[procrastinator]

I've just seen another one of those "XBMC is a nightmare to use" threads pop up. It happens every couple of weeks, and is usually down to the user trying to control XBMC with a mouse, and not appreciating that XBMC is a full screen media center, as opposed to a desktop media player. However, something that was said in the thread did make me think. Specifically, how complicated the settings menu can appear to new users.

There are a lot of settings in XBMC, the function of which are not always obvious, particularly to a new user. It's quite easy for experienced users to just to say RTFM, but I think that a lot (if not most) of the people who pick up XBMC for the first time do so to try it out, and stack it up against other media center software. The steep learning curve of XBMC can be a turn off.

So what could we do to make XBMC more accessible?

One of the things that was mentioned in the thread above was "tooltips". Obviously an exact copy of this isn't practical in XBMC - we generally don't use a mouse to control XBMC, and a tip popping up when you are focused on a menu item for more than a couple of seconds would get annoying. However, there are not currently any context menus for items in the settings menu. So could a context menu be introduced for items in settings to host an option for a tool tip? Each just giving a quick description of what the setting does.


XBMC works absolutely great once you know what you're doing, but as a new user the learning curve can be a bit steep. I think that there is definitely room to improve user-friendliness in XBMC. I'm not sure if this is the best solution, and I'm aware that it only deals with one corner of XBMC (settings), but I thought it'd be good to put it out there as a suggestion and see what people thought.


EDITED: to boldify the tl;dr version

[sphere]

So could a context menu be introduced for items in settings to host an option for a tool tip? Each just giving a quick description of what the setting does.

I like the idea - but why not just use the info key on settings? It could open a new "HelpOSD" overlay window.

regards,
sphere

[procrastinator]

I like the idea - but why not just use the info key on settings? It could open a new "HelpOSD" overlay window.

Good point! The info button is very fitting for this purpose.

I guess that the reason I suggested a context menu is because I most frequently use XBMC on my ATV2. The buttons on this remote are limited and do not include an 'info' button, but a context menu is still accessible. But in a wider context, yes, the 'info' button is appropriate.

[sphere]

The key->action mapping depends on your remote AND the opened window - If something like the HelpOSD would become real, there will be found any key on your remote to match the "info" action in the settings window to toggle the HelpOSD.

[Mudislander]

Good idea, but one of those things that nobody is interested in doing. Me for example - I enjoy modding a skin, but find help files very tedious to code.

[procrastinator]

I can see where you're coming from. And nobody wants to force a tedious task on someone, especially as this is a project that people devote their spare time to.

However I do think that user friendliness could and should be improved. So is there anything that can be done by the non-coding community to minimise the effort required to add this feature to an acceptable level? I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there who are enthusiastic enough to want to contribute, but are unable to code. One such contribution might be writing all the setting descriptions within a certain character limit. These could be compiled on the wiki (so that anyone can create and edit them), and then added to some sort of database for inclusion in XBMC. This could then be called from any skin. Except for skin-specific settings, all settings are common to every skin after all.

Although I'm trying to learn Python, making any kind of code-based contribution to XBMC still feels a very long way off. It's early days, so please pardon my ignorance if my suggestion shows a basic misunderstanding and doesn't really help.

[Fice]

I think a help text for the settings is a really nice feature request.

Nevertheless I feel pressing a button to get help feels unnatural and there are just too many input systems and conventions to make it obvious.
Does a novice now that "I" brings up the info dialog? (For people who just installed xbmc on a normal pc without a remote to give it a try)
Is it obvious for a mouse only user that right-click gives him some guidance?
What about a gamepad?

We could of course map almost all buttons to a help window (except the ones you need for changing the setting) but I think it is still not obvious that keypresses give you guidance.

So my suggestion would be to have add a label to the bottom/top of the screen where you see a description of the currently selected setting. See Screenshot
This works independant of the input type:
- mouse over for the mouse users.
- And I guess all other input methods have some sort of arrow keys.

And I guess that's why Mudislander was complaining, because right now a skinner could do this but he would have to copy the following code part (or sth. similar) for every single setting

Code:

<control type="label">
            <posx>40</posx>
            <posy>654</posy>
            <width>1200</width>
            <height>60</height>
            <align>center</align>
            <aligny>center</aligny>
            <label>Here is a Description of the currently selected Setting!!!! Yehaa ;)</label>
            <textcolor>white</textcolor>
            <shadowcolor>black</shadowcolor>
            <font>font-20</font>
            <include>VisibleFadeEffect</include>
        </control>

and on top of that every skinner would have to make the help strings himself until they get into xbmc's core language files.

So what i suggest is that we make a new info label available for skinners in the settings screen like "selectedSetting.Description". The skinner can now just design the area where the description should be available and is done with it...

And as an addition: This would also be helpful for the addon settings...

[digitaltomj]

I think the best way to achieve this would be an optional video tutorial which would ask to run at first start and be accessible as a help file in the OS afterwards...that way no real coding is changed...advanced xbmc users don't have to suffer like a windows power user has to...and its more of an obvious way to show someone with little computer know-how how to do all the cool things xbmc can do... of course, the tutorial will need a few adjustments depending on the OS used...also I think a link to the xbmc wiki and faq should be installed with the program.

[jmarshall]

What settings are not obvious?

Perhaps we can make them more obvious without resorting to writing screeds and screeds of information about each of them?

