[Martijn]

2) you can absolutely right click using a remote

4) plex as example? Sorry but that's just not right as that interface is just not great in my opinion and its different between each platform you have wich is again awful for consistency. Also take a look at the server side which also not that new user friendly. Not saying we can't improve but certainly don't point us to another bad example that we should follow.

10) you have absolutely no idea how much effort we spend on making an upgrade completely work without loosing data. So whatever you said on this point is just completely false. If you did loose data it means some weird stuff happened or you had third party crap installed that screwed up the upgrade and that is not our fault.

Not gonna comment on there points however there are valid once but in the end it all comes down to time we do not have long. So if some one steps up and improves them he or she is free to do so.

[jerome___]

@Martijn  2/ good... how to do ? I searched and never found. Why do you not just tell me how to do that ? I not understand your way to communicate, please... just share.

4/ we have two different point of views on that. I would be curious to see a survey result on that, because i never read users to be as confused as they seems to be with Kodi than with Plex. It looks like, more and more, for you, and maybe because of you are implicate in the project, it is KODI ONLY, and all the other are bad (because you are not implicate ?)... well, you seems to be a very young boy. i can just show that you can not accept any feedback (or for sure, only positive feedback).

0/ well, read this feed back for user. Ok, i can understand (and i trust you on that point... i think i can because you want to be honest) that you make effort (how much ? do you talk about time or what is the quantity unit ?). ok. Well, maybe the next update will show that how much effort you do has a full win on that point. All users, and devs to would like, for sure. No third party crap installed also... i not loose media datas, but configuration. Maybe this day it is better. But i can notice that, directly, your opinion is that it should be my fault... like that, maybe for be more honest ?... it is funny, isn't it ?

hope you want to be honest all the time, not only when you are speaking about an other one subject for answer. But... it seems to be clear about what you can accept or not. Let adults devs care about feedback please. I really appreciate your implication for code and how much you share what you seems to know... but communication and feedback is actually not your horse.

[wyrm]

Jerome_,

I’m Australian and while our national language is English I’m sure there have been no shortage of people scratching their heads trying to understand what the hell I’m talking about on occasions . You are trying to get your ideas across from French to English via google, you will be fighting an uphill battle with that endeavour. May I suggest you find a English speaking friend whom can translate for you and start presenting your ideas one at a time in seperate threads.

As to your point about Plex doing something with their GUI better than Kodi, while possible this is unlikely, Plex is an offshoot of Kodi so will share a number of our sins. Maybe things might be simpler, but that is possibly due to Kodi having a much richer feature set than Plex.

Now trust me there is work to be done in simplying the Kodi GUI. The PVR section comes to mind as far as how consistently it fits with the rest of the program. It has come a very long way with fitting in, but in my opinion it still is not there.

As to the customisation part of your posts. Go check other skins as there are all maner of different solutions to this issue that have been tried. Find a skin that most closely fits your ideas and then post on that skins forum questions and suggestions as far as usability is concerned. There are a number of places where the skin writer is heavily constrained on what they can change about Kodi, although in most cases with a heroic effort it is possible to make large scale changes to UI handling. In other parts of Kodi it is mandatory to provide your own vision of what the UI does. The home screen is a perfect example of this, as just about anything goes on this screen.

The last thing I would suggest is that you give the wiki a complete once over. There are a number of concepts that a new user really needs to understand to get the most from the program. There are a number of issues that you might find disappear if you stop trying to solve them from within the program and make use of things like smart playlists or make changes to the advanced settings file.

Remember Kodi is a Home Theater package driven by a remote viewed from a distance, not a media program using a keyboard and mouse from a short distance. While we endeavour to provide support for input methods other than remotes, these are secondary to the main aim of the program and UI. Sometimes you just have to get down and dirty with the inner working to get exactly what you are after.

Wyrm (AppTV)

[jerome___]

No, i think Plex UI should be a model because when you go inside a menu and click back, (for example), you will never fall in an other view like in Kodi. As i told allready (and i think english people should understand perfectly, if they want), when you want to go back from a menu in Kodi, in some situations, you not go back on same view, but on kind of file manager (with kind of directories) view. And again, that is too bad.
You can find many excuse for lie about this, but it is so simple to look and see that a UI who does not come back on the same view when the user is going back is a klinky.
Ok guys, i feel like you doesn't want to do something different or better, you doesn't want to look at users feedback... it si like that, i will not loose my time for people who doesn't want to move and look for ecuses instead of try to be constructive, or for some people who just said "you absolutly can do it", and never explain how.
This kind of spirit i don't like.
Bye and good luck. Now, i know why Kodi is like that...

[jjd-uk]

1.0 Yes I'd agree it would be nice to have multi-select within the the Kodi GUI window listing, at the moment I think multi-select is restricted to pop up dialogs, so this may need major changes to the GUI code.

