MediaEngine thoughts...

CarComp · 02-02-2009, 06:20 AM

I've personally been away from the CarComputer scene for awhile. Having a baby, a full time job at Caterpillar, and the demise of the engine in my car have been pretty much keeping me away from whiling the hours away in front of the IDE for awhile.

I do however have some good news. I just recently moved to first shift, and I also have managed to install a new engine in my car. Now all thats left to do is finish the rust repair (which I acquired a MIG welder to do) then I will be up to my old Software Development shenannigans.

Some thoughts about M.E.

We can't compete with all the new super "DO-EVERYTHING" apps, so we will probably concentrate efforts on making what we have done so far work really good, and optimizing code.
There are too many hardware options out there to include support for them all, so of course the same applies... What we have included will receive updates and optimizations.
I'm toying with ideas on what to do with my CuTouch PLC (www.comfiletech.com) I do know its going to control a lot of stuff, and I may also code it into a communicator with M.E.
Vista Sucks, and I don't really want to re-think mobile computing in my back office. Stick to what you're good at. The WindowsXP OS isn't going away anytime soon.

Thanks for everything and all your support for this great app.

Enforcer · 02-02-2009, 06:41 AM

I think there is an opening for fast and light.

Get the basics in the main base code, and any extras can be done by plugins.

But make it easy to install the plugins.

CarComp · 02-02-2009, 03:48 PM

Plugins? Damn the plugins! Haha. Actually, I've always been at a loss on how to implement them. I've always looked at our external apps thing as the "plugin system". What could a plugin really do as in being "plugged" into mediaengine? Control it? I don't know. It just seems to me like re-inventing the wheel. MediaEngine just uses the current wheel (any software you want) and puts pretty hubcaps on it (music and application control via touch).

I've also never understood why its important to be able to do anything from any screen? Is it *THAT* much work to go back to the main menu, or some other menu?

I could write a tiny, lightning fast app that does nothing but link other vb apps together like plugins, but whats the use of that?

Theres always been a few key things I think a frontend needs to have...

Good error handling, and NEVER lose window focus.
Quick user interface with feedback of some sort when its busy
Only do a few things natively and be REALLY good at it.

I think MediaEngine currently covers these bases. I mean come on when did it last crash on you? I've never actually had a major failure during normal use. Now granted I can't test it on EVERY computer running every service pack and patch etc, but on my computer, and a few others that I know, it works flawlessly.

I'm going to make it flawlesslyer next...

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