Cheers,
Jonathan

[digitaltomj]

i think its just general usage for the layman user that has little desire to learn by trial and error like we all did...Im not saying that this is our key demographic or anything...but I know all of my friends and family that I suggest they use XBMC have problems doing anything but installing the program...I have to make sure I set everything up for them and even then they seem to just use some horrible program like itunes instead...i don't know exactly what the problem is...but I do think a general introduction would be very helpful...even if it only explained all the wonderful things that xbmc is capable of.

[procrastinator]

Having used XBMC for over 5 years, it's quite difficult to put myself back in the shoes of a new user. A setting which I think of as obvious might be baffling to someone who's picked up the software for the first time. I certainly remember that when I first started using it then I often got frustrated at trying to find an option that did what I wanted to achieve, though it's now near impossible for me to remember any specific examples. I've also had the same experience as digitaltomj mentioned where I've introduced friends to XBMC, but they quickly get frustrated and give it up. Even relatively tech-savvy friends.

As for specific settings... As I said above it's a bit difficult to remember what settings are problematic, but here's some suggestions which might benefit from some explanation.

• Region - I've seen the °F vs °C question a number of time on these forums, and it's often one of the things people will try and change just after installing if it's not to their liking. It's not obvious that this setting is the one that'll change that.
  
• Timezone country and timezome - while it's obvious that these set a location, it's not necessarily obvious that this setting will set the correct time on your clock.
  
• Group movies in sets - not obvious to a new user what a set is and why they'd want their movies grouped.
  
• Clean library - not obvious to new user exactly what this does (I think that when I first started using XBMC I worried this would erase my entire library)
  
• Technical options in videos>playback
  
• Download additional information during updates under music options - what additional info?
  
• Replaygain volume adjustments what does this mean?
  
• Flatten TV shows - what does this mean?
  
• Vertical blank sync - what is this?
  

Those are just some examples I picked up from flicking through the settings quickly. For the most part, I'd say that you can see what the options do by the short descriptions that are there already. Exactly how much of that is because I've been using XBMC for quite a while isn't clear. Perhaps only a select few of the settings would benefit from further details, in which case some indication of this info being available could be included with the settings entry, and this would be accessed as described in one of the in earlier posts.

The "tool tip" suggestion might not be the best way to improve user-friendliness for the new user, but it's a suggestion in an area where (I think) XBMC could do better. You might take it or leave it, but I thought it'd be worth putting it out there for discussion. Thanks to those who've made all the constructive comments so far, especially to Fice who helped me understand the logistical burden of this a bit more.

[digitaltomj]

Perhaps XBMC could install on a new computer the way an OS installs with a guided setup...So maybe it could ask the user questions about how they would like to install. Those questions could now be used not only as a way to configure settings, but also to introduce XBMC's abilities...some of which I think procrastinator hit the nail on the head:

• Region - I've seen the °F vs °C question a number of time on these forums, and it's often one of the things people will try and change just after installing if it's not to their liking. It's not obvious that this setting is the one that'll change that.
  
• Timezone country and timezome - while it's obvious that these set a location, it's not necessarily obvious that this setting will set the correct time on your clock.
  
• Group movies in sets - not obvious to a new user what a set is and why they'd want their movies grouped.
  
• Clean library - not obvious to new user exactly what this does (I think that when I first started using XBMC I worried this would erase my entire library)
  
• Technical options in videos>playback
  

And perhaps even a few more things like

• Video/Music sources
  
• which scraper to use for movies, tv, and music
  
• audio output
  
• a list of prefered add-ons they might like
  
• and a few other advanced functions that are perhaps not intuitively found in the GUI
  

[jmarshall]

Thanks procastinator - that's most helpful.

Agreed regarding Region and Timezone (I believe both should apply only to XBMC as an Appliance, eg openelec pretty much - otherwise we should take the default from the OS) - these are one-offs that should be set at the start, or derived from the OS).

Group movies in sets - not sure how to better state that - any ideas?

Clean library could be changed - it's really "Remove items from library that no longer exist"

Flatten TV Shows could be changed to "Show seasons list in tvshows"

Replaygain is a little tricky - given that it requires users to have previously scanned their files and injected the replaygain info into the tags, I wonder whether this is best left out of the UI altogether. I suspect the proportion of users with the information available to begin with is pretty low, though there may be more with equivalent info available (eg iTunes drops normalisation stuff into tags now) that we currently don't read.

Download additional info during updates refers to whether album + artist info should be scraped from the web - definitely could be rewritten to make this clear - any ideas?

Vertical blank sync is tricky, as at the moment it's google-able - you don't want to rename technical stuff that contains keywords that can be easily googled. Personally I don't see a problem with it - users should not need to touch it anyway. Same with all the technical stuff.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[sphere]

Resorting some settings or renaming them is good idea, yes. However I would still prefer any possibility for a longer text or description for each setting - I see the problem mainly in non-english languages just because they need more space for a clear and easy to understand translation.
But that's only my personal opinion.

Regarding settings renaming/resorting - what about a xbmc.org blog entry about asking the users for not so obvious or even mysterious settings? I guess there we would reach more new users than in any forum thread or wiki page.

[digitaltomj]

what if there were some type of (?) symbol next to the less obvious settings that acted as a hyperlink, and when selected, would open the default browser and load the associated faq or wiki webpage?