INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: sraymond on December 12, 2003, 12:06:37 pm
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I wanted to start a thread on the readabiilty of Hairstyle on TVs.
What do you find is the minimum text size for readability? What's the best font?
The current (10.0.14) skin is unreadable on my 27" TV (800x600). It is especially hard to read the list of media files. I wonder if black on gray is less than optimum. myHTPC uses light on dark (i.e. white on dark green) and I find it much more readable.
I also wonder if it's asking too much to display two vertical lists at the same time - i.e. a list of media files on the right and a list of actions on the left.
Thoughts, anyone?
Scott-
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I have a similar size TV screen and am having similar issues. I generally have to sit in a chair closer to the TV when using MC.
I think however that if the thumbnail option was developed a bit more this would help things alot.
Let me expand. I have noticed today that there is an option as to how many rows and columns to display when in thumbnail view - this gives a large amount of control over how big things are.
Things would also be a lot better if the text under the thumbnails was allowed to span more than one line, thus allowing more of it to be seen.
I have seen big improvements in hairstyle (or whatever people are calling it today) over the last few days. :)
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Have you played with the text size Hairstyle option?
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Have you played with the text size Hairstyle option?
Yes, but then there's the limit of the button sizes. The main list is nice, especially because it's a single column of buttons.
But when there are two columns, it's a compromise between seeing all the text (but not being able to read it) or reading the text, but not seeing all the letters.
Can the buttons be made to expand automatically?
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That sounds like a skin issue since the skin XML positions everything.
You could try tuning it by hand to see if it's possible to get what you want. (it's the buttons rect)
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The only solution I can really think of is like a status bar thing.
Leave most things how they are, with the limited space it is virtually impossible to get a readably sized text without having only a handfull of selections on the screen.
However either along the bottom or top of the screen display the full text of the highlighted/selected item in the current view (scrolling if needs be).
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Viewing on my 42" plasma is, obviously, not an issue.
Just to make sure, maybe you should send it to JRiver so we can do a few months of testing with it :P
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The only solution I can really think of is like a status bar thing.
Yes... a bar (along the bottom maybe) would be very nice to show the entire text of the selected item.
Having spent some time watching my wife and son use Hairstiyle, I'm more convinced that two lists at the same time (the actions on the left and the media list on the right) are a bit of a problem.
It's nice that you can navigate with just the arrow keys, even between the two lists, but it is *not* inutuitive to some users. Enqueuing is about the only thing I do that needs me to switch between the two lists. What else do people use?
Scott-