[Buschel]

Hi,

thanks for the flowers.

1) Search bar from keyboard button ... MS OneNote app you will see that it has a down arrow button ...

Let me see what I can do.

2) Undocumented feature/ bug? - long pressing toggle full screen button pops up dialog asking about saving a resolution change? No long press ability is listed for this in the help section of the app. Seems like a bug.

In fact, I was also surprised there are undocumented longpress functions implemented -- and there are more than this. It is just hard to update the help as the help screen are images and not localizable strings. But: the longpress on the toggle fullscreen should switch between window and fullscreen mode (same what pressing "\" on the keyboard does). And this works for me with my Kodi 19.1 test system. What Kodi version do you use?

3) Gesture pad gets reset to default remote button view ...

Yes. The remote resets to default when re-entering. This kind of "last mode" is simply not implemented yet. But, if you search for a way to always start with the touchpad, you can configure this in the App settings under the iOS settings menu.

4) Here’s the biggie and this is definitely a bug. ...

Thanks for raising this. I will definitely have a look at this quickly.

5) Finally, I tested rounded corners and it’s buttery smooth.

Good to hear this now works well for you. I was not recognizing this impact, but after optimizing this it definitely runs smoother for me as well.

6) I accidentally came upon a feature that was discussed a few pages back that you added for someone. Tapping the button icons in a view that filters things like played, not yet played, or all. I like the behavior but it’s definitely not obvious that this functionality exists unless you are reading forum posts.

True. This filter-switching was also not known to me before I started to work with the code. And I was using the remote for several years.
Maybe it will be good to add some "tips" which the user can close.

[amasephy]

Thanks for the quick response on this. Sorry to bring up so many things so quickly after a new beta. I figured I would try to break the app by messing around.

Initially as I was doing this I encountered what I thought was a way to break that gesture left pane navigation by random chance. Then I couldn’t figure out how I did it so I spent 30 more minutes trying to reproduce. Finally by random chance again it happened and it dawned on me. I bet most people are not using that button, and tapping the change to gesture button. If you really like gesture pad navigation it’s probably set as default in the settings.

I didn’t test whether having it as the default prevents this bug, so that should probably be investigated.

As for your question, I’m using 18.9 on Xbox. As I mentioned a few posts back, Kodi on Xbox is a bit of a mess right now and I’ve blocked auto updating until hopefully 19.4 fixes the major problems, so I can’t see if 19.x changes this long press behavior.

Also, I think Kodi on Xbox in general acts different than from a general purpose device such as a PC. I used to use Kodi on an Intel NUC and have noticed little differences. Xbox probably has no concept of Windowed vs Fullscreen. So there long pressing simply presents a dialog asking if you want to keep the resolution change. I don’t notice the resolution changing, however this may be because Xbox is limited to 1080p GUI on 18.x. Still, even on 19.x where 4K GUI is enabled for Xbox, I would expect to be asked what resolution to be changed to, not just be asked if I want to keep whatever mysterious setting changed. Sounds like this is a Kodi issue and not a remote app issue though, except for the undocumented nature of it.

[amasephy]

Hi again Buschel,

I found another nasty bug related to the new remote icon button.

With the following steps you will trigger a very odd behavior doing the following.

Navigate to “Movies” or any left pane category.

Tap the remote icon button in upper right of screen.

The remote should be full screen now. Everything works good here.

Now swipe from right to left to reveal the settings pane, which is typical pretty sparse.

The remote should be partially visible on the left side of screen.

Now try and swipe back to the remote. You’ll find this to be impossible and it acts bizarre. It skips back to the movie pane but only on the portion that was visible where the remote screen was partially revealed. Best to experience this yourself, it’s hard to explain in text.

Note: if you simply tap the revealed portion of the remote, it will slide back over properly. Only using the swipe gesture to try and bring it back does this bug manifest.

