Strange behaviour with ICONS within webfront

Dev Community Dev/API Corner
1

Hi,

I've got a strange behaviour with the current plexmedia webinterface...

 

My channel will display mixed content:

  • 2 folders
  • 1 videoclip

 

The troublemaker is the length of the "title" of the videoclip. Why? I don't know...

 

 

def createVCObject(item, url, container = False):

        vco = VideoClipObject(
                key = Callback(createVCObject, item = item, url = url, container = True),
                rating_key = item,
                title = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa",
                summary = "My summary",
                thumb = ICON_PLAY,

 

Results in broken display. The icons are displayed in a strange way with no summry...

![post-185122-0-64012700-1393576090.jpg|690x334](upload://9IzHjx6bVNtZBou863zDYCan93m.jpg)

 

Just add 1 more 'a' solves this problem...

 

def createVCObject(item, url, container = False):

        vco = VideoClipObject(
                key = Callback(createVCObject, item = item, url = url, container = True),
                rating_key = item,
                title = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa",
                summary = "My summary",
                thumb = ICON_PLAY,

Content is displayed correctly...

![post-185122-0-27143200-1393576094.jpg|690x335](upload://1xGdeTQY6LWUnfxvs15PEItUajT.jpg)

 

With webfront I mean the direct webinterface of the pms.

 

Any hints about this strange thing?

Greets

Sascha

2

Plex/Web uses it's own discretion on how to display any channel content, based on the length of the title (if it's long enough it switches from thumbnail view to list view).  I don't think you can enforce it to use the layout of your choice (aside from having long titles!)

3

Ok, but in this case it seems to be a bug. I've deleted everything which forces to display the content as a detailed list...

Plex chooses to display the icons but (as you can see in the 1st picture) has trouble to create the right layout.

In this case the video clip is shifted to the top...

4

Yep this is a layout bug, it could be because it's "mixed" media, it probably assumes that there will never be a video clip + directory items in the same listing (which is a bad assumption).  The video clips use a different layout (size wise).  I'll report this bug.

5

Thanks, I'm having "mixed" content by browsing a dropbox folder. Hit this bug with my new channel :-/

6

Does the layout still have issues if you access the channel through plex.tv/web?

7

Except that the iconsize is strange (cut off) it looks ok... The icon for movies has a different style than for folders. So it looks really strange.

You can compare it, I've attached a screenshot.

![post-185122-0-53497200-1393608134.jpg|690x265](upload://lX7JfRjfpyZ0mCzje5QoQ4rE1sy.jpg)

I see that the APP_NAME is missing within plex.tv/web... Have to check this out :-)

8

You have to set the title and title2 in the ObjectContainer to get those types of titles, here's an example, I put the title and title2 in red to show what is what.

9

http://dev.plexapp.com/docs/api/objectkit.html?highlight=message#ObjectContainer.title1

10

This is what makes me crazy :-) It's not well documented for what to use title1 and title1 and when it changes... Do you have a clear explanation which title to update in which situation? :-)

11

typically title1 will remain the title of your channel and title2 is the "current" area you are in for example.  I don't know if I can make it clearer than in the image above.  That's how it looks in Plex/Web (except the first one should have been oc.title1 instead of oc.title, whoops).  In some other clients those titles are not used at all currently (such as Plex Home Theater) and in others I'm not sure how they are handled ... but those are what you need to set to get things to show up the way you're looking for them to show up in Plex/Web.

12

I've played around with that a little bit and only title2 is used... title1 does not show up anywhere...

13

Here's the line where I set it in the channel I used as an example in the image above:

https://github.com/plexinc-plugins/Discovery-Canada.bundle/blob/master/Contents/Code/__init__.py#L19

Using that method it sets it globally on ALL ObjectContainers used in the channel, but you should also be able to do it like this if you want to have it different for different areas:

oc = ObjectContainer()
oc.title1 = "My Title"

The screenshot above was taken with plex.tv/web ... On the local Plex/Web version (built into PMS) it looks a little different but it's still there, here's a pic of that (I added the red text to illustrate).

14

Ok, thanks got it. Nice hint with the global ObjectContainer configuration.

btw: the same bug with the mixed content exists within the PMC. A big problem is that the folder is a square icon and the videoclip icon a rectangle. Breaks the layout and displays the icon the wrong way.

15

Yep that's not a surprise that square and rectangle icons in the same section break layouts.  As for PMC it's old and not really supported any longer so don't hold your breath on that one.  I know PHT and most other clients also have issues with mixed aspect ratios of thumbnails.  One suggestion might be to make the aspect ratio the same on the icons you are using (either both square or both rectangle) and it will probably solve all of the issues.

16

I already have the same ratio; squares... And yes, PHT has the same problem,too :-)

17

If you've changed them both to have the same aspect ratio it could be that you are just getting cached versions of stuff.  Give it some time or search on how to clear the channel cache (I don't remember off the top of my head how to do it as the path is different for different operating systems).

18
  • I've installed the latest Preview (0.9.9.6) and the problem with the strange display still exists...
  • plex.tv/web looks better now