[UlfSchmidt]

Good evening @Buschel

Still not completely happy with your implementation of Global Search, but it’s obviously just my personal view:

1. Caching improved it very much
   
2. But …
   • Why do you call the Videos section here Music Videos? And there is even a small typo: VIdeos (with a capital I)
     
   • I am still convinced, that a global search needs to include album artists and movie collections too, otherwise a search e.g. for James Bond returns an empty list (at least an observation valid for the tagging I have in place - based on Kodi's standard scrapers)
     
   • … and misses all albums of a specific artist (I simply repeat one of my previous arguments, sorry)
     

Nevertheless,
Great work as always, everything else seems to work flawlessly! Thanks!

[Buschel]

• Caching -> Good to hear this works for you as well. Should be a good improvement, thanks for pointing this out.
  
• Music VIdeos -> Nice catch, I wasn't recognizing this. Fixed the typo already.
  
• Why "Music Videos" and not "Videos" -> Because this is what is requested and listed here. In fact, the menu is named different as also other Video-content can be reached from there.
  
• I could add the "Movie Collections" which then could be searched / filtered via their name as well.
  
• "Album artists" are included and can be searched (see section "Artists" or "Interpreten"). But I do not plan to change the search logic to also find albums artists for the listed albums. Album artists are listed under "artists".
  E.g. when searching "Genesis" you will find the album "Genesis" and the artist "Genesis". When you select the artist "Genesis" you will the list of albums by them -- exactly same behavior as when coming from the artist menu.
  

Thanks for sharing your user experience and ideas, even though I may not pick up all of them.

[UlfSchmidt]

Thanks for sharing your user experience and ideas, even though I may not pick up all of them.

Heul!

[Buschel]

Heul!

Small comfort: https://abload.de/img/simulatorscreenshot-idnj5w.png

[UlfSchmidt]

That was fast! Merci! Danke! Thanks!

[amasephy]

@Buschel

Thanks for the new beta so quickly.

So I’m noticing a few minor issues, but first the good news.

Up and down arrows work much more reliably now. Thanks.

Now for the quirks.

The new default pane setting. I noticed that this isn’t selecting the remote row on the main menu as it enters the remote pane. Even though the remote does automatically appear the server row on the main menu remains the one selected. Very minor.

I’m not sure if something changed with this release but if the app is resumed from suspension and Kodi server is turned back on it’s not going to the default pane anymore. Before I had mentioned the unnecessary pan animation even if it was already on the remote. Now it’s not going to the remote if it’s not on it.

With regards to the new global search index, the tiny shadow box pane that slides out under as you scroll the index has a minor issue. If you look closely the shadow box is not correctly aligned at the top. It’s off by 2mm screen height. I checked the other indices and they do not have that problem.

Possibly associated with the shadow box problem is if you are on the global search pane and reveal the right hand quick remote and pan back to the global search the index items all shift down almost the exact 2mm figure mentioned above about half a second after panning back.

[Buschel]

1. Missing selected row
Confirmed. Will look into this.

2. Default pane
Nothing was changed. What is the exact use case?

3. Offset of the index
Confirmed, and really weird. I was not seeing this as I was testing the iPhone in German language. The offset is visible as you described when the UI is in English, but not in German. Let's see if I can find this one.

[UlfSchmidt]

Hi @Buschel
some very minor issue I would appreciate to see fixed is the following: the year of a movie is known, but not the director. This currently results in this odd display. Could you please be so kind and change this to JAHR 1977 (or YEAR 1977) w/o parentheses?

Thanks!

[amasephy]

@Buschel

I think the issue with the remote not getting reset on Kodi server reconnect has to do with when the app is opened. If the app is opened (resumed) before Kodi server has been started then it doesn’t connect automatically.


Also, probably related to the prior issue with main menu not updating but if you are on say global search, suspend app, resume app and remote becomes the active pane the main menu will still be stuck on global search. Figured I would mention this as its slightly different from being stuck on server menu item.


Edit: An issue I presented before that you felt wasn’t and issue. I believe I noticed another nuance to it that makes it an actual issue.

In regards to the search box on movies for example.

- Activate the search box and then go back to the main menu

- Now pan back to movies. The search box is deactivated, although still visible. This is fine.

- Then go to the quick remote pane.

- Go back to movies pane. Search box is magically active again.

Note if you hit the cancel button to deactivate the search box instead of using the left main menu pane to deactivate the search box this is not a problem.

Also note that activating the search box causes that same index list jitter we just discussed on the global search.

Here’s a video of it in action. No taps, just panning the panes.

https://youtube.com/shorts/YmyvxILR8Gc?feature=share


Edit 2: Just noticed the search box length changes when you change the “sort by”. It’s only length when the type is set to title. Across every other type (year etc) it changes two what appears several different lengths. I think the text box should fill the full space like it does for title on all sort by types.

[Buschel]

Could you please be so kind and change this to JAHR 1977 (or YEAR 1977) w/o parentheses?

Done with PR#586 (screenshots included).

[Buschel]

@amasephy 
Your observations give me a hard time.

The index behaves really weird when the view is set to "automatic content insets". The misbehavior / vertical offset depends on the text which is used for the index. I am at the end of my possibilities and will stop researching this.

The use case with Global Search and the default pane is also just about marking the wrong menu, right? What should be possible without too much hassle is to unmark/deselect the current menu. But marking the menu entry for the default pane seems to require more coding than I feel appropriate. I will look at this tomorrow, but am not sure I will find an elegant solution ...

The issue in the video I will look at. Should not be too much of an issue.

The search box width is reduced by iOS when the table view's index is shown. I am not sure how to avoid this. In the grid view this does not happen as another index implementation is used.

[Buschel]

@amasephy, Good morning!

I found a solution for the "keyboard" topic. Now the keyboard is already restored when going back to the pane after swiping left to the main menu. The "default view" I could also hopefully get it finally right. The selection is correctly marked in the main menu on both iPad and iPhone. If another view was active before, it is unselected and the desired "default view" started and selected in the main menu. If the desired "default view" is already active, it is not reloaded, but just stays up.

On top of this I also worked on a few more improvements:

• New setting: Fallback to "art" when "fanart" is not present (PR#583)
  
• Move "Prefer TV Show poster" to app settings (PR#584)
  
• Add view options for TV Shows (PR#585)
  

Especially the last one is really nice. You need to resync the TV Shows data once, then you can switch the view in the App settings and do not need to resync anymore for each change of the setting. Also, the grid view and fullscreen on iPad is now supported. I was even thinking of removing the app setting "Prefer TV Show posters" completely and add a third view mode to the bottom toolbar (banner, list, grid). But this takes more work and I will not do it right away.

[UlfSchmidt]

Hi @Buschel

Nice to see that you eventually followed my arguments against this strange TV show poster setting. With your further improvements on this, we will get even full consistency between music, movies, and TV shows. Great work!

Maybe I should just wait a few days before I come back to the Global Search improvements I was asking for (may I already suggest a global search scope setting: "full" vs. "labels only"?)

Have a nice Sunday!
Ulf

[Buschel]

Maybe I should just wait a few days before I come back to the Global Search improvements I was asking for

You will love this: https://abload.de/img/simulatorscreenshot-i46jfc.png

[UlfSchmidt]

Warum nicht gleich so?
Simply amazing…
Another +1 for you!