Thread: An Open Source, Fast and Modular, C# Front End

Originally Posted by 2k1Toaster

I'm sure you can understand having a subforum for everyone that starts a new frontend would result in a huge navigation mess where 90% go unfinished or without even a half-working app.

I understand where you are coming from but I like to take a different route when I code. Instead of putting something together and then trying to hack in all the things you forgot or want to do differently - plan it out before you code. It also makes for some nice documentation when you have write ups for how everything works before the code is even finished. The goal of the forum would be to get everyones input on a few of the big issues and then do it right the first time.

Also, the UI code may not be done but theres plenty of code for the project once I setup a place to put it. Bluetooth, media player, speech recognition, database and obdii are all 90% done - they just need to be tweaked for this porject.

Originally Posted by UnusuallyGenius

OpenMobile

I like it!!

Simple and to the point...

Originally Posted by UnusuallyGenius

can you expound on this a little bit, so i can get to work on some images?
1) Colors
2) What is the media tab at the bottom?
3) What is the arrow by the time?
4) What all will go in the dynamic toolbar area?
5) I assume that is a home icon in the upper right?

You've been a huge help - sorry I haven't posted more info im still playing around with different ideas to see usability, etc.

1) Im a fan of black with some great lighting effects, shadows, transparency, gradiants etc. but im open to anything that looks good. I've seen some windows like silver or even light blue that look pretty good.
2)Due to the use of gestures, media controls really aren't needed for touchscreen use except as a backup - or manual control (like a powermate). So there should be a small tab in the bottom left with either the word music or a music icon that brings up a bar similar to these:
http://www.my-car-computer.com/image...bileimpact.gif
or
http://www.streetdeck.com/Images/SD2...Fullscreen.jpg
or
http://www.my-car-computer.com/image-files/freeway.jpg

It should contain some type of playback slider, a play/pause button, a stop, ff, rw,next and previous buttons.
3) A very crude attempt at a back button That whole tab is also drawn too big
4) The dynamic icon bar will be a panel of icons that can be dynamically loaded by any plugin to give a small status update. For example a bluetooth plugin could load a signal/battery strength icon. Tasks like updates that run in the background could display a status icon. That kind of thing...
5) Yup - the goal is to have navigation possible without having to look at the screen. Top right corner is home, bottom right is back, bottom left for media,top left for volume (forgot that until just now). Gestures for media control, speech recognition, etc should take care of the rest.

Other) I still haven't decided on the main menu - i was throwing around ideas similar to:
Icon Based:
http://www.stylingfx.com/streetdeck/scionSS1.jpg
http://imgur.com/bdGb0.jpg

Button Based:
http://www.my-car-computer.com/image...centrafuse.jpg
http://www.my-car-computer.com/image-files/pycar.jpg

iPhone like:
http://forums.streetdeck.com/forum/d...ile.php?id=568
^ Check out the home, power buttons for the effect im talking about

or possibly others. Once thats settled comes all the fun stuff like icons for buttons, sliders, etc. and then additional icons for highlighted and possibly clicked.

I lean pretty heavily toward having a home screen with buttons for only the most-used features, plus a 'more' button for less-used features.

http://imgur.com/bdGb0.jpg <== like this
http://i30.tinypic.com/xm5xeu.jpg <== or this, but I'd want play/pause/ff/rew & volume added

Having a most-most-most-frequently used stuff like back/home/music in the same place on every single screen is also cool. I'd envisioned a strip along the edge on one side, but corners is a great idea too. Easy to find with eyes on the road.

That said, if the app is fully skinnable, shouldn't skin development be pretty much independent of code development? Ideally, skin devs could do their artwork with whatever layouts and functionality they envision (within the constraints of what the FE is capable of, of course), and then tie the artwork to the code with XML files, or something like that.