[Buschel]

I confirm weird behaviour of the pan swipe gestures when entering the remote screen via the navigation bar's new button. This is not related to the latest changes to the gesture behavior of the remote screen, but something else. As the gesture handling looks correct when entering the NowPlaying screen via the navigation's bar button, I will try to see what is the difference.

[Buschel]

I confirm weird behaviour of the pan swipe gestures when entering the remote screen via the navigation bar's new button. This is not related to the latest changes to the gesture behavior of the remote screen, but something else. As the gesture handling looks correct when entering the NowPlaying screen via the navigation's bar button, I will try to see what is the difference.

This was hard to find. Took me hours to see the difference in the implementation of NowPlaying and RemoteViewController. It is fixed now, with a minor inconsistency left: When entering the remote screen via the navigation bar button, the pan left gesture is still working even when gesture view is active. I can live with this as the gesture view is usable and the weird panning behaviour seems resolved. This will need some more power user testing though

[amasephy]

Sound good, thanks for taking your Saturday morning to look at this, this certainly didn’t warrant such fast fixing!

Clearly none of these issues are really major, it takes some real fiddling to find them.

I look forward to putting the next beta to the test. 🙂

[amasephy]

I played around with another screen this afternoon and found another section of the app that is probably very seldom used, let alone known about.

This section exhibits the strange navigation gesture behavior I most recently mentioned. There’s also a typo on it.

If you go to your Kodi connection list and press edit, then use the gesture right to left to bring up the screen on the right, you should see a screen that says “Select an Kodi server…”. I bet this an artifact from when it used to be called XBMC as “an” would make sense here where as “an” does not make sense in the current form.

Now, try swiping back to the left. You’ll get that strange scrolling jumbled animation.

Interestingly, if you don’t tap Edit before you do this the navigation gestures work properly. This might give you some more clues as to what is going on.

Figured this should be reported as it doesn’t relate to the remote control as the other issue did.

It actually appears to be a pointless screen. I can’t see any feature that would be lost by just removing it entirely.

[Buschel]

It actually appears to be a pointless screen. I can’t see any feature that would be lost by just removing it entirely.

There is one feature: The torch light. You cannot get the torch otherwise (via the app) when there is no server connected. Not really a big deal as users can access the torch via iOS itself.

I cannot really reproduce the issue you describe with this screen. Even when using edit everything works as expected.

3) Gesture pad gets reset to default remote button view ...

Just implemented this feature and also removed the former "Gesture Control" setting. Maybe I can find a similar solution for the vertical position of the remote.

[UlfSchmidt]

Hello @Buschel,
Once again an update with so many fantastic improvements. Thanks for all your achievements. Here is nevertheless, as you asked for it, a brief list of my personal observations:
1. @amasephy 's observation #1 (see this post) with the missing Discard Keyboard button is something I cannot confirm. At least on my iPad it’s there.
2. Re observation #2: When I do a long press on the Full Screen button, it seems that Kodi toggles between 4:3 and 16:9. Nothing I was aware of previously.
3. Nothing new, but sometimes bothering me: if a year is not defined for a certain item, it is not taken as missing, but shown explicitly as 0. Wouldn’t it be good to treat such zeros as undefined and as a result suppress the year, i.e. the 0, in lists and detail views? Kodi itself suppresses such missing information.
3. Rounded corners: I have them disabled, but they are still there, even at a place where they don’t appear with rounded corners turned on: in folders lists, see image below:

[amasephy]

@Buschel

My mistake, I just realized I missed a step in reproducing the edit screen error.

Tap edit, then tap the (i) button to actually edit server settings like IP address. (This is the part I forgot to mention previously)

Now swipe over to the screen with the typo and torch button.

Now you will get the quirky navigation gesture.

[amasephy]

@UlfSchmidt I believe the iPad vs iPhone has different keyboards. Simply comparing the keyboard in safari on my iPad and iPhone the iPad has a discard keyboard, but on iPhone there is no space so it doesn’t exist.