1.1 Not sure what you mean by this? what metadata is lost?

2. If by right click you mean the menu you get when you select an item then right click on it, this is the Context Menu, and is accessed on your remote by pressing and holding the OK button.

3. No idea what problem you are seeing here, if enter a new window then go back then you should always return to the point you came from. If this does not happen for you then there maybe a bug.

4. Plex targets a different market than us, Plex is designed for to make access to media as simply as possible, they don't have many of the things we do as Kodi is more for the AV enthusiast that wants to view/listen to their media in the best possible quality. So for Plex quality matters less than usability, however for us quality always comes first. But sure there probably is many things we can maybe learn from Plex to increase the usability of Kodi.

5. Yes this is a failing with what the default skin can do with the current Kodi code. This is something we very much want to bring to a default Kodi install, however currently no one has either the time or skill to get this done. At the moment if you want this type of flexibility you need to use one of the skns that support custom home items, see https://kodi.wiki/view/Custom_home_items and https://kodi.wiki/view/Custom_home_items/Aeon_Nox_Silvo

6. Yes going back to point 1 then to enable multiselect in Library listing windows you'll need to enter a mode that disables playback of items or display of info on selection in order to allow the selection of multi items, personally I'd call it "Manager mode" to fit with the use of "Manage" on the Context Menu.

7.1 See below that is what "Remove this main menu item" does.

7.2 See below that is what "Enter files section" does did you read the text?



8. This is simply not possible, we rely on users reporting addons are not working or the devs to tells us they are no longer updating the addon, then we can mark the addon as broken on the repo.

9. Not going to happen, Kodi is an open platform and we like providing people the flexibility to do what they want with Kodi.

10. We take great care that nothing is ever lost on update, however with over 50 millions users with many different types of hardware combinations, it's impossible for us to test every scenario, so unfortunately on ocassions someone may have a problem when doing an update.

[jjd-uk]

You can find many excuse for lie about this, but it is so simple to look and see that a UI who does not come back on the same view when the user is going back is a klinky.

No one is making excuses, but I suspect no one understands exactly what you are referring to, as I certainly don't understand what you say you are seeing, as it's certainly never something I've seen in my usage of Kodi and that is no lie. You should always return along the exact same path you took to get to an item, we specifically remember the history of user selections for this very purpose, if there's situations where that is not happening then there is a definite bug. It would help massively if you took the time to pot some screenshots, as no one is calling you a liar either, we just don't understand the problem you are seeing.

[Quihico]

0/ The problem of Kodi UI is not the fault of the skin devs… if skin can change totaly Kodi, then the problem at first place is Kodi to let skin change to much Kodi. 

I have to completely disagree here, I think one of the best things about Kodi is that you can change/configure just about everything to your liking directly from the UI while still having a pretty solid default/starting configuration for new users that are not yet familiar with all the options.

1/ 1.0/How to select many medias (videos/movies/musics...) in one time ?

You can map the ToggleWatched-function to a button on your remote (for keyboard-users it is allready mapped to the letter "w") and then you can change the status for a single movie or even a whole category or folder of movies with one button-click. Seems to me that this is just as much effort or less even as having to select each movie in a multi-selection dialog so this point is not valid to me. Just that you haven't yet figured out how to to do it, does not mean it is not possible.

1.1/ Is it possible to loose meta-datas about mdeias ? for example, for a movie who has been seen or not ?

Keeping metadata when upgrading kodi version is the default, this includes watched status and user-ratings.
And you can also keep watched status when importing a videodatabase backup or from .nfo-files. Granted, it does require a little preconfiguration using advancedsettings.xml but it is definately possible and relatively easy even.

2/ when user use Kodi connected to a TV and use his remote TV control for command Kodi (like I do), how user can right click on jacket movie ?

Again, very much possible and the default even for most setups since the contextmenu-function is mapped to a bunch of default remote-layouts either to the "f1"-button or the "menu"-button. For my PhilipsTV-remote over CEC it was not available by default but mapping that contextmenu to an otherwise rarely-used button took all of 10 seconds over 8 years ago and I have been able to use it without adjusting ever since.

3/ when you go inside menu for extensions or for medias, etc… if you go back you will sometimes fall on a kind of file-reader view. ... When you go back, you have to see where you went from.

That is also default behaviour but there was a period in which a bug prevented this behaviour (because of some checking for slashes in the parent-path I think) but that has been corrected now. Keep in mind that here again are several options available for users. There's: Backspace, Nav_Back, Parent_Dir, Previous_Menu, all of which can have slightly different behaviour depending on point of origin and configured settings.

4/ if you want to see a nice and clear UI design you should go for look at plex.

Plex originally was a XBMC-fork. I think it should be pretty easy to make a skin to make Kodi look and feel exactly like Plex so have at it I'd say.

