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**pike** · 2006-02-23, 18:53

our webremote interface is in dire need of an update, and why not do it proper while we're at it..

look at google gmail, google suggest, google maps, it's all ajax.

to my understanding it's all javascript and xml, and it "runs" clientside, meaning the browser.

i wonder if there's any cunning webdevelopers out there that are interrested looking into it (design a new interface)?

here's some references for more information on ajax:

http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/default.asp
http://www.brainjar.com/dhtml/ajax/

**darkie** · 2006-02-23, 19:16

ajax is not that new. it exists for a long time already.
i've done some work on it already a long time ago and depending on what you want to use for, it can be a very nice addition. but what kind of new features do you expect from it?

**pike** · 2006-02-23, 19:20

i expect that:

* a seekbar/progressbar is possible with it
* realtime filelists or other type of lists (like partymode)
* possibility to change order in lists using drag'n'drop

thats all i can think of now, major enough ? Wink

[email protected] · 2006-02-24, 13:59

i dnt no much about ajax but i have recently been working alot on thw webserver and think i have the skills to do it. ive been looking at the ajax remote control for winamp got some ideas from that. im gona finish the changes im making to the webserver then maybe work on this.

LiquidIce629 · 2006-02-24, 22:37

i have been working on an ajax gui for xbmc. it supports drag and drop so you can drag items from your music library into a playlist. it was designed to be used on a touchpanel, and is still very much a work in progress.

i have posted a video of it in action here:
http://s11.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0qbu9...2jdzn0pmbj
(1mb)

i'd be happy to send the code to anyone who wants to check it out on their own box. it doesn't need to be compiled, just drop the files into the /web/ directory.
who knows, maybe it can get included in the official release when it's ready??

if anyone out there wants to give me a hand with css, skinning, or optimizing the javascript routines, send me a pm... i would be happy to have some help on this. kraqh3d has already been very helpful on the httpapi thread.

i'm also open for ideas. what kind of features would you like to see this have?

MidKnight · 2006-02-25, 00:22

liquidice629 thats looking good, does it only work for the music section? cause id like to try it on music videos

LiquidIce629 · 2006-02-25, 00:59

it's setup for music right now, but just changing a few lines will make it work for video as well.

goofygrin · 2006-03-01, 01:30

i just stumbled onto the web interface like last night and was going to try to take a stab at this...

i'm a web developer with heavy ajax experience (as well as as if i have to).

the feature set i'm going to start with is (since this is what i'm most interested in for my own purposes):
- browse music
- add music to a playlist
- see the currently playing playlist
- see the currently playing file information with file controls (e.g. slider, volume, next, back, stop, play)
- see album art for the current file

eventually, i'd like to be able to use the xbmc as a sonos killer using pdas as the remote...

unfortunately all the xbmchttp calls return <html><li>...</html> formatted stuff, so i have to do a lot of string parsing (which can be slow). xml would have been nice. i'm going to take a look at the asp/com calls that you can use and see if i can get some better data that way...

liquidice, i'd love to have a copy of your code as it would probably give me a good starting place Smile

thanks!

Livin · 2006-03-01, 07:20

i'd love to see an interface that would double as a touchscreen remote control... basically mimicing the on-screen gui but just on a touch screen connected to a pc.

this would be a killer remote control!

**darkie** · 2006-03-01, 13:37

Quote:unfortunately all the xbmchttp calls return <html><li>...</html> formatted stuff, so i have to do a lot of string parsing (which can be slow). xml would have been nice. i'm going to take a look at the asp/com calls that you can use and see if i can get some better data that way...

i had some ideas for it. as a start we could add a very basic xml interface and extend it in the future. this would also clean the sourcecode in the webserver a bit up. on the other hand, it is a bit silly to have different interfaces. because at this moment there are already two interfaces, xbmcweb and xbmchttp.

[email protected] · 2006-03-01, 14:38

i was looking at adding a xml extension to the webserver, and i agree the code is very messy for the webserver. webserver.cpp xbmchttp.cpp and xbmcweb.cpp all could be combined.

**darkie** · 2006-03-01, 15:25

if oyu already started on something let me know, else i will set something up. what we need is a good xml interface specification first so that it is easy to use and extendable.

goofygrin · 2006-03-01, 17:27

i've already started writing an asp (esp?) page that does some of the heavy lifting to make things easier from the js side (like getting bookmarks, that's a painful interface).

it will also come down to do we want to get all the files in a collection at one time to cache on the browser side (possibly slow) or go get them as needed (faster, but requires "loading" periods).

for the most part, i was just planning on using string replaces to replace <li> with </li><li>, </html> with </li></html> and then <html></li> with <html> and loading it into an xml dom. a xhtml return would have made things a lot easier...

i'm not a cpp programmer anymore, but with the code that's out there, i could take a stab at outputting the xml...

rather than making an xbmcxml interface, you could just add it as an optional parameter or something... but i'd say that we should take a step back, determine what all xml we'd need and get the methods that do just that.

hazeh · 2006-03-01, 17:32

being able to use a pda as a clean and featurefull remote would be brilliant.

will be keeping an eye on this.

**darkie** · 2006-03-01, 17:45

if a new interace is added it is based on xml for sure wich will have only one url. meaning that you can't do something like http://xboxip/xbmcxml?command=something. instead everything will be xml based, both request and response. this means you have to set up an xml message in memory (with javascript for example) and send it to http://xboxip/xbmcxml i don't think it is slower than the current way (you have to strip <li> and such atm)