BlueTouch V3 beta

[SilverEagle]

Guest wrote:
> This may be a too big of an ask.

Guest wrote:
> But I would love
> to see some genre selection or decade selection
> screen added. This would make this skin the
> perfect skin for any occasion. And if that's
> possible. Maybe adding a top songs list button
> which looks for songs from an external text file
> added by the user. This would be great as a lot
> of the time people selecting songs need some
> help, otherwise they just stay by the jukebox
> looking for what to add and by narrowing it down
> it makes it a lot easier

> This may be a too big of an ask.

Well: Yes and No.

This skin will remain a rather limited skin. (Although: I even once said I would not rewrite it for my skinlibrary, but cleary I have to eat my own words there...).

But my next skin will probably be a skin like the ones I've seen in British pubs, with list of 'most played', 'recently played', and selection in genres, periods etc.
Again all based on big-finger touchscreen usage, as I think there are more than enough desktop-mouse-skins (and applications) available, and nearly no alternatives for the commercial off-the-shelve pub-like jukeboxes.

I am also playing with the idea of designing the skin for a vertical screen (portrait orientation) as that is also something which seems up to now to be reserved for the commercial machines.

But all of the above are just my intentions for the future, and one never knows what that might bring

SilverEagle

[Guest]

that would be amazing. you should be working for silverjuke. you seem to add more functionality and appeal to silverjuke than they have for a while. cant wait for that next skin. but for this skin is a button to bring up the top songs from the charts possible? like i said before maybe grabbing a selection from an external text file and showing that selection.

[SilverEagle]

Guest wrote:
> ...but for this
> skin is a button to bring up the top songs from
> the charts possible? like i said before maybe
> grabbing a selection from an external text file
> and showing that selection.

Not at the moment, but there might be a change like that coming up: The last beta included the option of showing two buttons for karaoke-on/off filtering. I might extend that to alternative toggle somehow between some user-selectable filters. Not sure how I want the GUI to be though, it must fit into the 'intoxicated-proof' and 'icon-explainable' concept.

Just hang on and see...

SilverEagle.

[hotspur]

Hi SilverEagle, I had a chance to play with Beta7 a little bit and here's my feedback.

Problems

After using it for about an hour, I could only find two problems; you are making this much tougher than in the past. I only tried Beta7 on one machine so they could be local issues.

1 - The search screen does not like '&' signs in the artist title. The Artist is listed as Barry O'Dowd & The Highlanders

error1.gif (28.27 KiB) Viewed 2586 times

2 - The 'cannot add track to queue' message is not displaying properly.

error2.gif (15.78 KiB) Viewed 2588 times

Suggestions

I have a couple suggestions I think would improve the use of the skin. Most of these are culled from constant use over several days on a touchscreen-only machine.

1 - The alphabet buttons on the main screen are too small and too close to the bottom of the screen. They are difficult to press, especially on my setup since they are next to the bezel of the screen.

2 - The confirmation/backs buttons could use a slight green/red (go/stop) hue to help reinforce which button to press.

3 - The new keyboard in Beta3 is nice, but the buttons look washed out and are a bit difficult to read. It would also be nice to have a clear button in addition to the back button, so the user could start their search over without exiting the search screen and hitting the back button multiple times.


Very nice work, as always.

[mija5290]

ok, I've just installed beta 7. As soon as I try and load it it says error 38.
Any suggestions please?

[SilverEagle]

mija5290 wrote:
> ok, I've just installed beta 7. As soon as I try and load it it says error 38.
> Any suggestions please?

Could you post the output of the console (in silverjuke errorbox click 'details', then 'save')? Or if not possible a (partial) screenshot?

[SilverEagle]

hotspur wrote:
> Hi SilverEagle, I had a chance to play with Beta7
> a little bit and here's my feedback.

Thanks a lot, very thorough!