5/ imagine I want to populate a media menu with specifics filters, how is it complicate to just find where to do that and after… how to do that.

I feel you should focus more on your language skills and searching capabilities because you are once more asking for features that are allready present. Have a look at video nodes & smart playlists

6/ That is why, in the left panel (the one who appear when you go maximum left), there is a nice place for put an “edit mode” button (also because right click is for mouse only… remote control can not access it).

This is where Kodi's add-on system comes into play nicely as there is a an add-on that will allow you to do exactly that: library editor script. There are even some skins that have it integrated allready, most in the contextmenu, for your issues with that, see point 2/
 

7.1/ user can enable/disable them from setting menu, and an other one sub-menu. Ok… why not just directly access it from this famous edit mode ?

I have come across at least one skin (don't remember which one sadly or I would have linked it) that has exactly that option. Personally, I do not feel this should be available by default since it will allow (new) users to "mess up" considerably which will cause a lot of frustration.
 

7.2/ when you click on the menu, at first time there is nothing inside, but the menu appears. At first use and without addons, user is a bit locked inside the “Kodi con,cept of organisation” (who is, I think, a bad concept and prove is that many users are confused with this concept, don’t lie this return users fact). Instead of have a strange and locked menus concept, it should be possible to have something more flexible and clean in first time open. To ask users where are medias, how they want to be organized, etc.

Imo, this is exactly what Kodi's default skin for Krypton and above (Estuary) does, maybe not as elaborate as you suggest here but it does clearly explain you need to add content and offers you to bring you to the right place to do so.

8/ for addons, every body, Pierre, Paul, Jacques can do his addon… well, that is nice. But then, there is nothing to wash unmaintained and unusable addons ?

There definately is, you can mark an addon as broken in it's addon.xml on the repository and Kodi will then notify users it is marked as broken and offer to disable it if it is currently enabled on the user's system. Again, it feels more and more like you are only showing your inability to search/find/use features allready implemented.
 

9/ with addons also, if an addon can change the aspect and the functions of Kodi, so concept of addon on Kodi is unsafe. Also, that is a point for show that Kodi UI is not flexible at start time already. And it should be better to first be more flexible, but more restrictive for addon change abilities.

What version of kodi are you using? Have you even tried a clean/fresh install as on Krypton onwards you need to enable third-party repositories and that gives a very clear notification on what the consequences could be. If that third-party option is not enabled, only addons from official Kodi repository can be used and those are checked & vetted before they are included in Kodi's official repository.

10/ update time… make users afraid to loose things. That should be a priority to, before to post new update as “stable”, be sure that no one will have a risk to loose datas or loose configuration.

Kodi goes through at least a dozen beta & pre-release versions before releasing a stable version and as with all programs, users are advised to backup their stuff before upgrading. Adhering to that simple advice will ensure you never have to loose anything even if an upgrade goes wrong, which for me has never happened and I've upgraded AND downgraded loads of times.

Do not get me wrong, I think there are aspects of Kodi that can be improved upon but I also think that most of those aspects are at present very usable at the very least.

[Klojum]

Making up excuses, lies?!? Kodi's GUI should look like Plex?!? Make users afraid to loose things?! That's not the most effective way to make friends here.
I think mr Jerome here drank the wrong wine yesterday.

Apparently they only way to create improvements is in the French way. And none other. So far we've had only a handful of people complaining on the GUI's inner workings. And now Kodi has to change its GUI just for those 3-4 people, while the other tens of millions others Kodi GUI users don't seem to have a problem. And all the while, Kodi is not caring for users with older Kodi/XMBC versions??... What a crock of horse manure.

Somehow it reminds me of a clip of Robin Williams' tv show "Live on Broadway" in 2002...

[jools5000]

Nice video... made me laugh

I did a bit of a dogfood test last December.  Disabled Kodi (gasp) and installed Plex Media Player on my HTPC.  Lasted all of 2 weeks before I uninstalled. 

Yes Plex looks nice and has a simple UI, but god it struggles with large libraries (way to much scrolling).  Lack of view customisation (and general customisation).  Slower to navigate (just not as responsive as Kodi)

Each to their own and its not hard to give Plex a ago - I keep it for accessling my library when away from home, it handles all the transcoding etc.  But for local use Kodi is lightyears ahead even before installing any skins or addons.

[nickr]

Calling someone a liar is pretty damn offensive. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't make him a liar. It is a difference of OPINION. Just because you think someone is wrong, doesn't make them a liar.

I agree that the way kodi jumps back is sometimes unintuitive. But it is a complex beast and sometimes shit happens GUI wise.

Where you want to go is always only a few remote clicks away.

Oh and ContextMenu (c on keyboard, long press OK on remote) is the functional equivalent of right click.