dont have a lot of time right now to type, but the one feature for skinning that i would love for someone to adopt is this.
Image placement:
I want to be able to place any image anywhere i want to, and easily ie, i dont want to type in numbers to place items, drag and drop is the keyword here. But also some kind of precision placement will be needed to fix my jittery hands.
Any image or button i create should be able to be assigned to ANY function in the program or as many as realisticly possible.
So if i want to create a skin that when the app loads all you see is one big play button, i should be able to do this. So if you dont need certain parts of the app (GPS, radio etc) you dont need to make buttons for these and the feature wont be available at all.
External Application handleing:
This should work just like any other skinable feature in the app.
In the options/settings for the app i want to pic all the external apps that i want available to me. Then when i create a skin, i want to make a button that i can place anywhere (just like above) and assign the external app to this button. Really no need to have a menu of apps to choose from unless my list is big, in which case i could simply make a screen that had all the icons for apps i want to go to.
also buttons should be able to have more than one function assigned to it. Sort of like a macro assigned to a keyboard shortcut. I can make one button that goes to a certain screen and automaticly start doing something else when it gets there.
I have a few other ideas also, but the basis for all of this in the end is SPEED.
I must be able to get to where im going quickly and with as few clicks as possible.
Remember, im also driveing.
Right now im using plane ole winamp in my car because its the only app that lets me do what i want to do quickly and not get in the way. I found a skin that works great for my small 7in screen and find that its much quicker for me to just use winamp because everything else takes longer to do the same things. I load up mediaengine when i want to show off my system to someone etc. But dont really use it for daily driveing because of a few bugs small bugs that make things harder for me.
now back to work.
more later if anyone wants to continue talking about this type of stuff.