> 1 - The search screen does not like '&' signs
> in the artist title. The Artist is listed as Barry
> O'Dowd & The Highlanders

Fixed.

> 2 - The 'cannot add track to queue' message is
> not displaying properly.

Fixed.

> 1 - The alphabet buttons on the main screen are
> too small and too close to the bottom of the
> screen. They are difficult to press, especially
> on my setup since they are next to the bezel of
> the screen.

I spaced them a tiny bit further apart, and made them distribute over the available space to take advantage of higher resolutions. I am a bit hesitant to move them upwards, as that would needlessly waste available screenspace for other users without an interfering bezel.

> 2 - The confirmation/backs buttons could use a
> slight green/red (go/stop) hue to help reinforce
> which button to press.

I'll paint the icons and see how it looks, but I expect I probably won't like it. But I'll post the icons and tell you how to put them in.

> 3 - The new keyboard in Beta3 is nice, but the
> buttons look washed out and are a bit difficult
> to read. It would also be nice to have a clear
> button in addition to the back button, so the
> user could start their search over without
> exiting the search screen and hitting the back
> button multiple times.

I agree the clear button might be nice. But I think it adds just more GUI clutter while any novice can already use the 'leave/re-eneter searchmode', while a user-in-the-know can:
1) tap the results string
2) for most keyboard layouts type shift + clear
3) when no results are found: a tap anywhere on the upper screen resets the search.

The best way might indeed be a dedicated 'clear' key on the keyboard, but these keyboards are the normal Silverjuke ones so you would have to change a keyboard definition for that (is certainly possible if you want to). And I do not like the idea of modifying all available keyboard definitions and shipping them with this skin.

> Very nice work, as always.
Thanks

SilverEagle

[mija5290]

no problems, silvereagle. i will save the errors in the morning (its on my other computer - i dont have it with me right now) and post immediately.

[hotspur]

SilverEagle wrote:
> hotspur wrote:
>
> > 1 - The alphabet buttons on the main screen are
> > too small and too close to the bottom of the
> > screen. They are difficult to press, especially
> > on my setup since they are next to the bezel of
> > the screen.
>
> I spaced them a tiny bit further apart, and made
> them distribute over the available space to take
> advantage of higher resolutions. I am a bit
> hesitant to move them upwards, as that would
> needlessly waste available screenspace for other
> users without an interfering bezel.

I'm biased, but I think this would be a good use of some of that precious real estate. I'd be interested to see what experience other users have had with those buttons. For me, it involved a careful thumbnail press to click them, and my success rate was far below 100%.

>
> > 2 - The confirmation/backs buttons could use a
> > slight green/red (go/stop) hue to help reinforce
> > which button to press.
>
> I'll paint the icons and see how it looks, but I
> expect I probably won't like it. But I'll post
> the icons and tell you how to put them in.

I can modify icons and put them in the skin. I'll make an example to show you (and for my own use).

>
> > 3 - The new keyboard in Beta3 is nice, but the
> > buttons look washed out and are a bit difficult
> > to read. It would also be nice to have a clear
> > button in addition to the back button, so the
> > user could start their search over without
> > exiting the search screen and hitting the back
> > button multiple times.
>
> I agree the clear button might be nice. But I
> think it adds just more GUI clutter while any
> novice can already use the 'leave/re-eneter
> searchmode', while a user-in-the-know can:
> 1) tap the results string
> 2) for most keyboard layouts type shift + clear
> 3) when no results are found: a tap anywhere on
> the upper screen resets the search.
>
> The best way might indeed be a dedicated 'clear'
> key on the keyboard, but these keyboards are the
> normal Silverjuke ones so you would have to
> change a keyboard definition for that (is
> certainly possible if you want to). And I do not
> like the idea of modifying all available keyboard
> definitions and shipping them with this skin.
>

Fair enough. There was a reason this was suggestion #3.
What happens when you tap the results string? I didn't know that was possible.

[SilverEagle]