Hackweek IV Summary

Guess what, even i was allowed a week of hacking last week. So let me tell you what i did. My initial plan for the week was to spend half of it on freevo bug hunting and the other half on the osc factory plugin i started some weeks ago.  Python all the way… So i started on Monday on freevo and hunted a bug down that was nagging me. After a couple of minutes it turned out it was a timing problem in an OSD function. To understand it i had to learn about the new OSD dialog plugin Adam hacked up to style freevo on screen dialogs. He said on the freevo-users lists a couple of weeks ago:

“The overlay display stuff is still pretty much in development and needs someone with some artistic ability (ie. not me :-)) to design a nicer display for the seeking/pause display.”

So i thought what the heck let me see if i can come up with something. My artistic skills are limited but i think i understand what about the freevo user interface attracts me and others so much. It’s the right mixture of Text and Graphics. Usually media center developers try to impress you with glowing, transparent 3D graphics that turn, slide, flip and flow. You have to memorize what each of those animations means and that makes it pretty complicated in my eyes. Freevo on the other hand uses Text a lot.

A directory for instance is no fancy folder icon, a file is neither, they are represented as Text. A directory with square brackets and a file without.  But of course there is also an area for things like a cover or descriptions.

The fancy stuff is good to have but navigation and general usage have to work without it. Graphics should support Text – thats what i like about the user interface  of Freevo. What did not have this right mixture in Freevo was the OSD.

So i tried to come up with an OSD that follows these principles. Here is what i ended up with after many tries.

So i fixed some bugs, had to add a couple fo features to the dialogs core and styled this OSD theme. I was done by Friday so no osc factory plugin. Luckily i hack a lot on my normal worktime too so you don’t have to wait too long for it ;-)

Update: The code is in the Freevo tracker…