The thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that when you’re selecting from a list, most people scroll up and down. For example, if you’re making a grocery list, you don’t write the selections across the page but rather down. Additionally that’s what we’re used to doing with our phones as well.
Same thing with websites, it’s just what our minds have gotten used to doing. So having to scroll left/right to select a library (especially if you have a lot of them) is something users aren’t used to.
Good afternoon, @panni I discovered that if you leave this option set to Brazilian Portuguese, the subtitles we’re looking for in PM4K will be in Brazilian Portuguese. I only just found this out. Before, it was only set to Portuguese.
I am usually loving your ideas. But here I have to object. I hear where you are coming from, but having a collection of textual representations of anything (here: the title of a library), where you don’t have control of the width of each of them, but only for the height of the text, with you wider space, you get less information onto the screen most probably. Controlling the height of the text, you are getting any number from 5 to more than 20 items into a side menu and still have plenty of space for your UI. Try that with a horizontal band of library titles. If you are using scrolling titles you ‘ll probably find a compromise, but imho this comes at a prize. Scrolling text in three of four library tiles that also carry an icon (to have a quick identifier for different types of libraries) just looks like too much movement in what may be the user’s main navigation area. On an account level, please also add info on different server’s to this. I cannot help but mumble to myself that - for TV remote controlled devices, - if you move between library tiles that are floating horizontally in and out, this means more time (in ms) for the humand eyes to find the right content (if not trained to number of clicks yet). Kind of vertical cursor movement in a vertical text list is less distracting - even if the number of clicks would stay the same. Your software, your rules… but “16:9” is not that much of a valid argument in my opinion.
That does not mean that there can’t be clever horizontal band or grid solutions for library choice. But having the choice of choosing between multiple libraries of different types works best if the number of choices that can be seen at the same time is max’d out.
It’s for a reason that drop-down-menus are not constructed as drop-right-menus even if computer screens are 16:9, too.
I’m not arguing for keeping the libraries horizontal. I’m arguing against giving up vertical real estate and vertical flyout sidebars. That can be done in multiple ways and I’ll explore those.
E.g.: Show currently selected library as text, nothing else, on click, show in place dropdown with all libraries, that can be quickly scrolled vertically. Choose, (auto close menu, auto select first hub item), done.
Edit: Vertical sidebar tends to be a good idea, but not in a remote control/TV environment, as that basically prohibits us from allowing round robining in hubs (how would you round robin left-bound if “left” opens the sidebar as well? You could argue for “back” opens the sidebar, but then it’s one more click for the exit action.
Again. Just thinking about stuff and collecting your thoughts
Edit 2: The “back” idea actually isn’t that bad, if we move user and server options into a sidebar as well. I’m leaning towards exploring the option I earlier gave an example for.
I actually have gotten quite used to it after using PM4K and Infuse as daily drivers the last few years. The way PM4K has it implemented right now just makes a lot of sense to me personally on a projector or big screen TV. So if @panni decides to change up down the line I hope it’s an optional UI skin or something lol.
I think people should consider using collections as well instead of 30-40 different libraries. I mean Plex has Movies, TV and Music officially (audiobooks possible with Audnexus agent of course) so I don’t get why people have a ton of “libraries” instead of using collections to sort through each library. But that’s another topic for a different time.
So I started playing around with collections and my issue with them is that stuff gets just as buried in those as well, especially if you have a large library.
For example, I currently have a library called “Holiday” which contains all my Christmas titles. I can create a collection with the same thing, but then it becomes harder to find among all the other auto-generated collections (and yes, I do like those as well).
Having it as a dedicated library just makes it easier to find, especially this time of year.
Long-Press-Left to open side-menu of the left? Long-press right to open it on the right? Both? You could argue that users might be thumb-parking on round-robining their horizontal menues, but hey… this way, they learn something new
