[Kabooga]

I like the dark theme. The new GUI I'm nearly finished with uses much the same color scheme as your dark theme.

The 0.3.0 version is stable, and very usable.

Music tab works without issues (have not tried on my large media PC, will try soon).
Series tab: Will try series tab on the large media PC.
Movies tab: Both movies and trailers are working...Good work.

Small nitpick: Runtime for movies are showing thousands of minutes.

As ruth440 said, fantastic work. Keep it up.


Now I need to prepare for the Belgium vs US match. Yes.....Blasphemy.
Funny enough I am conflicted on who to cheer for, most of my family still lives in Belgium.

[tuxfuxch]

Hi,

just a short reply... sorry:
@kabooga: runtime for movies problem: it's already fixed, but not yet uploaded. i think i had a different scraper in the previous installation, and it had an other time format (i guess). the next release will have it right.
than fan for switzerland in 17hours, we have to beat argentina *autsch*

@ruth440: well, that with the music tab should not happen. if it does it as i reviewed the code, i think i see the problem. but the meaning is: it should not. i am not sure if it will be a small fix, so i can't promise to be fast with finding a good solution for it. but could you explain better what you mean with:

The only real show stopper I could find was the missing ability of reducing the amount of lines in the music tab, but I'm afraid that this issue has to do with my phone simply not having a browser that can render the page correctly.

if the meaning was: you have the page switch, but in the background it is showing too much: with very large collection, it will not be only your phone which colapses. my problem: i have 30 albums, and did not buy any in the last 10 years

because of the signs which are not shown: it's the best fix right now. make shure you know what you did, because after an update it you have to do it again. i need to think about if and in case how i fix this. so sorry about that.


thanks for your valuable help of both of you. it's really helpful and i apreciate the time you invest!

[tuxfuxch]

Hi everyone,

My laterst work now. Here the changelog:
Version 0.3.1:
- bugfix: Movie time now showing right mintues value
- bugfix: all key's in local storage get's checked if set, otherwise default setting gets written
- bugfix: footer content sometimes still visible after disabling it: does not happen anymore
- Addons get sorted by how may times they got started (from the given device and browser)
- if previewpictures sould not be shown, they are now removed rather than only hidden
- some css adjustments
- update of readme

@kabooga: movietimes are fixed now. What happens if i change the scrapper i will check another time. Thanks for the hint.
@ruth440: 1) don't copy your work of the buttons in the new version. Some details changed there. You have to do it again. I'm sorry..
2) now very improtant: the problem of the long loading time might be a bigger isssue, which i can't solve very fast. I believe (hope) it's the RAM rather than the processor. So i made a small workaround in the hope it works out for you (can't test it by myselfe...). Please load the new version and in the settings, tick the button "hide preview pictures" in the "general" group. In version 0.3.0 the pictures got only hidden, if they shoud not be showed. now they get removed. It's still a bit of a dirty hack, but i think that we have a solution is more important right now. I think now it is maybe not as nice, but at least usable. Please test it, and i would appreciate if you told me if it works for you or not.

[ruth440]

Hi tuxfuxch
I am happy to provide additional info and screenshots, but since I'll be away for a few days it will be thursday or friday. I want to be sure to give you the correct feddback and I don't want to do a rushed posting before that. Hope that's ok.

[tuxfuxch]

Hi ruth44,

i am totaly fine with that and would appreciate if you could share your experiance, as soon as you want.

[tuxfuxch]

Hey Ruth,

please wait with testing! i have already the solution, and for a first test it's working. but i need to test a bit more befor i upload it!

before the new solution, all elements in the list got into the html, but not all visible to the user. now only the ones which were also shown before are actually in the html, and not all of them.

upside: it works now much better for low power devices (i hope )
downside: when you go to the next page, it's less fluent

the upside overweight a lot i think.

still, when you have a huge library, the first loading takes a while. this is not because of the interface. it's because the server needs much longer to respond.

so stay tuned, soon i upload the new version, and then i would apreciate testing.

[Kabooga]

I was going to suggest segmenting the list. I remember XBMC had an issue with really large lists, but loading the list by segments was faster. But it looks like you have a potential fix.

I can test also. My main Media PC has a large collection.

