Thread: Features in an ideal frontend?

Documentation isn't allot of fun to write, but it can make a huge difference to how long it takes before users can begin effectively using a piece of software so I think it plays a pretty important part.

What i'd love to see is someone who focuses first of all on getting the basics down solid and only then trying to encorporate every feature under the sun into it. I know with front ends like road runner there's lots of little niggling things that often happen which requires the user to start digging through forums and then configuration to make the appropriate changes. Things like flash rotating images rotating in front of/blocking off album art, I think it's all the niggling configuration necessities rather than having it "out of the box - set and forget" that i dislike most about roadrunner. I know it's far from easy to develop quality software and road runner does a pretty good job (especially when you consider it's free).

Are there many people on these forums who develop in .NET? I've considered starting up an open source project somewhere for a new front end if there's a couple of people willing to work towards a solid frontend first before focusing on all the requests to encorporate everything under the sun.

I would certainly agree with the last post ... get the basic's down and working first before adding in the long list of extra's that RR (and the others) incorporate. RR is an excellent program but as mentioned before there are so many add-on / extra's getting the config for it right is very difficult. This is where good documentation comes in ...

Would it be feasible to have the config file for this FE allow you to enable / disable individual modules within the FE to reduce processing overheads and simplify the config file ?

One last thing would be (if possible) to remember that not everyone has a superfast and powerful carputer ... can this new FE run on the more humble pc's out there ?