[DiMag]

1. THE GENERAL IDEA

XBMC currently greets with a Weather screen. It occurred to me that this is only part of the "what's on today?" information a user may need alongside:

• his/her mailbox
  
• data for aired TV shows,
  
• the state of XBMC (XBMC Forum Viewer),
  
• RSS feeds,
  

etc etc.

There exist addons for all the above, and in this sense I do not hereby propose a new feature. Rather I propose a redesign of the Weather home screen section as a more general Today section. The title would have to change to "Today" (an easy hack of strings.xml), some sub-menu items would have to be added (a hack --albeit a less easy one-- of IncludesMainMenuItems.xml). But otherwise much would remain as is ---except it would be better arranged.

The purpose of this rearrangement would be, firstly, increased usability. Secondly (and perhaps more importantly), it would help concentrate the mind as to whether such features as calendaring, social media, etc ---commonly requested by users and equally commonly rejected by developers--- are indeed an enhancement of a media-oriented platform such as XBMC.


2. SPECIFICS

What I had in mind is a structure like this:

=============================== TODAY ==================================
(Default view: Weather background (or widget), as now.)
============================================================================

Sub-menu items:

Mail (addon exists)| Google Mail (addon exists)| XBMC Forum Viewer (addon exists)| etc
============================================================================
Floor:
RSS ticker
(I believe the RSS ticker must not show on the general home screen, only here)