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Full Version: [OBSOLETE] Pandora Radio (Script) Music Addon
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Great work, I wish you can make the stations on the left FONT larger or have an options to adjust, mine is pretty small and would love to see it bigger

Keep up the GREAT WORK!
dallasnights Wrote:I wish you can make the stations on the left FONT larger or have an options to adjust, mine is pretty small and would love to see it bigger!

I will experiment with the font size. In the meantime you can find one that would for you. Open up the following file in a text editor:

.../XBMC/addons/script.xbmc.pandora/resources/skins/Android/NTSC/script-pandora.xml

And replace the two occurences of 'font10' with your preference. The font used for the track information is 'font13', so I would suggest trying 'font12'.

Regards,
Steve
Your advice worked perfect 13 is best for me thank you!!!!
I can throw together some layouts for you based off of the work I did earlier. I agree that the stations list needs to be hidden until called upon. Maybe do it like most skins do the pop out menu to change view types.

What information can you pull from Pandora? Artist/record/track? Need to know so I know what to make room for in the layout.



smorloc Wrote:Yes it always has. I changed it so it doesn't do it as quickly as previous versions. Personally I don't like the fading so a I turned it down a bit...



That can be easily done. I'm guessing he won't mind.



I am not familar with the iOS application. Do you have a screen shot so I can understand what you are refering to?



Pandora offers quite a bit in the way of additional information and I would love to give access to it. My problem is working within the current layout and my lack of graphic artist capabilties. I am not all that fond of the current layout. If I could, I would use the current window/dialog to display much more interesting info. Some ways to adjust the space could include:
  • Reduce or eliminate the real estate taken up by the station list. Typically I put on a station and listen to it for hours. I don't need to see all my other stations all the time
  • Make the "Pandora" graphics much smaller
  • Tighten up the layout of current information, buttons and progress bar
  • Add additional fields such as playlist, artist info, album info, genre, lyrics, etc

What doesn't fit in the current real estate could be moved to a secondary dialog.



50/50 beteween having the Pandora dialog up and watching the screen saver...



I completely agree!

Can anyone work with me on a new layout? You'll work on the layout & graphics. I'll work on coding the interface and pulling/parsing the information from Pandora...

Regards,
Steve
htpc guy Wrote:What information can you pull from Pandora? Artist/record/track? Need to know so I know what to make room for in the layout.

I'm still trying to assimilate the information Pandora returns for a song. I have place a text file that contains the information for 4 songs on the web site:

http://www.morlock.net/PandoraDump.txt

This should give you an idea of what is available. In many cases I would probably need to retrieve & parse the reults of fetching a URL.

BYW, your Andoird-like skin looks freakin' awesome.

Regards,
Steve
I have updated the Pandora script to make 'htpc guys's skin the default. There is an option to select the original in the settings dialog. Existing users will might need to manually select the original skin.

http://www.morlock.net/script.xbmc.pandora.zip

(I've dropped the version number from the ZIP file name. The web log was showing that the old version was still getting downloaded. By keeping the name the same, the most current will always be downloaded.)

Regards,
Steve
I just wanted to let everyone know that I was repeatedly downloading and installing the zip from Steve's post above this morning. It was driving me nuts since I was never getting the updated addon. I thought it was me.

Then, I went to this link that he had in an earlier post and got version 1.1.1
http://www.morlock.net/script.xbmc.pandora-v1.1.1.zip

All is good now.
@smorloc, htpc guy
Thanks a ton for your work to improve the script. I'm very happy to see others are interested in helping with development. I'll be finishing up school here soon and will hopefully be able to come back and do some more work myself. You are certainly welcome to development in whatever way you choose, though I would personally appreciate it greatly if you could continue to use gitorious as it makes collaboration much easier.

The pro-git book http://progit.org/book/ is a great place to start if you are unfamiliar with git (Chapters 1&2 should cover everything you need to get started). Also, make sure to configure git to handle newlines properly http://help.github.com/dealing-with-lineendings/. If you need help just ask.

