sub-genre would of course load up the content for that sub-genre in the third row.

As for intuitive graphics, the content is coming from site with dynamic content that I don't have control over, so the only way to make custom graphics for it, would be to hard-code the base list of genres, which I'd rather not do. I'm thinking I'll end up needing to draw my own UI, which I really don't want to do...

Well, I just created a modal window dialog using roImageCanvas, with the ability to specify blocks of text, selects and toggles, and it returns the selected values on close. Actually it supports specifying window size and color, border size and color, content padding offset, background screen shading, setting of arbitrary button that closes it, etc. Most if not all the sizes can be specified as a percent of the screen size (for window size) or percent of the window size (for border/content).Not quite suited for browsing categories, but if you want a useful way to allow settings to be toggled, it'll be in librokudev within a few days. Really, it's complete, I just need to write some documentation. In a later version I'll probably add the ability to specify images for border/background, but for now it works well enough as a way to get user input in a controlled manner.

Maybe you'll find a use for it.

[TheEndless]

"kbenson" wrote:
Well, I just created a modal window dialog using roImageCanvas, with the ability to specify blocks of text, selects and toggles, and it returns the selected values on close. Actually it supports specifying window size and color, border size and color, content padding offset, background screen shading, setting of arbitrary button that closes it, etc. Most if not all the sizes can be specified as a percent of the screen size (for window size) or percent of the window size (for border/content).Not quite suited for browsing categories, but if you want a useful way to allow settings to be toggled, it'll be in librokudev within a few days. Really, it's complete, I just need to write some documentation. In a later version I'll probably add the ability to specify images for border/background, but for now it works well enough as a way to get user input in a controlled manner.

Maybe you'll find a use for it.

Thanks, but I've already got something similar that I did for my MainSqueeze channel. I don't know if you've looked at it at all, but it has a completely custom drawn skinnable UI, including custom dialogs, so I wrote a reusable "class" for that.

The grid screen lends itself beautifully to displaying the content in this channel I'm working on. It'd just be more useful if I could use it higher in the screen stack, without requiring the 12 button remote, or a custom "back" icon to exit it.

What I'd really find useful is a way to composite multiple images and text, and use that composited image for poster items. That way I could use one or more graphics and overlay text on them for use as a single icon. I've run across instances where that would have come in handy many many times.

[kbenson]

"TheEndless" wrote:

Thanks, but I've already got something similar that I did for my MainSqueeze channel. I don't know if you've looked at it at all, but it has a completely custom drawn skinnable UI, including custom dialogs, so I wrote a reusable "class" for that.

Ah, I haven't gotten too far into it, no server to stream from. I remember being really impressed by the graphics, and remember now that you must have drawn your own menus.

The grid screen lends itself beautifully to displaying the content in this channel I'm working on. It'd just be more useful if I could use it higher in the screen stack, without requiring the 12 button remote, or a custom "back" icon to exit it.

What I'd really find useful is a way to composite multiple images and text, and use that composited image for poster items. That way I could use one or more graphics and overlay text on them for use as a single icon. I've run across instances where that would have come in handy many many times.

Yeah, the box is pretty locked down with respect to querying it's current visual or audible state. Probably as a content security measure.

[RokuKevin]

In v2.9 (coming soon), we will give developers control over the behavior of the "Up" remote code at the top of the grid....

This will give you the ability to "close" the grid screen when the "Up" button is pressed on the top row.

--Kevin

[evilmax17]

"RokuKevin" wrote:
In v2.9 (coming soon), we will give developers control over the behavior of the "Up" remote code at the top of the grid....

This will give you the ability to "close" the grid screen when the "Up" button is pressed on the top row.

--Kevin

Greatly appreciated. Thanks for the feedback!

[TheEndless]

"RokuKevin" wrote:
In v2.9 (coming soon), we will give developers control over the behavior of the "Up" remote code at the top of the grid....

This will give you the ability to "close" the grid screen when the "Up" button is pressed on the top row.

--Kevin

Thanks, Kevin. We also still seem to be missing a way to capture the Back button. It just unabashedly closes the screen, which is a real problem on the gridscreen, since you can't stack them. Any plans on adding that in 2.9?

[RokuKevin]

The back button is not intended to be controlled by the developer (though on the roImageCanvas and dialogs you need to program its behavior explicitly). For a consistent UX, it is intended to always close the current screen and move back one screen in the display stack....

--Kevin

[TheEndless]

"RokuKevin" wrote:
The back button is not intended to be controlled by the developer (though on the roImageCanvas and dialogs you need to program its behavior explicitly). For a consistent UX, it is intended to always close the current screen and move back one screen in the display stack....

--Kevin

I understand that in theory, but since the grid screen doesn't stack, it doesn't work in a channel with "nested" grids. I've managed to work around it by explicitly setting a flag to indicate whether it's a programmatic close or not, and behave accordingly in the IsScreenClosed() event. It would just be easier to deal with if I could capture a back button press in the IsRemoteButtonPressed() event.