The only people who get pissed off by these posts are complete morons or just haven't had their cup of coffee yet! This is actually a very old thread. When I re-read it I realized some of the people that were opposed to changing the UI are now they same people who are actively involved in doing just that... there is now a plan to change up the UI (actually build a whole new one) after the release of 0710.
You make some very valid points, most of which I completely agree with.
Suggestions:
1. Mythtv be running in background so that going to TV is quicker and you do not see the "prescaling theme images"
2. Mythtv theme be chosen which looks more like LMCE
3. Would suggest recordings button take you back to videos page but as there are some problems with this I would not recommend at the moment (e.g. in progress recording is not visible on LMCE videos page)
I agree with this one, and I think I've even mentioned your suggestions before, however, the new UI is going to try to better integrate into MythTV and VDR. This would eleminate the need for the MythFrontend entirely as the new UI would simply request what it needs from the MythBackend. I first suggested that we just extend the proven MythFrontend, but the addition of VDR (provides similar dvr functionality) would make this unrealistic. The new UI will now have to seamlessly work with both platforms.
Suggestions:
1. Show subtitle in small text under the title, or merge into title with a colon ( inbetween. e.g. "Heroes: The Beginning". If people are opposed to this then implementing point 4 would pretty much fix this useability issue.
2. In the submenu for Play/Close/Delete make the cursor hover over play or close by default so I can do something useful with my first button/keypress. Also make these buttons bigger/move to a more obvious place.
3. Not sure where all the "1001_20071212162003.mpg" videos come from?
4. Once you are in the play/close/delete submenu you should be able to cycle through the videos using (obvious) up and down buttons while staying in that view. There is no sense going back to the previous screen if you are just browsing.
5. There should be a disable cover art button/option for the main list which presents media in a table - e.g. Title | Episode | Length | Director etc (fields configurable). There would be space for a small thumbnail
This is one of my biggest frustrations as I pointed out on the first page of this thread. I still think my suggestion of a rolodex type of display, or sub-menus, would be better here (see my original post for details). The "1001_20071212162003.mpg" files are MythTV recordings that for one reason or another have lost there information. This one actually alludes to a problem with your setup. Either a the database got corrupted at some point and it had to remove some entries to repair it, or LinuxMCE hasn't re-scanned the MythTV database after a re-install, or you re-installed without backing up the MythTV database. All the scenarios have actually happened to me while testing. I really love your idea on point 4. That just makes sense...
Suggestions:
1. An ok button at the top right of the options screen should take you back to the list with your filters applied
2. The search button should be under that
3. Consider having search populated with all results before you start searching. Can understand there are arguments both ways here. If point 1 was implemented this would not be necessary anyway
4. Add a search box to top of list on main page. Will search within all videos, or within filtered results if filters have been applied.
5. LMCE should set media type to tv show when saving mythtv recordings (doesn't seem to have for mine)
Suggestions:
1. Album/Artist/Genre buttons at the top or side which change the list type
2. Search box at top of main list
3. Make changes to filters page as suggested for videos
4. Search results in a table form e.g. Track | Artist | Album
5. Table form view also an option for the main screen? e.g. a disable cover art button/option. Fields could be user configurable (e.g. option of track, artist, album, genre, time, year, track no, etc top be visible)
I don't really have anything to add to these, other than you are right and your ideas should be kept in mind when designing the new UI.
P.S. Just because you don't program in C doesn't mean you can't contribute, which you have. Believe me your posts are read by developers and when they are typed in an intelligent manner they are taken to heart and discussed. I invite you to read the following
rather large threads:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3344.0 (be mindful that this one is in the developers forum, but as a developer yourself you are welcome to give input [even if you don't program in C, which isn't uncommon and has been discussed in there too]) and
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3480.msg18454#msg18454 (starting at the relevant post).