I haven’t used the Kodi remote on iPad so I can’t speak for its presence there but I assume it’s using the standard keyboard.

As for the long press resolution change, I guess I didn’t mention that I was performing this long press simply in the GUI and now while playing any video back. Not sure if this changes anything or not.

At least on Xbox no apparent resolution or aspect ratio change occurred despite asking me if I wanted to keep the change I made.

[Buschel]

3. Nothing new, but sometimes bothering me: if a year is not defined for a certain item, it is not taken as missing, but shown explicitly as 0. Wouldn’t it be good to treat such zeros as undefined and as a result suppress the year, i.e. the 0, in lists and detail views? Kodi itself suppresses such missing information.

I see similar cases in my test database. Kodi simply provides 0 in such case. I could of course add a check for reasonable numbers.

3. Rounded corners: I have them disabled, but they are still there, even at a place where they don’t appear with rounded corners turned on: in folders lists, see image below:

Oh no, but I somehow expected such findings after the lastest performance optimization. Even though personally really like the rounded corners feature, this is like whack-a-mole. Thanks for pointing it out. I just fixed it.

[UlfSchmidt]

3. Nothing new, but sometimes bothering me: if a year is not defined for a certain item, it is not taken as missing, but shown explicitly as 0. Wouldn’t it be good to treat such zeros as undefined and as a result suppress the year, i.e. the 0, in lists and detail views? Kodi itself suppresses such missing information.

I see similar cases in my test database. Kodi simply provides 0 in such case. I could of course add a check for reasonable numbers.

3. Rounded corners: I have them disabled, but they are still there, even at a place where they don’t appear with rounded corners turned on: in folders lists, see image below:

Oh no, but I somehow expected such findings after the lastest performance optimization. Even though personally really like the rounded corners feature, this is like whack-a-mole. Thanks for pointing it out. I just fixed it.

Like the fact that you guys are always on line.
Thanks for the fixes, anyway

[Buschel]

Now you will get the quirky navigation gesture.

Thanks for the detailed description. I could now reproduce and fix it. This is exactly the same issue as I was resolving for the Remote screen earlier today.

[amasephy]

@Buschel

I discovered another way to break the gesture pad. This time it’s on the main remote control and not using the remote icon.

Steps to reproduce:

1) Tap Remote control, tap gesture pad to activate it, tap the gear icon in lower left, tap “more”, tap “Done”, now you can use gesture navigation on the remote control and the gesture pad area no longer works. (Swiping just slides the whole remote view).

2) I should add that after you initially tap the gear icon and the remote is only partially revealed the only way to get back to it is to tap a revealed portion of the remote, trying to swipe it does not work. As this swipe gesture has been a pain to implement it might be a big ask but maybe it would make sense to enable the swipe back gesture if the remote is in a partially revealed state. The app feels stiff and inconsistent in this spot.

3) The screen that I initially thought was pointless and that you pointed out had one feature - the torch button. It actually serves a real purpose, when your Kodi box is not on, you can tap your Kodi connection and then swipe to the right screen. You’ll see the familiar torch button but below it is a Wake on Lan button now. So definitely wouldn't want this screen removed.

4) I also found another inconsistency with the swipe gesture that occurs at various spots in the app. It’s probably related to a swipe right to left gesture animation in the app.

To reproduce: bring up the main remote control. Now swipe left to right just a little bit, reveal maybe a half inch of the left navigation bar, and let go. As expected the remote re-centers itself. However, swiping right to left the same amount and letting go immediately takes you to the right hand screen. Its hyper sensitive.

5) I actually just tested this and it’s a major problem with the gesture pad being set as the default in the app settings. It actually doesn’t work! The swipe navigation gestures are enabled making the gesture pad unusable. Tapping to enable the button navigation and toggling back to the gesture pad does fix the problem, however as we discussed before every time the remote is accessed it gets reinitialized and in this case back into a broke state.

6) I swear I don’t just sit around all day tinkering with the app. 😉