[tuxfuxch]

Hi Again,

thanks kabooga! do you mean i load the whole liste segment by segment, but have the full list to start? that would be needed, otherwise my concept would not work.

my idea did not work out. now i had anotherone which is a very promising one, but i am still facing some problems and hope for the right ideas and if i have them i need also some time to test. i guess it will take a while until i have something which is good. Sorry

[tuxfuxch]

Hi everyone,

ok i did my work and testet it. i could just not leave it... i even got up again in the night

the latest version is now 0.3.2 you can find here.

but, there are 2 but's:
-the next button apears also in the end of the list. i don't know yet how to get rid of it. i will find a solution. it's just one aha away i guess
-sometimes it apears as nothing is happening because there is now "work in progress" sign yet. just be patient if you have a very large collection
.
i am glad to say, that in my testing it looks good. the interface is slighly less responsive, but muuuuch better when

my first attempts did not work out, because the filters did not work. finally i found a solution for that. i had just to do some more rework.
i downloaded a list with movies (1600!) and made for each filmname a file. so i does not need space and i have a loooot of movies to test, without buying 1550 movies

it works ok in the moviesection with my mobile. i hope that is also the case for the music section. in tv-series and addon section i think no change is necessary unless somone hast multiple hundred addons installed.....

i would apreciate if you could test that, espessialy the music section. don't forget: with large libraries you need to reduce items which are shown to a handfull!

loading the list the first time (always the first time, not only once, but maybe once a day...) it takes a while. with a very low performing processor and ram, it still can take a while also in the handling. with my 1Ghz processor and a movielist with 1600movies i think its ok.

[ruth440]

Hi tuxfuxch
I simply HAD to test the new version 0.3.2 right away before making a more detailed response. So here it is: This is the cat's meow! You have come such a long way since your first verison and I can honestly say that yarc in combination with XBMC *will* replace my Logitech Media Server. You have done a mindblowingly good job in a very short time.

Since you are spewing new releases like there was no tomorrow, my timeframe for in-depth testing has to change a little. If you are still interested, I will give you a more detailed description during the weekend - I will mainly focus on the music part if that's ok?

[tuxfuxch]

hey ruth,

i'm glad to hear that. to be honest: i needed an excuse to not learn

i will and can't keep up so fast. i will now let it a while and concentrate on bugfixing. that you concentrate on the music library would be perfect for me, because i don't have a large one. so everything will slow down a lot now.

have fun!

[ruth440]

Hi tuxfuxch
My feedback seems to be shaping up to be more of a review. I got a bunch of comments (mostly good ones!) and several screenshots. Will post it within 24 hours. Take care.

[ruth440]

Hi tuxfuxch
As promised, here is a more detailed run-down of my testing of your current 0.3.2 yarc release. The testing is all done using low end, outdated hardware but running the latest 13.1 stable XBMC release.

This is more a kind of review than a bug hunt and will be focusing on the aspect of using the music section.

Hardware (some specifications was mentioned in my earlier post)
Computer: XBMC 13.1 running on Linux Mint 17 XFCE on an Atom D2700 @ 2.13GHz with 4 gigabytes of RAM.
Phone: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic running an ARM CPU @ 434 MHz with Symbian s60v5 and 42,1 megabyte of available RAM. The browser used is Opera Mobile 12.

The start screen looks like this when having edited the buttons to plain text, as mentioned before:



There is always a good resizing, making the interface fit the 3.2” screen which, for the Nokia 5800 is at 640x360 pixels.

Having the ability of loading and removing items into a play list and a search feature is essential when it comes to listening to my music. Being a collector of music I have until now compiled a collection from 367 artists, having released 766 albums with a total of 7679 songs. Thus, I need a tool that can manage this in a straight forward, quick and simple way.

Fortunately, yarc can cut up the collection into smaller chunks and display them accordingly. I have set the maximum amount of items to be displayed at once to 25, which works nicely in yarc 0.3.2. The real power is the search capability, because scrolling a library of hundreds of artist will get you nowhere fast.



Notice the vertical scrollbar in combination with the amount of items being displayed? This is not the way to find your music if there are hundreds of albums. Having said that, the load time is light and acceptable - things work well even on a ridiculously outdated phone like the Nokia 5800.

So, searching is an option which has to work. And it does. A lazy search for Kate Bush by simply typing “Bus” reveals this:



The search is not case sensitive, which is also nice when doing these lazy searches.

One thing I really miss is the ability to search tracks. The search looks like this before typing:



Yes, I now it clearly states “Search for album title or artist”, but:



Hmmm... I know that Kooks is from the album Hunky Dory by David Bowie, but if I were to forget that I would be in real trouble here... I have the song, but it's not displayed, which is a shame. In a future release I would love the functionality of being able to search for a song title.

