[umcisou]

Are you going to have cd / dvd cover art in your now playing?

That would be cool.

J

Yes I'm trying to, especially for the music section.

In fact most part of the system of those new features is set up. But I have still to make the GUI, including cover.

I have a lot of professional work these days but I hope November will be more quiet to work on this.

[alexisazen]

I tried it this weekend on my N810. It looks good and works as advertised.
Thank you for your efforts!

[uchenzei]

I'm working on an evolution with some new feautures : browse and play your music and now playing.
So you will be able to use it with your TV off.
I will post about it as soon as possible.

I really can't wait to see the results of your efforts

[uchenzei]

Go to post #12 and I've posted a link to a version that you can use with out turning on your tv. If you go up a couple posts you can get to the link for the thread that has screen shots.

J

Hi J,
please could you repost the correct link for the latest version of your interface? (I mean the one with those big buttons on the bottom and with scrolling bar fixed).
The last link you referred to in that thread seems to be no longer working.

Thanks in advance

[jjchambers]

sure I'll get it up and post here. It may take a couple days but I'll get to it.

J

[uchenzei]

sure I'll get it up and post here. It may take a couple days but I'll get to it.

J

Excellent, I'll wait for it.

[jjchambers]

Sorry it took so long but here is the default.asp file and the syles folder. They are in a file called web.rar. Just drop these in your web folder under xbmc. Obviously backup the originals just in case.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=b5d6a...b9a8902bda

Anyone is more then welcome to modify the original if you want and post back here to show how the changes look.

J

[jadz]

And alternatively to overwriting your existing web interface files just create a new sub-directory and extract the files there. That way you have both the original and the updated version.

[azinck]

Hi all,

I'm looking into setting up a HTPC again after being away from the rat race for a few years. Interfaces have really come a long way, and XBMC is very impressive. I came across this very useful thread a couple of days ago while looking for a way to control my HTPC. Thanks for all the work you have put in (particularly umcisou).

I've made a few updates to the tool. Here's a rundown:

Features/improvements:
- Ajax is used to send commands much faster
- Navigate menus with the D-Pad and go forward and back through menus using D-pad's middle button along with the "back" button just below the D-pad
- Press and hold middle button in D-pad to pull up context-sensitive menu
- Press and hold "back" button to return to home menu
- New graphics and more efficient use of space since a "soft" D-pad is no longer needed
- Vertical-scrollbar no longer appears in full-screen mode

Known issues/concerns:
- Background is orange. The N770 (I don't know about the other Nokia devices) highlights elements on the page in orange as you use the D-pad to move around. I've made the background orange so that you can't see this outline. If anyone figures out a more elegant solution please let me know.
- The "Back" button (the button immediately below the D-pad) isn't disabled. It's the button to use to back out of XBMC's menus, but it's also the browser's back button. There doesn't seem to be a way to suppress the "back" behavior via javascript, so if there's a page in your history and you press that button your N770 will navigate to the previous web page. The solution is to always launch the browser and go to the page directly via a bookmark so there won't be any pages in your history for that browsing session.
- Sometimes the browser crashes when pressing or holding the back button. This seems to just be a bug in the browser but it's annoying.

I only have an N770 so there may be some design choices I've made that aren't optimal for the other devices. If you have feedback I'm happy to hone it further.

My version of the remote looks like this:


You can download it from here:
http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-n770-remote/

[jjchambers]

azinck, this sounds awesome! Being able to use the d-pad will be great so you don't have to look at the screen to move around. I'll check this out ASAP (I have an N800) and let you know how it goes.

J

[azinck]

Yeah, wanting to add d-pad support is what motivated me to make the modifications. Let me know how it goes for you on the n800; it's possible (though unlikely) that the n800 and n810 might use different keycodes for the button presses.

Now, the n810 opens up lots of possibilities with its hardware keyboard. If someone owns an N810 they might have fun modifying my controls.js file to support loads of functionality through the hardware buttons.

[jjchambers]

I love it! D-pad works great, back button works how you said it would (you need to open right to the page otherwise it goes back to previous browser page). The only button I think you really need to put in is the MENU button from the original remote. Put it right between your HOME and INFO buttons. I use that button on almost every movie to switch between analog or digital sound and adjust the aspect ratio and what not. When I'm in full-screen (on my N800) there are no scroll bars.

