Teddyboy wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:01 pm
I’m in a period of mourning with the imminent death of Media Center when Windows7 end of support begins at the end of the year.
Media center upon initial launch or after initial configuration allows you to adjust settings using only the remote and the onscreen keyboard. I was disappointed when I had to have a mouse and keyboard attached to configure cmc.
You can use the remote control for all setup EXCEPT when selecting drives\folders\filepaths. I know that's not quite where you want it to be, but it is really close. To do the drives\folders selection via remote, I'll have to program a fully custom file explorer GUI, and also I'll need to include network capabilities since most My Movies users will have data on a NAS type device.
This is a significant programming effort, and considering that most users will only have to use a mouse a few times for initial setup, it's hard to justify doing this over the other more functional improvements in the rest of the app.
To be clear, this is on my wish list too, but it is pretty much near the bottom of that list.
Teddyboy wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:01 pm
The software should initially walk you through first time configuration i.e selecting network shares for example.
I agree, and to be fair I sort of do have a walkthrough. The new user experience gives a list of steps to take, and points you in the right direction, and updates as you complete the steps. This is even translated to all supported languages.
If you haven't experienced this (I know you started with a much older version), you can either install a fresh copy in a new directory, or simply delete/rename the CMC.cfg file. When CMC doesn't see the CMC.cfg file it initiates the new user help screens.
True, it's not as fancy as WMC, but then again Microsoft is a $258 Billion company, with 134,944 employees, and my operation is approximately 99.99925% smaller. I think I've done pretty well with 0.00075% of the resource, and even though I do charge for CMC, please understand it is a Not For Profit operation, and all revenue covers my business expenses to develop CMC and gets reinvested into the product. All of my very considerable labor is free.
I explained all this to help set expectations. I'm flattered that you mention CMC in the same context with WMC - that is my goal after all - but I have to make hard decisions to set priorities for what to include, it's simply impossible for me to do everything in short order.
Another consideration is that I still hope to implement API integration with My Movies, and if I spend too much time creating a fancy first time configuration wizard, that may end up being throwaway work.
Teddyboy wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:01 pm
Another thing that I find annoying is the ghosted osd at the very top of cmc’s library display. When you scroll up to it to search or filter it’s really big. I would like it to be hidden and only appear when I need it. In MyMovies all that is hidden in a drop down that only pops up when you scroll to the top and click on it.
You're not the first user to complain of this. While I have made the icon bar more transparent over time, it seems it is still too visible for some user's tastes. I'm planning to make the transparency level user configurable, so you can set it to 0% (invisible) if that is your preference. Look for that in an upcoming version.
I have also begun to make the GUI skinnable, and CMC v2.1 was the very first version to expose some of this skinning ability. If you wanted to, you could copy the default CMC skins folder to make your own version, then replace the icons with smaller icons that you like better (keep the pixel dimensions the same, just shrink the artwork inside). I plan to improve skinning support in the future for things like custom colors and more, but there's absolutely nothing stopping you from playing with what's exposed in v2.1 today.
Teddyboy wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:01 pm
The scrolling is not smooth. When browsing it jerks a little it should be silky smooth like media center or my movies is when navigating remote.
First, it would be helpful if you were more specific about which scrolling is not smooth. I'll make an assumption that you are referring to scrolling the covers, and yes you are correct it is not smooth. In fact, it is not really scrolling at all, but simply shifting the covers over, column by column. This was a shortcut that allows me to ship a product that works great even on very low end hardware.
When I added the Music Library this past year, I included a lot of smooth transition animations. They are fancy, but they are a big challenge to program. My programming language only allows me to interact with the GUI from the main programming thread, so if I put too many animations in this main thread then they end up blocking other functions, which can make the GUI feel unresponsive and glitchy.
I think I did a pretty good job overcoming these limitations in the Music Library, though if you time your keystrokes just right you can get the GUI to freak out a bit, so I still have improvements to make there. I also did some cover scrolling animations on the Box Set view, and just like the Music Library if you move too fast you can freak out the GUI. I've also seen some poor performance on low-end hardware that I feel needs to be better before making this a core feature of the main cover rows.
I do plan to make cover scrolling smoother, and while I'll be applying lessons learned from programming the Music Library's GUI, this will still be a significant effort and a difficult challenge. And any time I spend on making scrolling smoother is time I'm not spending on adding functionality or implementing the My Movies API.
So again, I refer you to my comments about making hard decisions and prioritizing features. I share your desires, I want the GUI to be smoother, I want the GUI to be more customizable to please every user, I want the new user experience to be super simple, but I also want to finish implementing the core My Movies features (Aspect Ratio / Audio Track info, Similar Titles, further improve TV Series, etc.) and Music Library features (Playlists, Genres, Years, etc.), and dozens of other improvements that are planned.
Be patient and I will get to these improvements - and more. Just please understand that some of this flash and polish and a lower priority to other features.
Paul