Sometimes search results would seem to reload and then stall, but I noticed a significant improvement when switching off my screen capture software on my Phone. Sometimes, however, there was stalling and strange reloads of search results. In most cases though, things work:



Adding a track of an album to a play list is as important as searching. Simply click and select:

(I can only display 6 images in one post.)
View image at http://www.tafkan.com/Shot_07.jpg

There is no limitation of the items shown in the play list, but loading a large play list does not slow things down, so that is not really an issue. For example, this play list has 50+ items:

View image at http://www.tafkan.com/Shot_08.jpg

As for optimisation, I love the functionality of toggling the simple now playing item at the bottom of the screen:

View image at http://www.tafkan.com/Shot_09.jpg

When this is enabled the page needs to reload in order to show the time elapsed. But collapsing the now playing arrow, the reload stops. Nice one. Which is something to be said about this entire release.

So, there you have it: yarc is getting leaner, meaner and much more streamlined. But don't get too busy, tuxfuxch – I'm no programmer, but I bet you've been clocking in a bucket-load of hours in the last two weeks on this one. I just hope you don't get tired of what you do, because you're doing some serious a**kicking!

[tuxfuxch]

Hi ruth,

thanks a lot for your feedback. it's also nice to see on screenshots how it looks like!

so here my reply:
can you explain a bit more this:

Sometimes, however, there was stalling and strange reloads of search results.

i don't really get this. also what you mean with "strange results".

about the reloading of "time elapsed":
do i understand right, that it reloads the whole page? if yes: that should not happen, and in the testet browsers (firefox, rekonq, firefox-mobile, maxton and the browser my mobile already had) it does not happen. and i will not change it, because it's a feature i need. so i need to suggest to not use this "now playing" bar.

now about searching for music title:
first of all i need to explain, that in my case of usage, i decide for an album, and then i play it. i actually never really select songs. that's why i programmed it like this: i first get the albums from xbmc. not the music titles, only the album. only if you open an album, it gets the song from the xbmc. so since the songs are in the beginning not aviable for my remote, it can't search for it.

i don't know what it would mean in terms of performance if i would get all the songs. i would need to try this.

so in conclusion, i need to disapoint you. this possibility will not be programmed anytime soon. for a major update i certainly will think about it and it's on my todo-think-about-list.

than i would like to ask, why there are so many pictures missing, who should be visible. i thought about the signs you had to replace as you mentioned in the remote to replace with pictures, but i think that would not be a solution for you.

---

oh btw: it's also nice to hear, how others are using it. and what others like. so i know what to maybe "not change".

[ruth440]

can you explain a bit more this:
Sometimes, however, there was stalling and strange reloads of search results.
i don't really get this. also what you mean with "strange results".

The page starts loading a list and sometimes it will display a few items and then stop. After a few seconds, it appears to be reloading and then sometimes display more results before stopping all together. It only happens sometimes - about 20-30 percent of the times I've tried. And it seems to have helped switching off my screencapture or exiting my browser and then loading it up again.

about the reloading of "time elapsed":
do i understand right, that it reloads the whole page?

No, sorry for my bad description. It does not load the entire page - only the now playing part, which I think is just a great example of optimisation combined with the fact that there is no reloads at all when the now playing option is minimized. To me that's just shows you have done an intelligent way of doing your programming :-)

i don't know what it would mean in terms of performance if i would get all the songs. i would need to try this.

That would be very interesting to see. It's not a showstopper, though, since I can usually remember either the artist name or the album title. There are times when a song title is in my head and I cant remember the band or album. But that's relatively rare.

so in conclusion, i need to disapoint you. this possibility will not be programmed anytime soon. for a major update i certainly will think about it and it's on my todo-think-about-list.

I'm not disapointed at all - I'm delighted and grateful for this fantastic release and I realise things take time and above all consideration. Should you decide not to go for track search I know you will have your reasons. The fact that you included the playlist is much more than what I hoped for!

than i would like to ask, why there are so many pictures missing, who should be visible. i thought about the signs you had to replace as you mentioned in the remote to replace with pictures, but i think that would not be a solution for you.

Yes the missing pictures I notised as well. I'm not bothered by it, though. With such aging hardware I'm going for functionality rather than eyecandy. Pictures are nice, but not important. And as long as I can change the special characters on the remote buttons myself, there is no real issue.

Thanks for all your help. Should you have any further questions, please let my know.