More controlls for the quick option menu?

[Left4Cake]

Could the quick option menu that you pull up by holding down, also have scroll wheel up and down as keys to input with?

[Chronon]

To input what?  Currently, the quick screen allows you to increment the value of a setting by pressing the button corresponding to the direction of the setting's label.  You need to more carefully describe what you propose that the scroll wheel actions would do upon entering this screen because it's not clear to me.

[gbl08ma]

I guess s/he is trying to say that there should be more positions on the quick screen, so instead of having four keys to change settings (up, down, left, right), we would also have more keys (holding and also scroll up and scroll down on targets with scrolling wheel).

I also think the quick menu could be much useful, and I got a bit different and perhaps more different proposal: add more settings to the quick menu (in fact, my mostly used settings are more than 4), using a multiple quick screens system. On targets with scroll wheels, to change of screen on the quick menu we could use scrolling. (on other targets, I think most of them have a spare, unused on quick screen key that could do this task)
If we just added three screens, we would already be enough to assign 12 settings, more than enough for me; ideally, the number of screens would be a setting - but this is not a must.

Here is my idea of the UI explained with ASCII "art": (read from left column to right column, from up to down)


Assigning custom names to quick screen is much likely useless, but if doesn't evolve too much work, I think it sould be added because it will allow more organization.

Things to do/investigate/define on this proposal:
- How to save these settings for the new quick screen, specially if the number of quick screens is dynamic (user can set how many screens s/he wants)
- Remove the "Screen 1/1" text is user only wants one quick screen - assuming the number of screens is dynamic
- Improve usability/speed when pinning a setting to a quick screen
- Extend the quick screen to not only define settings, but also launch files and plugins (plugins are files, at the end)
(this last one might be difficult to implement because files aren't static things, and well, it's just a suggestion - it's in bold because I think it's important, even without implementing all the rest of my suggestion)

Now, even if this is a great idea, I'm sure almost nobody will come up wanting to code it. I think that coding will not be the most hard part, after we get a clean idea without any doubts of how it should work.

PS: I'm gonna setup my development environment, this time on a real machine and not on a VM, wish me good luck

[Chronon]

Thank you.  This is much clearer now.  Do you think there should be a way to also switch screens on targets that lack a scroll wheel?

[bluebrother]

This would be somewhat problematic for players with small screens -- just think of the Archos Ondio for example, or the Sansa Clip for a more recent one. Some players also don't have enough keys for more input actions (for example the Iriver h100 series). I would rather completely remove the Quick Screen and replace it with a customizable menu that can hold any entry from the menu. That means you'd need to enter the entry before you can change it but IMO that's still acceptable. Another option would be to have a "Quickchange List" which uses double lines that show both setting and value and is navigated via up / down, and changed via left / right (or the appropriate keys depending on your player).

Something like this, selected item marked with # at the beginning of the line:

Code: [Select]

# Volume
#        -10dB
 Shuffle
         Off
 Show files
         All


[gbl08ma]

Thank you.  This is much clearer now.  Do you think there should be a way to also switch screens on targets that lack a scroll wheel?

Yes, of course we should not leave this feature off of all the targets without a scroll wheel.

This would be somewhat problematic for players with small screens -- just think of the Archos Ondio for example, or the Sansa Clip for a more recent one. Some players also don't have enough keys for more input actions (for example the Iriver h100 series). I would rather completely remove the Quick Screen and replace it with a customizable menu that can hold any entry from the menu. That means you'd need to enter the entry before you can change it but IMO that's still acceptable. Another option would be to have a "Quickchange List" which uses double lines that show both setting and value and is navigated via up / down, and changed via left / right (or the appropriate keys depending on your player).

Something like this, selected item marked with # at the beginning of the line:

Code: [Select]

# Volume
#        -10dB
 Shuffle
         Off
 Show files
         All


bluebrother, your idea is also feasible, but I think that for targets that can handle the quick screen type I suggested, with various screens, it should be used, and keep that simple menu for those targets without a big enough screen or enough keys. From my point of view, one of the goods of the quick screen as it is now, on targets with scroll wheel, is that you don't need to scroll to change the settings, like happens on menus. That allows you to do an operation with your eyes closed, or while looking at other things. For example, on iPods you hold the Menu key and then click one of the directional keys, which is something you can do by feeling the keys.
If you put a menu instead, you cannot feel the current menu selection and thus you don't know where to click. Unless you activate voice which has some inconveniences (at least fro me) if you're not visually impaired: 1. the voices usually are not in other language than English, unless you build them yourself and 2. the voices are not needed always, and they get irritant after some time of not using them.

Now, you ask: but, doesn't my feature suggestion require the scroll wheel to be used? No, for the four items of the first screen. The access the other screens, yes you would need to scroll, but for the first screen, no. So, you could pin the settings you want to define with "your eyes closed" to the first quick screen, and the less used ones to the second, third and so on screens.

