[amasephy]

I guess I should add some additional perspective on why I even suggested the keyboard be active on the global search.

If you recall, the feature that you added that brought me to this thread originally was the “bottom aligned” remote. One of the first features I asked for was the ability to swipe back and forth between panes like the remote. Can you guess what these things all have in common? They reduce how much reaching my thumb has to do towards the top of the screen. I really dislike it when apps force me to reach really far. As you mentioned phones try to be one handed devices. I have a 12 mini, the smallest current device, and it’s still hard to reach the top of the screen even with my larger than average hands. I really appreciate uix decisions that take that into consideration. I don’t know how people manage with their regular or jumbo sized phones.

Food for thought, even Apple realizes this is a problem and moved Safaris address bar to the bottom.

In short, I’m all for anything you can do to reduce taps (like the remote being default) and reaching for things towards the top of the screen (being able to swipe between panes).

[Buschel]

Can this be done on the down arrow? Interestingly this tap conflict issue isn’t a problem when using the alphabetic indexer feature. Maybe you can look at that and see if there is an obvious thing in code that prevents tap conflicts?

Yes, I would do this for both arrows. I guess most people would try to touch the arrows where the horizontal part of the arrow is. This is already at the border of the button, so touching this is often failing. As far as I can see the index is just using a bigger touchable area.

Global search: it takes very long (more than 30 seconds) to load all items from my archive and it seems there is no caching of the item list, which renders the feature almost useless for me. When loaded and doing a search, I miss results where e.g. the artist matches. It seems that only titles are currently taken into account by the search algorithm. So e.g. I can find all my Genesis DVDs, but only the album titled "Genesis" is listed. Not what I would expect from a "global" search…

Hmm, caching would be an option to reduce the loading time. The search is only checking for the labels, meaning it will look for the artist name in the artist section or for the song title in the songs section. Kodi's web interface does it the same way, and I felt this is useful. If I would show also all songs of an artist which match the search, this would list too many songs in my opinion. In this case you can either select the artist from the list (which enters the list of albums by this artist) or directly go to the music menu to check for music roles.

[UlfSchmidt]

Hmm, caching would be an option to reduce the loading time. The search is only checking for the labels, meaning it will look for the artist name in the artist section or for the song title in the songs section. Kodi's web interface does it the same way, and I felt this is useful. If I would show also all songs of an artist which match the search, this would list too many songs in my opinion. In this case you can either select the artist from the list (which enters the list of albums by this artist) or directly go to the music menu to check for music roles.

Not all songs of an artist, but at least all albums of an artist
And, since all songs, albums, movies, etc. are already cached, just grep thru these?

Different topic, which I wanted to address since a while:
Why is only the way how TV shows are listed not set up in the settings part of the App, but hidden in the individual connection settings. Or is this just on the iPad?

[Buschel]

Not all songs of an artist, but at least all albums of an artist
And, since all songs, albums, movies, etc. are already cached, just grep thru these?

Well, I agree this reduces the amount of "hits", but you can still achieve what you want with selecting the artist from the same list. Just 1 click away.

Different topic, which I wanted to address since a while:
Why is only the way how TV shows are listed not set up in the settings part of the App, but hidden in the individual connection settings. Or is this just on the iPad?

Good question, I was asking this myself. The only difference is: As it is done right now, you can handle this different for each connected server. Otherwise this setting would be valid for each server. I can only imagine this was done due to different behaviour of different Kodi server versions ...

[UlfSchmidt]

Well, I agree this reduces the amount of "hits", but you can still achieve what you want with selecting the artist from the same list. Just 1 click away.

But for my Genesis DVDs I see both the Genesis Collection of DVDs and the individual DVDs, but for my Genesis CDs, the behavior is different. (I understand why it is the way it is I am asking just for the sake of consistency )

Good question, I was asking this myself. The only difference is: As it is done right now, you can handle this different for each connected server. Otherwise this setting would be valid for each server. I can only imagine this was done due to different behaviour of different Kodi server versions ...

Maybe good point in time to harmonize the settings. I still remember when I was eagerly looking for this option, because I knew it was there, but I was no longer able to find it! Nothing else can be set up per server, why the **** this option?

[Buschel]

Seems I need to add some Music DVDs as well. Btw, I should really take the time and watch the good old Wembley Concert from the Invisible Touch Tour again. Should still be somewhere in my disc collection.

Over my breakfast coffee I will look into the change history when the banner/cover setting was introduced. Maybe there are some hints on why it was done like this.

[Buschel]

Over my breakfast coffee I will look into the change history when the banner/cover setting was introduced. Maybe there are some hints on why it was done like this.

This was -- about 10 years ago -- implemented using an App-wide setting. 1 week later it was changed to a setting per instance, and sadly there is no comment on the reason behind. I also cannot see any thread here which points to this. Let me create a GitHub issue for this and see if the founder might comment on this.

[UlfSchmidt]

Thanks for your research on this. While you enjoy your well deserved coffee, I wanted to share my thoughts about some App functionality:
For me, when I started using the iOS App, I had very soon the impression that the programmer of it simply used the App to try as many as possible of the API functions available. It looked so cluttered (and still does, since you are very cautious when it comes to UI modifications. And I’m talking about modifications, not extensions).
I still think that the TV series mode is simply there because the programmer wanted to learn how to implement this specific kind of UI element. Same for this fancy About pop-up in the bottom left, the embossed Kodi logo almost everywhere, the excessive use of artwork, that is even moving around etc.
Sorry, I do not want to blame or offend anyone, it is just my personal opinion. I highly appreciate all the work done by every contributor and the App in its current status is already a huge improvement in terms of usability and functionality. But I still think it is somehow overloaded and not as clean as it could be.

[amasephy]

@Buschel

After using the new beta for a day I noticed a minor quirk. No sure if anything can be done about it.

If you leave the remote app running in suspended mode (not force closing it) after you shut down Kodi server you will notice this.

-Start up Kodi again.

-Resume the remote app. It will present the last used screen which for me is typically the remote screen.

- Since the app has a few second delay before connecting to Kodi server it will reconnect a moment after resuming the app.

- Since the app is already on the remote screen it would be nice if it didn’t slide the remote out of view and then back into view upon server reconnect.

- Maybe some check could be performed where if the app is already on the default pane when the server connects, it won’t try and go to the remote screen again,(or whatever the default is) thus avoiding the sliding animation.

[Buschel]

Yes, this is definitely caused by the new feature to enter a certain menu after (re-)connecting. This is software, so you can do nearly anything.
I can look at this, but will not give it high priority.

In the meanwhile I increased button size for the up and down arrows for better touch-experience. Works a lot better now.

Based on the feedback on the missing caching for the Global Search I started looking into it. I have caching basically working, but this unveiled an issue which I now need to understand and resolve before moving on. These are exactly the reasons why the last build was a pure test build, and nothing was merged yet.

[UlfSchmidt]

The App never worked better, even if you name it "a pure test build". Please do not roll back anything…

[amasephy]

Thanks, much appreciated. I agree, this test build is the best version yet.

[Buschel]

Quick update. I now could resolve the issue with the Global Search caching and could also add basic sorting (by type and and by name). With sorting also the sections and the index becomes available as suggested. Screenshots: https://abload.de/img/bildschirmfoto2022-01vlk6u.png

I hope we can provide an updated TF build soon.

[amasephy]

Looking good! Caching was definitely a good idea. Having the index will make scrolling this nice I bet.

[Buschel]

1.10 build 3145.42

Here comes the next test build with a few already announced changes:
- Better touch usability for the up/down arrows
- Library cache for the Global Search
- Sort option incl. index for the Global Search

Happy testing!