I think you can almost get rid of the fast forward and rewind buttons but keep the skip buttons. When watching a move, the left and right d-pad buttons skip fwd and back 10 sec, and the up and down d-pad buttons skip fwd and back 5 min. The center d-pad button also pauses and un-pauses when watching a movie or listening to music so you could almost get rid of the pause button also. When listening to music, the left and right d-pad will skip to next or previous song.

The mute button worked great but I could not get the volume up or down to work. No big deal since I don't use the volume buttons through the xbox. Which lead to a personal request: I control the volume through my receiver or tv. Do know if there is a way to send an http command from inside your app. I need the volume up and down to send an http command to Event Ghost which then sends an ir command out of my USB-UIRT to the TV or receiver to adjust the volume. I'm working on a very cheap home control web page using Even Ghost and USB-UIRT to control all of my HT stuff from the N800.

Thanks for the great app! I'm gonna dig into it a bit and see if I can figure out what changes what...
edit: nevermind, I know nothing about javascript so I won't be any use, other then testing it out on an N800.

J

[azinck]

I love it! D-pad works great, back button works how you said it would (you need to open right to the page otherwise it goes back to previous browser page). The only button I think you really need to put in is the MENU button from the original remote. Put it right between your HOME and INFO buttons. I use that button on almost every movie to switch between analog or digital sound and adjust the aspect ratio and what not. When I'm in full-screen (on my N800) there are no scroll bars.

Thanks for the detailed assessment of its usability on the n800, jjchambers. I only have a moment to reply now so I'll be less than complete, but just wanted to address one thing real fast. The MENU button is actually there: you hold down the middle button of the D-Pad. Do you think that's too subtle? Once you know it's there I think it "feels" right. I could add a software button, too. I'll follow up with more later...

[jjchambers]

Thanks for the detailed assessment of its usability on the n800, jjchambers. I only have a moment to reply now so I'll be less than complete, but just wanted to address one thing real fast. The MENU button is actually there: you hold down the middle button of the D-Pad. Do you think that's too subtle? Once you know it's there I think it "feels" right. I could add a software button, too. I'll follow up with more later...

That's awesome if it is there. I'll check it out tonight. You may want to put that in your readme file. Thanks again.

J

[azinck]

That's awesome if it is there. I'll check it out tonight. You may want to put that in your readme file. Thanks again.

J

Excellent, thanks for the feedback.

It is in my readme, but maybe my terminology is vague, I've only been using XBMC for about a week now so I don't have all the lingo down. I wrote:
"- Press and hold middle button in D-pad to pull up context-sensitive menu"

It would probably be clearer if I made a separate section of the readme file dedicated to describing the behavior of the hardware buttons.

I think you can almost get rid of the fast forward and rewind buttons but keep the skip buttons. When watching a move, the left and right d-pad buttons skip fwd and back 10 sec, and the up and down d-pad buttons skip fwd and back 5 min. The center d-pad button also pauses and un-pauses when watching a movie or listening to music so you could almost get rid of the pause button also. When listening to music, the left and right d-pad will skip to next or previous song.

I considered this. It's true that the transport buttons are often redundant but I think they're still useful for when you might be listening to music while doing something else in the interface. In that situation they give you one-touch access to those behaviors without having to pull up the music screen. I would be more eager to remove them if I could think of buttons I'd really like to add in place of them. Do you have any suggestions for useful buttons that could go in their place?

The mute button worked great but I could not get the volume up or down to work. No big deal since I don't use the volume buttons through the xbox.

Hmm, volume up and down work for me just fine (I'm running the Windows version of XBMC) but I'll keep an eye on that problem.

Which lead to a personal request: I control the volume through my receiver or tv. Do know if there is a way to send an http command from inside your app. I need the volume up and down to send an http command to Event Ghost which then sends an ir command out of my USB-UIRT to the TV or receiver to adjust the volume. I'm working on a very cheap home control web page using Even Ghost and USB-UIRT to control all of my HT stuff from the N800.

Yes, this would be very easy to do. All this little app does is send HTTP requests. You can do this yourself without knowing anything about javascript:

- In the n770/js directory, open controls.js in your text editor of choice
- in the "command_map" array at the top of the file find the line that starts with 'btn-vol-down' and change the command to whatever http request you need to send to event ghost. You would change the portion of the line that's in green below:

Code:

'btn-vol-down'    :{'command':'[color=green]../xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=Action&parameter=89[/color]'},

- do the same for 'btn-vol-up' and 'mute' (and anything else!), if you want.