Support and General Use > Theming and Appearance Customization
iHP140 Built-in Themes Overhaul
Dwyloc:
--- Quote from: Llorean on March 16, 2007, 05:06:55 AM ---While it's true many people feel it would be nice for the devs to work on UI shinyness ando ther such things, to be honest there's not a compelling reason to do so. Most or all of the developers agree Rockbox could look prettier. But if you're a developer, and you look at Rockbox, and you see audio freeze bugs, voice interface problems that prevent blind people from being able to even use it, battery life issues, tons of not yet implemented hardware, and then you loook in the other direction and you see people saying "You guys should make it prettier" it's somewhat frustrating.
--- End quote ---
I quite agree that this is not really something that the core developers really need to be spending their time addressing as I am sure they feel that their free time spent working on Rockbox is better spent working on improvements to functionality and fixing more serious issues.
I am also of the opinion that there are at least as many people who use rockbox who do not have the programming skills to work fixing technical issues with Rockbox, but do have the skills to help improve the look and UI of Rockbox.
--- Quote from: Llorean on March 16, 2007, 05:06:55 AM ---More shiny helps to bring in non-technical users, who flood the tracker with feature requests for things that the software can't already do, ask questions that are answered in the manual, and otherwise increase the support load.
--- End quote ---
I also agree to a certain extent that this is also true but as the default look and UI of Rockbox improves new users should have less questions feel they need to ask before they can start making full use of Rockbox.
For example if the default rockbox wps was changed for less CPU demanding wps without peak bars less people would start their rockbox experience with audio playback issues and making support requests on the forms and IRC.
Llorean:
There's a very high probability that when the default WPS changes, it won't have peakmeters for that very reason.
And people who can improve the UI are freely welcome to submit patches. Nobody's going to stop them. So these users who lack the technical skill for more in depth work but can do UI work are fully welcome to submit patches.
I don't see how most of that conflicts with what I said, since most of my statement was regarding the core developers. :)
Paul Slocum:
But this isn't something developers need to spend time on. Non-developers could create a uniform, nice looking default WPS for all targets. It's just a matter of switching the default choice once it's done.
And in any open source project, some users inevitably become developers. More users translates to more developers, which means a stronger project. That was my point in talking about gaining users.
I'm a embedded systems programmer and I would jump in if I didn't already have way too many side projects. And actually, I'm more likely to become an active developer on an open source project that looks professional and doesn't skimp on UI design (like a lot of open source projects do).
Llorean:
So, to attract people interested in UI design, like you, we should have an already good looking UI?
Anyway, the WPS isn't the UI, it's just a single screen. I assumed by "UI" you meant the full user interface including the interaction with the menus, etc. Those certainly require a programmer.
We're already considering multiple themes as possible default ones, and if I'd know this conversation was solely and entirely about the default theme, I'd have had a lot less to say. ;) When you started mentioning "UI" though, I thought we'd passed into the "Programming time is necessary" category.
Dwyloc:
--- Quote from: Llorean on March 16, 2007, 04:00:31 PM ---So, to attract people interested in UI design, like you, we should have an already good looking UI?
--- End quote ---
No the project just need to continue being open to new idea's and patches (like it is today).
--- Quote from: Llorean on March 16, 2007, 04:00:31 PM ---Anyway, the WPS isn't the UI, it's just a single screen. I assumed by "UI" you meant the full user interface including the interaction with the menus, etc. Those certainly require a programmer.
--- End quote ---
Yes I quite agree, but reprogramming menu's is not quite as changing as fixing audio playback bugs.
I would also like to say at this point what I am really impressed with the new menu system and its small icons and the new root menu. Both of which I was not expecting to like that much.
As normally I use the always use the file view as bookmarking is not supported in database mode and I listen to a lot of audio books with my DAPs. But I find my self using the database view alot now on my h120 and I previously never used it as its that easy to bookmark my audio book in file view then search for some music in the database view with the new interface.
I am also impressed with just how good the icons look in the new menu system with both my h120 and ipod nano and would love to have the option of customising them at some point in the future.
--- Quote from: Llorean on March 16, 2007, 04:00:31 PM ---We're already considering multiple themes as possible default ones, and if I'd know this conversation was solely and entirely about the default theme, I'd have had a lot less to say. ;) When you started mentioning "UI" though, I thought we'd passed into the "Programming time is necessary" category.
--- End quote ---
Sorry I started out this discussion just looking to come up with some idea's for renaming the existing wps to name them in more consistent way (like renaming engineer2 to engineer or add an engineer1) and making sure that they all also had matching rwps for the LCD remote. But I seem to have got side tracked again ;D
I am happy to say I think we are now looking for the same type of future changes / improvements but are just fraising it in a different way.
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