[Martijn]

Seriously....
I see some complaining the font is too big. Other are complaining it's too small.
You CAN NOT make every one happy.

[voochi]

I would not say it is fundamentally flawed. Adjusting the spacing is a rather minor thing when you look at the big picture. There's a lot of "foundation" that Estuary lays down that is really good. Most everything else is one part preference and one part dark magic.

By fundamentally flawed I mean at an early stage someone made the decision to have a large top and bottom task bar. This then influenced the layout of every view, the proportion, visual balance, padding etc in the various views. It is therefore not easy now to increase the font size without substantially redesigning the skin. You cannot stick big text into a small box.

Look at how little screen space is devoted to the actual, important information in a library view:
http://i.imgur.com/cqmonKC.jpg

The red box is using maybe 60% of available screen area. The plot box is using maybe... 10%. And for what? Two huge bars that are mostly empty. A blue clock icon that does nothing. A huge bar with the time on it. I have the time on my watch, I have the time on my phone, I have the time on my clock and a dozen other things in my house, many of them within view/reach of my TV. You know what I don't have on any of those things? The plot to the movies I am trying to browse and can barely read because it's too small...

Also, in reply to Martijn, I have not seen anybody complain that the font is too big. But I have seen several dozen complain that it is too small and when it goes stable you can expect a lot more.

[Martijn]

You call a design decision flawed? Then I call your comment flawed.

I've already seen different opinions on it and either you like it or not. If you like it then use it, if you don't find something else.
I don't care what you have at home or whatever your flawed interior decisions are.

[Martijn]

Btw it have the plot on my phone or tablet because I use the Kore remote which is perfectly readable so I don't really care what's on the TV.

[voochi]

This blog post calls for suggestions and constructive criticism:
https://kodi.tv/a-brand-new-look-for-fut...-versions/
"We’re sure many of you will have suggestions to make Estuary and Estouchy even better so we’d love to hear them."

You may disagree with my comments but I have elaborated on them with an explanation of why I think the font legibility is poor, the reasons behind it, diagrams etc. So this is constructive criticism.

Your smart-ass reply is proof that you have no interest in suggestions or constructive criticism. So why invite them? Just put a sticky on the top saying "skin is perfect, no suggestions please". It would save everybody time.

I think you are taking criticism of the skin personally. Unless you are a professional UI designer there is no shame in designing a bad UI.

[Martijn]

You started by saying it's flawed! That is absolutely no constructive criticism.

fyi I didn't design it, I'm no UI designer either but neither are you probably.

[voochi]

You started by saying it flawed! That is absolutely no constructive criticism

Yes but I elaborated on the reason in some detail, which makes it constructive criticism.

Design can be subjective but there is also times when a design decision is objectively flawed. Kodi is HTPC software, the purpose is to browse a media library etc, on your TV. If a design desicision (huge taskbars) makes the library browsing experience worse (because you strain to read some elements) then yes, we can say it is flawed. There are established guidelines for minimum font size in a 10 foot UI.

[Zaaacharias]

Martijn, with all due respect, but your latest posts are not very constructive. People on this thread try to give feedback and help to make kodi better and what they get is "use it if you like it, if not don't"... I know for myself that getting feedback isn't easy and sometimes can make you angry, but you should see this thread as what it is: people trying to help and improve Kodi.
Of course it's impossible to make every single person happy, but like I wrote in a previous post Estuary is the new default skin and therefore should work for as many people and applications as possible. At the current state Estuary is not a good skin if used on a regular TV. Compare it to any other of the popular skins and you will easily see that font size IS a problem.
My suggestion: add an OPTION for bigger font size and less empty space. so the users can decide what suits them best.

[Ned Scott]

@voochi

Ah, fair enough. I would actually agree with your clarification, then :)

[Ned Scott]

@Zaaacharias

That's a great example and really helps illustrate the point a lot of us have been trying to make, but please be careful about what you use as an example image. Mainly, avoid references to banned add-ons (wiki). A list of just "movies" is okay, but there's a specific add-on name that should be avoided. I only mention it so that there is less chance a mod will delete your example in the future, as it really is a nice example.

Looks like it did get removed. Well, here's the screenshots with the offending name having been edited out:

EDIT: text quote as well:

Exactly my thoughts: a lot of wasted space ... not only in the EPG timeline but overall.
Don't get me wrong. I really like Estuary and think it's a great design but also think that it still needs some tweaking to be a great skin for as many people as possible. And that's what the default skin should be in my opinion: for as many people as possible.
I played around a little in Photoshop and scaled up a few elements and increased the font size. This is what I came up with:

Original:



Zaaacharias suggestion:

[rodalpho]

The ideal approach would be to poll Kodi users about their TV size and the distance they sit from it. This will produce a bell curve, with something like 40" size and 10' distance in the middle and extremes like 13" and a mile on the left, and 120" and 1' on the right. Then you make pains to offer text sizes that are easily readable for the middle third of the curve.