But, as Rockbox is all about customization, and since all users don't like the quick screen as it is now (as we can see), a setting could be added that allowed users to choose between two types of quick screen: menu and graphic/directional. However, most likely this would evolve too much work and open space for lots of bugs, but that's with the developers who actually develop more than me

[gevaerts]

But, as Rockbox is all about customization, and since all users don't like the quick screen as it is now (as we can see), a setting could be added that allowed users to choose between two types of quick screen: menu and graphic/directional. However, most likely this would evolve too much work and open space for lots of bugs, but that's with the developers who actually develop more than me

And that setting could then be added to the quickscreen for people who can't make up their mind.

A lot of developers feel that we have too many settings already. Let's not go overboard here.

[gbl08ma]

But, as Rockbox is all about customization, and since all users don't like the quick screen as it is now (as we can see), a setting could be added that allowed users to choose between two types of quick screen: menu and graphic/directional. However, most likely this would evolve too much work and open space for lots of bugs, but that's with the developers who actually develop more than me

And that setting could then be added to the quickscreen for people who can't make up their mind.

A lot of developers feel that we have too many settings already. Let's not go overboard here.

I also think that setting is not needed, simply use menu-like quick screen for small targets and directional style quick screen for targets with a screen big enough to handle it. I went looking more carefully into the quick screen and saw that the area that usually holds the title for the menu is blank, on the quick screen it could be used to show the "Screen X/X" text. (unless it is only blank in the theme I'm using, my own port of photoSkins for Nano)

I already got my development environment set up and was able to compile the latest build, however I got no idea of where to start in order to implement at least a prototype of the quickscreen I suggested.

[Llorean]

What settings do you change so often that you need multiple pages of the quickscreen? Do you often change more than one setting at once? How many values of each of those settings do you regularly use?

[gbl08ma]

What settings do you change so often that you need multiple pages of the quickscreen? Do you often change more than one setting at once? How many values of each of those settings do you regularly use?

Hmmm, well let's see. I'll divide the settings into the ones I have currently on the quick screen and the others I would also like to have:

The settings I already have on the quick screen:

• Show files (Music, Playlists, Supported, All)
• Shuffle
• Repeat
• Turn off when idle (I change this often depending on what I'm doing with the iPod)

The settings apart from these I would like to modify quickly:

• Channel configuration (I think it is named this way in English, it's where you can choose between Stereo/Mono/Karaoke)
• Keyclick (I have the iPod piezo patch applied, and depending on the place/situation sometimes I like to turn it off momentarily)
• And, if we could pin files and plugins to the quick screen:
  
  • text_editor plugin
  • calculator plugin
  • Some musics, videos, LUA scripts and text files (like one I got with quick notes)

As you can see, for me having multiple quick screens would save a lot of time and key presses (the keys of my iPod are getting unresponsive ).[/list]

[Llorean]

Do you really change all of these multiple times each time you use the player?

[gbl08ma]

Do you really change all of these multiple times each time you use the player?

Yes, and sometimes various times during the use. The only exception is perhaps the Channel configuration.
But, the quick screen could get much more useful for me if I could launch files (and plugins) from there. And adding that would be the real reason to implement multiple screens, because I want to be able to "play" more than four files/plugins.
-----
Unrelated PS: did anyone with an iPod Nano 2Gen see that revision r28165 has a problem? Someone's working on adding runtime estimation... but at the same time, LCD stopped working properly since it shakes and gets blank like an old CRT TV set going to die but, sometimes it goes back to a readable state for a few seconds where we can see that runtime estimation works! Now I can't use Rockbox, but I can see how much battery time is left! Great (however, 2 hours and 30 minutes for 15% of battery seems a bit high, no?)

[soap]

Do you really change all of these multiple times each time you use the player?

More importantly, do you toggle between two states, or have a variety of configurations you use?

EDIT:
Buschel's been notified regarding your off-topic second half of your above post.  In the future please create a new thread.

EDIT 2:
Current build has reverted the LCD changes.  Please test.

[JdGordon]

The quickscreen topic keeps coming up but as usual it is one of those topics which getting concensus on what to do AND someone to actually do it isnt ever going to happen.

My feeling is that we really should remove the screen and replace it with a fully customisable menu (like bluebrother said, and has been talked about in another thread) where you would move up/down a list of settings (or maybe files/config browsers) and left/right would change the setting (or load the file). The problem with this is how the heck would users actually set it up?
Maybe it would be a simple text file with a list of the setting names to use (and some extra magic keyboards for items which arnt actually settings), but that isnt really nice..?

[Llorean]

Couldn't it be like the current quick screen (in terms of how you add things)?

As in, "Context menu - add to custom menu"

And from within the custom menu "Context menu - remove"?