Thread: A no-touch skin at 800x480

Originally Posted by bes51659

I will hopefully be able to use phone keypad and text entering methods, and/or voice control to enter text. But not solved yet. I thought it was, but then phoco was gone... A bit upsetting since I had a license...

I read your post at work and then at home and then thought about it in the tub, and now I've read it again. I'm not sure I understand :-)

Love the highlight/glowing thing. Very much like the banner I invisioned.

Is your idee that if you are watching TV, and "enters the room", the TV screen floats away like you've taken a step backwards. And then you can see the icons, and configure/change mode and what have you? That sounds very neat indead!

Pretty much what was I was thinking is I would like it so that when the skin first loads, it will show something similar to the screen shown above. After a few seconds of inactivity it will zoom into the floating screen and show the visualizer and album art,etc. If you press the mode key it will zoom out (like stepping away from the screen) and show the four menu options. Twist the knob and the menu items rotate to show more options. Click on one and the screen flickers and changes to the new screen, don't do anything for a few seconds and it zooms back into the screen you were just on.
For me and the touchscreen version, If I tap anywhere on the edge of the screen when it's zoomed in it will zoom out, and I can just tap the option I want or press the left or right walls to show more menu options.

I'm mostly going to use GPS and music, so I won't need to switch between the skins that much, and I can have GPS full screen since my Pioneer Deck will display track title and artist, etc.

This will require me to make some stuff in flash, and I have Flash CS3, but I'm going to look into Swish Max 2 tonight and download the trial version for that. I'm going to start by making the skin without flash, and then modifying it later.

Originally Posted by bes51659

Is the background a photo?

Yes, ever seen the PS3 commercials with the white room? this is a picture from those ads with the PS3 removed.

Originally Posted by bes51659

Are you using a touchscreen or some kind of joystick?

I have an 8" touch screen. (And a wireless mouse and keyboard for the passenger or when I'm stopped and need to type lengthy text.)

Originally Posted by bes51659

I am impressed anyway. I think there is to much "buttons" on all skins I've seen. Like a stereo from the 70's. Better to manuever in context sensitive menues.

I had a look at my FM screen. adn what I need there. I will edit this message as soon as my internet is on again (on 33k6 modem at the moment...)

For most people, they have the touchscreen and nothing else, so they have to have buttons for volume control, play, pause, etc. so it ends up getting cluttered. There are plenty of skins that manage the different functions well, but what we are trying to do is something totally different.

quick test just to see how it would work. the audio icon is highlighted to show that it glows and grows.

here's a screen capture I made with this to see how the idle timer worked. I have it set so that after 10 seconds of no input, it will zoom in to the other screen. (Since it's not in flash yet, it just switches to the full view) It also shows the effects for the symbols at the bottom just to show how they react when they are being used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIR1JG1Xt_E

Originally Posted by bes51659

I did not see the right and left wall though, did I? Or did I just not understand? Or was just exactly what you said, just an idle time test :-)

The left and right walls are invisible touch buttons, on the first screen, pressing the left wall activates the VISU (which doesn't show up in the screen capture) and pressing the right wall zooms in to the floating screen. I did this just to test out a few things, and is not finished yet.

Originally Posted by bes51659

I like that it's so transparant! I think that using different backgrounds could be a way of indicating current mode (tv/radio/mp3/dvd/nav) when configuring other stuff.

Like this picure that is a polish radio station (I think) could indicate that Radio is selected. (yes alright. farfetched I know)

I mean that you have different rooms for different apps. Is that what you had in mind too?

It would be a very easy way for people to make their personal skin.

I was thinking of using the white room for every screen, but having some other indication of where you are in the skin.
Having different backgrounds would take away the perspective of the front row of buttons and their reflections.

My theory was that there's this blank white room with a floating transparent screen and holograms of different things on the floor in front of it. Touch one of the holograms and the screen changes to that function like it's changing channels, after a few seconds of inactivity it zooms in and focuses on the screen. Tap the edge of the screen to zoom back out and see the holograms on the floor. Tap the left and right walls to see more options. Tap the ceiling and a menu drops down to select less-used functions like notepad, etc.
So for what I was thinking, there would only be two views of the room; Zoomed out showing the symbols on the floor, and zoomed in with the edges of the floating screen at the edges of the real screen.

All the screen shots you were providing are more simplified and may be easier to implement than my crazy white room thing.

I think it might be a good idea to have different colors for the room to help differentiate between the different modes. What colors would you associate with the different functions though?

It is possible to scale the TV down to the small screen in the zoomed out view and then when it zooms in the video fills the screen. There are sometimes issues where it restarts the program, but it has been worked out before, so it would be a matter of implementing the same methods to whatever we want to have show in the screen when the view is zoomed out.

I think there may be others viewing this thread, and haven't chimed since it seems to be a direct conversation between bes51659 and myself, but by all means, if there is someone that has anything to add to this thread, feel free to post. (Especially those that know flash and it's capabilities.