Thing is, we already know what sizes work-- TiVo did a ton of usability studies on this. When creating their SD UI back in 1998, targeting 4:3 CRT sets up to 27" large at 10 feet distance and 720x480p resolution, they used ENORMOUS fonts, with the entire screen functioning as a single horizontal list.



(Note, this is a native 4:3 image stretched to 16:9.)

I personally believe the original TiVo UI is the best 10' UI ever created. It is dead simple, with easily understood navigation-- left backs out, right drills in, and it's super easy to read yet not busy, retaining tons of whitespace. It has not yet been surpassed, including by TiVo themselves. Which takes us to...

The HD TiVo UI. They built their HD UI in 2010, targeting 16:9 1080p sets up to 42" large at 10 foot distance. They made more efficient use of the extra horizontal space and display sizes and moved to smaller fonts.



When you compare the font sizes on the HD UI TiVo to the official Kodi skin, the readability gap is stark and immediate.



The text size difference is obvious, but there's more to it-- the DVD covers for movies are attractive, but could anyone without Chuck Yeager's eyes read the Christmas Carol cover 10 feet away from a 40" TV? It's low contrast, tiny text. And the movie on the top right, with the green portal thing-- there's no title at all in that graphic! This is a case of cosmetics trumping usability, the exact opposite of my beloved SD TiVo UI at the top of this post.

[mazey]

I think slightly bigger wouldn't hurt. if its 11 go 12. bump it all up 1. should be fine since we have scrolling texts. honestly i struggle with a 55" at 10 feet. i really need to focus to read anything. and some stuff like the top left episode number during playback i cant read at all since its blueish.

[edrikk]

You started by saying it's flawed! That is absolutely no constructive criticism.

fyi I didn't design it, I'm no UI designer either but neither are you probably.

Hi Martijn,

I've been around long enough on the forums to know your tech expertise and knowledge.
With all due respect though, I disagree with this post. Although the word "flawed" is strong, the intention (to me) wasn't how it was interpreted, and thankfully it was cleared in a later post.

I really feel like the folks on this thread have been very peacefully / calmly sharing (as requested by Devs) that the current Estuary skin isn't usable in the living room/on a TV/from a distance.

It's fair to say that on a tablet or monitor its fine, but the use case behind why Estuary was said to be created for simply doesn't work as intended! (I am saying designed for based on the blog post from yourself which reads: "The first one is called Estuary and it will be what most of you will see from now as it is designed for the so-called “10 foot media center experience")

Is it fair to say "like it or leave it?" I guess it is... But at the same time, over the last whatever years, People leave the default skin on despite some awesome functionality from other skins because:

- it has been functional in nearly all Use Cases
- it is from the developers of the Core, so you assume a certain quality
- it's from the developers of the Core, so you know it won't break with the next version, and you have to re-accustom the family to something else.

So with that said, all we ask is to please look at the screen shots provided... The fonts in many areas, including plots, descriptions, etc are simply not readable from 10 feet away, on a 50" TV... This is comments from my wife who has 20-20 vision... She had to move to 5 feet away to read.. I can't tell my family that "it reads fine on my Kodi App, so suck it up!"


At the very least making font sizes selectable would help Users.

[scott967]

Font.xml allows for multiple fontsets, so yes it is possible to design different point-size fonts for the user to choose from. But, from my personal experience in doing/maintaining a skin mod, it is difficult to get a window layout that looks good with different point-size fonts. Often the "massive" ones are cut-off and need to scroll or can overlap, or at least the spacing of text elements doesn't look as nice. I find it is possible to make a compromise that looks "pretty much" OK, but I am a computer scientist not a graphic designer so my artistic sense may be flawed.

Creating a new fontset is probably one of the easier mods especially if you use the same ttf as in the original. so try it and see how good you can get it.

Edit. OK took about 5 mins to create an alternative arial ttf fontset that's 170% the default size. Has good and not so good points:



scott s.
.

[QueK9]

As an engineer I understand that no one wants to hear that their baby is ugly. You work your ass off and then when it is reviewed people try their damnedest to pick it apart. I don't care if it is constructive criticism; no one likes it. However, to make a better product it is important for the creator to listen and try to incorporate what the customer is asking for. Let's keep the peace because we all appreciate your work.