I'm still rather busy for the next week or two, but I'll take a closer look and see if I can't give any suggestions when I get a chance. If you want to get a hold of me you should be able to find me on IRC (feel free to /msg), or if you prefer gtalk/aim/etc... shoot me a PM with contact info.

Thanks again, Keep up the great work.
@smorloc: The changes you have made thus far are great and the proposed changes sound even better! In general, I am in favor of keeping the main interface page clean and simple. Moving the stations off that screen would help that a lot. It seems to me that when you enter Pandora, you should see a list of your stations (if you are planning on adding the ability to create a station, this could go here as well). Once you select your station, then you go into the main interface. Like you, I don't change stations that often.

If there was a way to select the ARTIST from the main Pandora screen (during playback), then have a choice to get Artist, bookmark the artist or "create a station using this artist" that would be cool. Then if you selected the SONG title get a choice of Lyrics, bookmark song or "create a station from this song". Just one way to go about it.

Regarding the previous songs played, in the IOS App on the iPhone, if you turn the phone to Landscape, it shows album art with the artist name/song in Coverflow format for all of the songs played in the current session. So if you are listening & hear a song/artist you but don't get a change to look at the screen, you can go back & see what you missed. Since Pandora is all about music discovery - I use this a lot. But that may just be me ;-)

On the iPad, the Pandora app displays the same info & album art across the top of the screen - letting you scroll back to see what you missed. The album art for previously played items is unnecessary for XBMC, IMHO - Artist/Song would be sufficient.

I think the fading in & out of the Pandora icon on the playback screen is ....odd. Seems like it would be better if it just stayed there or went away completely. Although, I do like having something on the screen reminding me I am listening to Pandora. Meh, it's a very minor thing regardless.

All the above is just suggestions and opinions of course. I am just happy that Pandora looks & functions better than it did look forward to any improved functionality.

@spbogie: big thanks to you as well for creating this Addon and continuing to work on it.
partpricer Wrote:I just wanted to let everyone know that I was repeatedly downloading and installing the zip from Steve's post above this morning. It was driving me nuts since I was never getting the updated addon. I thought it was me.

Sorry about that. It is probably a caching issue on my server.
I placed a copied in a named version file & will continue to do so in the future:
http://www.morlock.net/script.xbmc.pandora-v1.1.2.zip

Regards,
Steve
eTip Wrote:I think the fading in & out of the Pandora icon on the playback screen is ....odd. Seems like it would be better if it just stayed there or went away completely. Although, I do like having something on the screen reminding me I am listening to Pandora. Meh, it's a very minor thing regardless.

I think its odd too. However, I'm running my HTPC through a rear-projection TV (yes they still exist), and if the icon was always on, I'd be afraid of having the image burned into my screen. Since I usually have the visualizer on when I run Pandora anyway, I don't really care if the logo is there, or if its blinking. Its not a big deal, just something to keep in mind.

Speaking of the visualizer, since I've started using smorloc's update, the pandora add-on hasn't been using it. It just shows the skin's (Night) default music fanart. For this reason, I haven't started using this version of the add-on on my HTPC. Does anyone know how to turn it back on? The music settings for playback show that I have the milkdrop visualization turned on.
how can i close the pandora view without closing the script this is a very nice script but would love to be able to move around xbmc without having to turn off the script
maseatx Wrote:how can i close the pandora view without closing the script this is a very nice script but would love to be able to move around xbmc without having to turn off the script

I just noticed this today and couldn't figure out a way either. I agree that would be nice. Minor issue for me though.
yes it sucks that one of the nicest scripts is missing one of the most basic of features


and yes i know that there is an arrow to close the pandora view down so you see the now playing
maseatx Wrote:yes it sucks that one of the nicest scripts is missing one of the most basic of features

I agree. I having been trying to figure out how to get this script to behave like most of the other ones. I'm still working through the XBMC documentation to figure out how to get this addon to behave like the other similar addons. My guess is that this shouldn't be a difficult behavoir to implement in the Pandora addon.

For myself, I would like to put Pandora on an then play a picture slideshow...

Regards,
Steve