Thread: YOUR dream front end

Originally Posted by ibmeruu

Neon Boom Box has allot of potential.

I would love a Speedometer in it because I am going to put a drum machine in my steering wheel.

That will block my analog speedo so I would like to just see one on my screen.

Or maybe just a speedo widget ?

before that happens I need to actually have a mini in my car. I don't actually have a carputer yet thats why development has been kinda slow on NBB.

but when I get one and get some way of hooking my mini up to the obd2 interface on my car im sure I can rig up something. if you are a developer at all I can help you write your own module for NBB there is an SDK but I haven't released anything but a verry rough beta that has changed a whole lot since.

Originally Posted by smilr

I've had to rethink my UI layout now that I have tried it on my actual touchscreen. Some of the buttons were too small, and indeed - these were the function switching buttons.

I do plan on releasing my FE. Although I've written out pretty much ALL of the code from AMP2 that I began with, it still technically has roots in that program, which was open-sourced, thus mine must be even if I hadn't wished for that.

The UI I will build is going to be far less flashy than those I've seen elsewhere for Mac / PC. I'm also not putting any effort at all into video playback. In the end, I suspect the only thing anyone else will want to use from it is the Coreaudio playback engine, assuming I ever finish the damn thing.

I don't think that you have to open source anything just because it is based off AMP. (what license is AMP under). Also AMP itself has a large amount of borrowed code from various places on the internet (don't know about AMP 2) so depending on what you kept from AMP you may need to open only part of your code...

anyhow how far have you gotten on your playback engine? I have barely used any core audio myself largely because it doesn't seem nearly as programmer friendly as quicktime...

lack of flash is fine with most people btw. NBB gets criticized for being too flashy I think... I have tried to cut back regardless because of performance constraints. there are alot of optimizations I need to make for release 6 but first i need to get 5 out! (any day now)

So...I just took a five hour trip with the Mini and several front ends in the car. The upshot is that none of them *quite* work the way I'd like them to.

I'm mostly in need of music and navigation. The music come from both the Mini itself and XM. I buy music on iTunes, so I have music with DRM in it. I also have a dead touchscreen on an 8.4" screen that I haven't been able to find a replacement for. I use either the keyboard/mouse or a Griffin Powermate for control.

-Car Front End - Works fine, but is playlist based. Doesn't work with spaces, though. To access navigation, you have to quit the program.

-Neon Boombox - Lots of promise, but doesn't do playlists. You can use Spaces on it to reveal the nav program running in a different space, making it compatible with nav.

-FrontRow - Works best, includes video, photos, etc. When you get out to fuel the car and restart, picks up where it left off, like a radio. Can be controlled with Powermate. Can't be used with spaces, therefore no nav capability. Also, don't like the 'now playing' screen. Very murky in daylight, text too small.

None of the frontends I tested can play or control XM.

It'm very glad to see development in Mac front ends and grateful to have betas to test. It's difficult for someone like myself who knows more than the average user but less than the application programmers and hackers to cobble together a front end that works with just a few music inputs.

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

Car Front End - Works fine, but is playlist based. Doesn't work with spaces, though. To access navigation, you have to quit the program.

Technically you don't have to quit, you can hide it instead (standard cmd+H keys or the Hide button from the Menu screen).

As far as "doesn't work" with Spaces, I assume that you mean that your hot key commands to switch spaces doesn't work? I'm curious what NBB does (or doesn't do) that allows it to work. I have a couple ideas (i'm taking a rather heavy handed approach key bindings or maybe they aren't capturing the display (e.g. not a true full screen app)) that i'll look into.

EDIT: NBB must not be capturing the display. As soon as I stop capturing the display, Spaces works fine. The downside though is that when switching back to CFE's space it wasn't always getting focus (fine with a TS, but would suck without a mouse/pointing device of some sort). It would be nice if Apple gave us hooks into Spaces, but as far as I know they still haven't and no one has hacked it yet.

-dave

@iamgnat No NBB does not capture the screen, but actually it does do quite a bit of event chain management for its key bindings so that prolly isn't the reason that CFE wont play with spaces. Also there are ways around the focus problem as long as your application is key.

@bugbyte playlist support will be in release 6 I promise. release 6 should also be out quicker than 5 which I admit has taken alot longer to get out than I think it deserves, but it does sport a MUCH better music browser and has support for browsing by song yada yada yada.

Also if you weren't aware release 5 has key binding support. tho the music module's is lackluster at the moment, but I myself rather like the main screens handling of it. I hope it plays nice with your powermate.

Originally Posted by iamgnat

Technically you don't have to quit, you can hide it instead (standard cmd+H keys or the Hide button from the Menu screen).

I'd settle for the app becoming transparent so I can view the nav screen below, for now!

Originally Posted by iamgnat

As far as "doesn't work" with Spaces, I assume that you mean that your hot key commands to switch spaces doesn't work? I'm curious what NBB does (or doesn't do) that allows it to work. I have a couple ideas (i'm taking a rather heavy handed approach key bindings or maybe they aren't capturing the display (e.g. not a true full screen app)) that i'll look into.

EDIT: NBB must not be capturing the display. As soon as I stop capturing the display, Spaces works fine. The downside though is that when switching back to CFE's space it wasn't always getting focus (fine with a TS, but would suck without a mouse/pointing device of some sort). It would be nice if Apple gave us hooks into Spaces, but as far as I know they still haven't and no one has hacked it yet.

-dave

Sounds like you're figuring it out. All I know is it zips out of the way when you hit the hotkey, then zips back when you hit it again.

I'm not criticizing. I'm just glad we've got some development and options going on.

Originally Posted by NeonDev

@bugbyte playlist support will be in release 6 I promise. release 6 should also be out quicker than 5 which I admit has taken alot longer to get out than I think it deserves, but it does sport a MUCH better music browser and has support for browsing by song yada yada yada.

Also if you weren't aware release 5 has key binding support. tho the music module's is lackluster at the moment, but I myself rather like the main screens handling of it. I hope it plays nice with your powermate.

Great to hear! And I must have forgotten about the key bindings in NBB. I'll read up on them and try them out on my return home Friday.

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

I'd settle for the app becoming transparent so I can view the nav screen below, for now!

There is someone working on such a plugin for CFE, but last I heard from him he was tied up in Exams.

Sounds like you're figuring it out. All I know is it zips out of the way when you hit the hotkey, then zips back when you hit it again.

Based on what I found last night and NeonDev's confirmation above, that i'm capturing the display is the "problem".

I'm not criticizing.

I didn't see it as such. Without input like that we can't improve what we have

-dave