Login at Kodi Home

stoolzo · 2014-03-06, 14:00

Just wondering if this is a project that is in progress, seems odd that this hasnt yet been adressed yet, although XBMC has really only become useful on Android handsets since hardware decoding was enabled.

Please tell me there will be some thought put into this in future versions Smile

sheepybach · 2014-03-06, 14:22

Hi,
What touch screens are you asking about please? As to my knowledge Touch screens are all ready supported.

**Martijn** · 2014-03-06, 14:29

read the blog post on xbmc.org again

stoolzo · 2014-03-06, 18:42

Obviously i'm talking about android touch screens, tablets and phones.
I have the Gotham beta on both my phone and tablet, where the playback is beautifully smooth I just cant use it as the menu’s and player controls are either to small, in the wrong place or hidden behind other menus. XBMC has been written with a remote control, keyboard or mouse in mind, not a touch screens, this is the problem.
Yeah I read the article on new themes but I’m not talking about making something look slightly different which is really all these tend to d. An example is DRIOD this is really a help at all as it still has all the small player controls for instance. The setup and browsing / menu parts of the current themes are generally ok, we just need some very specific changes in three areas. Also, most theme makers (it appears) tend to go for something that looks nice over ease of use. For instance, you’d think the swiping action would be good for touch screen but it isn’t, I still prefer a list of fixed options to menus that take a few seconds to settle down or stop moving before I can select them. It looks great but is very annoying.
Four things we need now.
1. Big fat seek / time elapsed bar at the top of the screen on startup and screen touch / pause.

2. All commonly used controls on screen at one time at the bottom, all large or resizable for small screens. E.g - Play, Stop, pause, nude ahead, nudge back, next chapter as minimum.

3. All controls should appear on screen when any media is started, music or video, like windows media player classic or other Android media players. This already happens with Videos but the seek and play controls are too close together and too small in all themes.

4. There are no player controls when music is played unless you right click and choose to play with video player. Scrap this and just have one player.
Making everything else touch- tastic would just be gravy and you don’t need this really as once you have setup XBMC all you will be doing from then on is playing media, this is the important area where changes need to be made.

**Martijn** · 2014-03-06, 18:56

Advise. Get a bigger touchsreen

stoolzo · (This post was last modified: 2014-03-06, 19:04 by stoolzo.)

http://www.openoceans.de/xbmc/osd_controls.jpg

check this out, one of the new themes, this is what I mean but just making things look different, totally unusable with smaller touch screens (all android devices), Look how small the play controls are.

Metroid looks promising though, a bit of fattening on the seek bar and this might be useful as this themer has cottoned on to the problem of having seek and play controls to close together being a problem.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=178956

See forth screen shot.

Another way to fix this problem would be to separate the OSD / Theme / menu resolution from the output resolution, by being able to set a different screen resolution for the menus it would all you to drop the resolution and this make the menus larger on screen. a combination of a good theme and this would be idea for the Android and other platforms.

**nooryani84** · (This post was last modified: 2014-03-06, 19:07 by nooryani84.)

Then you will have to make a theme yourself or hope someone else does. I wouldn't want to watch movies on anything smaller than my Nexus 7 2.gen and even then it's too small IMO.

Edit: Works flawlessly on touch screens.

stoolzo · 2014-03-06, 19:07

(2014-03-06, 18:56)Martijn Wrote: Advise. Get a bigger touchsreen

Nothing useful to add to this topic?

**Martijn** · (This post was last modified: 2014-03-06, 19:08 by Martijn.)

Then i suggest you start making your own theme to fit your needs. I'm sure over time more tablet skins will come but that's not our main job.

And using XBMC on a < 7" is just stupid. I use it on a 7" with several skin and i do not have any issue.

**nooryani84** · 2014-03-06, 19:11

Asking for themes designed for something < 7" is like asking for Native Object-Based Storage Support for XBMC when you have 512 TB without any RAID.

stoolzo · (This post was last modified: 2014-03-06, 19:22 by stoolzo.)

(2014-03-06, 19:06)nooryani84 Wrote: Then you will have to make a theme yourself or hope someone else does. I wouldn't want to watch movies on anything smaller than my Nexus 7 2.gen and even then it's too small IMO.

Edit: Works flawlessly on touch screens.

Everything works flawlessly, just isnt a joy to use like it is on a PC, lets not pretend it is, unless you have two Beadle hands or fingers like cocktail sticks.

(2014-03-06, 19:07)Martijn Wrote: Then i suggest you start making your own theme to fit your needs. I'm sure over time more tablet skins will come but that's not our main job.

And using XBMC on a < 7" is just stupid. I use it on a 7" with several skin and i do not have any issue.

Really, playing music on an Android phone is stupid, wonder if the Billions of people already using their phones to play music are aware of this?

Perhaps you just use your 7inch for playing movies but a lot of people are going to want to just play music, to do this on a small screen you are going to need decent sized, or re sizable controls.

**nooryani84** · 2014-03-06, 19:23

There are plenty of alternatives that are far better if you want to play music on your phone. The way XBMC works - if a someone wants feature X for XBMC then they will have to make it themselves or hope that someone else wants to develop it. Asking for XBMC to perform better on sub-7 inch devices is rather demanding and it would cater to a very niche user base.

stoolzo · (This post was last modified: 2014-03-06, 19:28 by stoolzo.)

(2014-03-06, 19:11)nooryani84 Wrote: Asking for themes designed for something < 7" is like asking for Native Object-Based Storage Support for XBMC when you have 512 TB without any RAID.

The PC version of XBMC is fully functional and has been for ages, it doesn't really need the Dev at the moment, devs should be concentrating on getting XBMC out to the potential of Billions of users with Android phones. Sure it works but it as ass to use as it wasnt designed for small screens. That goes for themers too.

I'll have a look into doing a theme but i'd learning it all from scratch, may just try tweaking someone else first.

**nooryani84** · 2014-03-06, 19:32

Billions of users want to watch movies on their Android phones? Did you just completely ignore my last post?

stoolzo · (This post was last modified: 2014-03-06, 19:38 by stoolzo.)

(2014-03-06, 19:23)nooryani84 Wrote: There are plenty of alternatives that are far better if you want to play music on your phone. The way XBMC works - if a someone wants feature X for XBMC then they will have to make it themselves or hope that someone else wants to develop it. Asking for XBMC to perform better on sub-7 inch devices is rather demanding and it would cater to a very niche user base.

Indeed there other options, there are other options for playing movies too, its just a shame, its so close to being a great media player on Android, it just needs a little tweaking and it will be the best player available.

Nobody is demanding anything here, apologies to anyone if it came across that way. I'm really just opening up a discussion in the hope that someone is interested in following this line of development, gui or theme wise.

I got a couple of those quotes mixed up, I think you know what i'm on about though.