iPhone / iPod touch skin for SlimServer

[pippin]

sooo.

I put a first release on my new web page.
User's manual is not finished yet (only halfway through), but since I will probably not have time to fix that today I put on the skin anyway. You might not find all tweaks (just two hints: album covers are clickable and lines in playlist view are clickable), but installation instructions are there and most of it is somewhat straightforward if you read "UI Philosophy".

You'll find it at www.penguinlovesmusic.com and I will be happy to hear your feedback.

Have fun!

[BBear]

I've used the link but it keeps coming back to the same artical page and there doesn't seem to be a download link anywhere. Any chance you could give me a direct link? I'm eager to begin using this on my shinny new ipod T.

BB

[pippin]

Should work now

[pippin]

Oh, I forgot to mention:

I've got a big wish, too:
SlimServer currently is not able to STREAM to the ipod/iphone. Looks to me that this has to do with SlimServer not supporting byte-range requests (it doesn't and ipod/iphone requires it).

So if anybody out here can get Slimdevices to fix that, or fix it himself... That would make quite a christmas present...

[erland]

Wow, this is so cool.

I've installed it and it works great so far, I've only noticed some small things:
- The notification splash when hitting "+" is shown outside screen if I hit a "+" on the bottom of a long list. The splash seems to be always displayed on the top part of the list.
- I think I would rather perfer that the alphabetic letter links to the right of the list would be shown one per row instead of spread out on all items in a long list.
- When I hit an alphabetic letter to the right, it scrolls to the correct page but it always seems to be positioned at the top. The result is that sometimes I need to scroll to get the the first artist with the selected letter.
- I think it would be useful to always have "Home" button somewhere on the screen because sometimes when browsing down into different menus it can be a few clicks to get back to the home menu.

The scrolling performance is a problem as I suspected, but it actually works better than I had thought. It is actually at least as fast to find a specific artist with this skin as with the new Jive remote.

I'm really looking forward to be able to use the Custom Browse plugin together with this skin, so for me support for third party plugins are important.

Also the "Now Playing" screen is great, it gives me a cover art display with reasonable screen size when the iPod is put into the docking station beside the SqueezeBox.

I'm starting to see very few reasons why I should use the standard SlimServer web interface on a PC when this skin is finished. Unfortunately for Logitech I'm starting to feel the same thing about the Jive remote, because IMO an iPod Touch with this skin will be better when finished.

Thanks for making this available, keep up the good work and let us know if there are any specific parts you would like help implementing or testing.

[pippin]

Wow, this is so cool.

I've installed it and it works great so far, I've only noticed some small things:
- The notification splash when hitting "+" is shown outside screen if I hit a "+" on the bottom of a long list. The splash seems to be always displayed on the top part of the list.

True. I have to admit I was thinking about removing it altogether, but, yes, I know how to fix that...

- I think I would rather perfer that the alphabetic letter links to the right of the list would be shown one per row instead of spread out on all items in a long list.

Not sure if I fully understand this one...

- When I hit an alphabetic letter to the right, it scrolls to the correct page but it always seems to be positioned at the top. The result is that sometimes I need to scroll to get the the first artist with the selected letter.

Ooops, good one, didn't notice that one. I set the "items per page" setting to 21 so every page starts with the right letter... I think I also know how to change this one, but that's a bit of work...

- I think it would be useful to always have "Home" button somewhere on the screen because sometimes when browsing down into different menus it can be a few clicks to get back to the home menu.

You always have it at the bottom of the PAGE, but getting there... hm, think I've got an idea (similar to the one on the playlist page ;-) Finally a real iPhone app where you can scroll behind buttons would be nice, though.

The scrolling performance is a problem as I suspected, but it actually works better than I had thought. It is actually at least as fast to find a specific artist with this skin as with the new Jive remote.

Ooops, to me it looked quite good, I was having more problems with load times...

I'm really looking forward to be able to use the Custom Browse plugin together with this skin, so for me support for third party plugins are important.

OK, moved up on the to-do-list ;-)

Also the "Now Playing" screen is great, it gives me a cover art display with reasonable screen size when the iPod is put into the docking station beside the SqueezeBox.

I'm starting to see very few reasons why I should use the standard SlimServer web interface on a PC when this skin is finished. Unfortunately for Logitech I'm starting to feel the same thing about the Jive remote, because IMO an iPod Touch with this skin will be better when finished.

Thanks for making this available, keep up the good work and let us know if there are any specific parts you would like help implementing or testing.

Thanks

Joerg

[pippin]

So, didn't expect this so early, but...

Updated the manual (Browser Page now explained) and added Version 0.1a
It fixes two issues:

Wow, this is so cool.
- I think I would rather perfer that the alphabetic letter links to the right of the list would be shown one per row instead of spread out on all items in a long list.

Not like this, but a repeating list with about 1.5 items per row. A bit like Apple does it. Don't know why I didn't do it this way from the beginning...

- When I hit an alphabetic letter to the right, it scrolls to the correct page but it always seems to be positioned at the top. The result is that sometimes I need to scroll to get the the first artist with the selected letter.

Works now.

Sorry for having to download again ;-)

[pippin]

Wow, this is so cool.

I'm really looking forward to be able to use the Custom Browse plugin together with this skin, so for me support for third party plugins are important.

...

Thanks for making this available, keep up the good work and let us know if there are any specific parts you would like help implementing or testing.

Now... it's probably time for that ;-)
I think I could use your help on the Custom Browse plugin.
TECHNICALLY, that works now, but to make it look good, I think you will need a custom custombrowse_list.html file to make the layout nice and to handle the "sort by" options.

CustomBrowse puts all controls to the left of the text container, while iPeng distributes has the "add" control on the right and the "play" option embedded in the filename, so the control blocks in the "controls" variable should be distributed between "leftcontrols", "rightcontrols" and a link parameter called "textlink". I can provide you with a sample (the xmlbrowse.html used for internet radio).

Wanna go for it?

Cheers,

Joerg

I can hand you a development version of iPeng to play around with the capabilities

[mherger]

> How is this supposed to work? Doesn't for me. Do I have to use a
> special format for the file? I just modified the standard one (removing
> everything that was in there and adding my own strings) and saved it as
> custom-strings.txt in the SC root. Restarted SC. Nothing :-(

That should definitely work. If it doesn't, remove strings.bin from SC's cache folder, and turn on --checkstrings

> Also: Is it also possible to have skin-specific custom strings? I don't

No. Strings are searched as strings.txt or custom-strings.txt in the program folder and plugin folders. Thus you could add your own strings.txt in an otherwise empty Plugins/iPeng folder instead.

> want to save stuff in different directory trees and what happens if
> somebody does already have a "custom-strings.txt" file?

I'd therefore recommend the Plugins trick.

[pippin]

>
No. Strings are searched as strings.txt or custom-strings.txt in the program folder and plugin folders. Thus you could add your own strings.txt in an otherwise empty Plugins/iPeng folder instead.

I thought about that as well. Probably need an installation program then since it adds some source of error, it's so nice to have just everything in one directory tree...