Roku Developer Program

[jbrave]

In experimenting with the banner ad option in the RoPosterscreen in the Flat-Category mode, I discovered a few things:

1. banner ad on SD is covering up the bottom of the text of the current poster item in flat-category mode. That looks terrible!
2. banner ad on HD is a little too close to the bottom of the text of the current poster item in flat-category mode. This also doesn't look very good.
3. Banner ad is basically too big for its own good, unless Roku meant banner ads to be obnoxious.
4. There is a white border on the banner ad - while this is not terrible looking, it doesn't give you the smooth banner ad look you see on the main channal screen.
5. There is no isAdFocused event even though there is an isAdFocused condition...

Can you guys (Roku) please give us a bit more flexibility on controlling the banner ad look? Would be nice if we could have a smaller banner ad option that doesn't bump up against the text (or just move the text higher if there is an ad showing), and also, if we could disable the border and the "cool" glossy effect and just show the ad as it actually looks.

Having overbearing banner ads is fine if you are trying to force people to buy a ad-free version, but otherwise, not so nice...

Of course, I was trying to use the IsAdSelectable for a purpose other than banner advertising - namely to create an "info" screen button for those who don't have an info button on their remotes, although I'm considering how to integrate banner ads at the same time.

If one could capture more than just the select and the play button from this screen with msg.getIndex(), it would be give us more flexibility.

One could always create their own UI from scratch but the problem there is, the sdk doesn't give you the ability to smooth scroll images and layers on an Image Canvas.


- Joel

[TheEndless]

"jbrave" wrote:
2. banner ad on HD is a little too close to the bottom of the text of the current poster item in flat-category mode. This also doesn't look very good.

There's also an instance where the ShortDescriptionLine1 text gets pushed up to overlay the bottom border of the current poster. I'm not looking at it now, so I'm not sure which mode does that.

"jbrave" wrote:
5. There is no isAdFocused event even though there is an isAdFocused condition...

I'm curious as to why you'd need to know it's focused? Are you wanting to change the image when they highlight it or something? Also, what's the "isAdFocused" condition you're talking about? I don't see that anywhere in the docs...

"jbrave" wrote:
If one could capture more than just the select and the play button from this screen with msg.getIndex(), it would be give us more flexibility.

I think the problem with that is that all the other buttons have a built-in function on the poster screen, and allowing a developer to override those could be very confusing to the end user. I can definitely see some utility in it, though.

"jbrave" wrote:
One could always create their own UI from scratch but the problem there is, the sdk doesn't give you the ability to smooth scroll images and layers on an Image Canvas.

But neither does the poster screen.. ?
Not that it helps, but the poster screens in my Sirius|XM channel are all custom drawn, and it was a nightmare!

[jbrave]

"TheEndless" wrote:

"jbrave" wrote:
5. There is no isAdFocused event even though there is an isAdFocused condition...

I'm curious as to why you'd need to know it's focused? Are you wanting to change the image when they highlight it or something? Also, what's the "isAdFocused" condition you're talking about? I don't see that anywhere in the docs...

It's just the design - Every other event on the poster screen where there is something that has two states - focused and selected, there is a focused event, but here there are two states and only the isSelected event is available.

As to what one could do with it - you could update the advertisement with "press select for more info" when someone focuses on it. I'm poping up an image canvas with information about the current posteritem, but the user has to press down, then press select in order to do so.

[bosborne]

I'm also having some issues here. In flat-category, the banner add covers up some of the 2nd line for description text. Changing the poster screen to arced-landscape fixes the issue, but I wish I was able to keep flat.