Possibility: Menu Transitions?

[zwaldowski]

I was going to post this as a feature request to Flyspray, but I'd like to pass it on the forum first for opinions.  Now, what do I ask?  Menu transitions, a la those on the iPod and the Sansa.  I feel that logical movement between menus and screens would be very beneficial to a user's understanding of RB.  By this, I mean for:

• Menus to submenus go from right to left (e.g., new one pushes old one out)
• Submenus to menus go from left to right (e.g., old one pushes new one out)
• Context menus go from bottom to top (e.g., context menu pushes WPS up)
• Returning to WPS/main menu hotkey goes from top to bottom (e.g., it overrides all)

What do you think?

[safetydan]

This feature has been requested before and rejected.

Essentially it's just eye candy that's going to slow down navigation (because now you have to wait for the transition rather than have the menu instantly appear), and also cost RAM and CPU time because of the increase in code required to support fancy transitions. Both RAM and CPU time are precious and any changes in their use will have impacts on battery life.

[crzyboyster]

Well, I really don't see the point in this... Correct me if I'm wrong, but this really doesn't have many benefits at all...

[psycho_maniac]

You are correct. Just eye candy. I love the idea, but I would rather see it on my computer more than my dap.

[cool_walking_]

I am against this.  As already said, this would slow down navigation.  Eye candy is nice to have sometimes, but it should never get in the way of functionality.

[zwaldowski]

All valid points.  I was just looking for some room to bounce ideas.  I had similar reservations about it.

[wesmo]

A lack of eye candy might actually turn away some new (non tech/audiophile) users - i.e. "rockbox has awesome features but looks crap compared to my default firmware."

I couldn't care less about fading menus in/out, but an setting that allows you to change layouts - similar to nokia series 40 phones (grid, menu, slide) would be nice.

How much ram/cpu time would be wasted? And how dramatic would the impact on batt life be?

[nls]

it's impossible to say how much resources it would take up but would only use cpu time while the transition was in progress. IMHO this is useless eyecandy but I wouldn't oppose a clean, efficient implementation that didn't slow down navigation. However it would probably complicate the ui code a bit... (which is bad)

[crash91]

IMO it shouldnt take up that much memory and CPU. Whats there to do? Take a dump of the current screen, save it in temp memory, then display that, and cut off whatever part you want (right part if right>left) and draw a bit of the menu on the side. Yes, it would complicate the ui code, and anyway, if pictureflow exsists, and could possibly be used in the future when songs are playing, why not this?

[GodEater]

We await your patch to do this with interest.

[AlexP]

if pictureflow exsists, and could possibly be used in the future when songs are playing, why not this?

Pictureflow is a plugin, therefore the resources question goes away.

[linuxstb]

IMO it shouldnt take up that much memory and CPU. Whats there to do? Take a dump of the current screen, save it in temp memory, then display that, ...

What temp memory?  Rockbox doesn't have any:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WhyNoMalloc

[Mad Cow]

I've seen the transitions in the ipod OF and I hated them, they were really jumpy and only displayed 3 or 4 frames of the screen sliding so it looked like crap, while slowing down navigation. I guess a good, smooth implementation would be nice, but from what I've seen on the ipod that would be fairly hard.