Suggested Change: SageMC Menus

[Brent]

One of the few things I don't like about SageMC is the way certain menu items get scattered around. Here's a little suggestion that I'd like others to give input on:

Right now, the Main Menu shows "My Menu"



Then from "My Menu" you see:

• @email
• RSS Feeds
• Video Conversions
• Parental Controls
• Settings

It would be my preference to move RSS Feeds, Video Conversions and Parental Controls to the Settings Page somehow. And remove @email from being installed by default (you could always re-add it if you wanted it) and therefore remove "My Menu" from the main menu and instead have "Settings" which would take you to the settings page.

Anyone agree, disagree? Looking for others input as the overall menu structure can certainly be improved. Other suggestions are welcome as well. No promises on what will or won't be changed (especially since I don't code this stuff) but I think the discussion is healthy

Thanks,

[brewston]

I always change 'my menu' to 'settings' - keeps the wife out of there !

[MeInMaui]

I'm fine with changing the default Dynamic menu structure. It is certainly easy enough to change. Kick some ideas around and see what you can come up with.

Aloha,
Mike

[HelenWeathers]

It would be my preference to move RSS Feeds, Video Conversions and Parental Controls to the Settings Page somehow. And remove @email from being installed by default (you could always re-add it if you wanted it) and therefore remove "My Menu" from the main menu and instead have "Settings" which would take you to the settings page.

I agree 100% with this suggestion. Even though I am new to Sage and newer to MC STV, I believe this makes sense. (I just discovered the Dynamic menus external program thingy and am now a happy Blu-ray playing camper.)

[briands]

Brent... here's a thread where the menu question was asked previously...
And here's my suggestion (of course that was before many of the current options existed).

TV

Recordings
Guide
Schedule (Parallel view by default
Favorites (Parallel view
IR Manipulation ?(Parallel view
Search
Live TV

Video Files

Actually only video Media files including ripped DVDs

Music

Music player functionality
Portable sync (this is a wishlist item)
FM Radio
Web Radio
Pandora

DVD

Play local DVD OPTICAL DISC

Photos

View folders
Slideshow
Import from Camera (wishlist)
Export to... (wishlist)

Burn disk
Printer
Order prints

Weather

Advanced

Setup
History

Edit - actually updated in red for NEW options - EDIt added indents that were lost

[othy]

I agree with the OP--the current My Menu page seems extraneous. In my opinion, everything that doesn't get used frequently should go in one submenu.

That said, I don't think you'll find a setup that everyone likes. In fact, the major selling point for me is how easy it is to customize the menus.

In my case I remap "My TV" to point to what would be considered the "Recordings" menu--since 95% of the time that we turn on our tv we're going to watch recorded shows. I then make a "Live TV" menu item that points to the traditional "My TV" screen (Guide, Search, Recordings, Schedule, etc) . Live TV isn't the right name of course, but it makes sense to my wife. Go to "My TV" to watch stuff we've recorded, go to "Live TV" for other TV stuff.

I'm not suggesting that as a change, just pointing out that people will have different opinions of the best layout.

Tim

[Brent]

Keep in mind these are just suggestions, but if easy to do I think they could be implemented in part eventually. Also, think of this as the "default SageMC" installation - you can of course change the menu format, titles, submenus etc on your own, but this would be the way things looked when you first install SageMC so it's sort of important for the first-experience of the new SageMC user.

I like some of briands suggestions - some of those could be implemented down the road, but we'll focus on the easy-to-implement menu changes and mostly cosmetic changes for the first go around.

Further thoughts to consider:

1.
The menus saying "My XXXXXX" is kind of a fallback to the old MCE days. Would anyone be upset if the menus were more like:

• "TV" instead of "My TV"
• "Videos" or "Movies" instead of "My Videos"
• Same thing across the board. Remove "My" from the titles. A very minor and cosmetic change, but I think it has some merit. Still would like to hear what others think on this one.

I don't know how easy it would be to change the My Videos or the Settings (SageMC) page. I think there is a limit to 7 menu items on a screen but not sure. Here are a few further thoughts:

2.
Add the following "internal screens" to Settings Page or Settings>SageMC:

• Video Conversions (I'm expecting some to not like this suggestion so speak up if you don't)
• RSS
• @Email

These would then be removed from the "My Menu" by default. As mentioned before, the user could of course add or create their own submenu items with these types of things on their own if they wanted to, but the initial SageMC install would be this way.

3.
The main menu would then have a "Settings" or "Advanced" (not the "my menus") item on the main menu which would take the user directly to the Settings page of SageMC.

4.
Move the "Play DVD" to the "My Videos" screen. This one might be a bit more controversial so I'm looking for input from everyone on whether they think that is a good or bad idea. With the extenders, I think the "play DVD" menu item is used less and less. Further it really is just another way to play a video so it seems logical to me to put it in the video menu screen as an option for playing a video/movie.


Here's another thought on menus. Othy's way of showing both Recorded TV and LiveTV on the front menu is more like the way BeyondTV does it. There are very likely others who prefer this sort of thing as well as others. My suggestion would be to come up with 1 basic "default Menu" you see at installation, but include 2 or 3 other dynamic menu layouts with differing styles that the user could just "load" from the "main menu options" - in other words have those 3 or 4 menu files part of the SageMC install so the user doesn't even have to create them themselves... they would already be there. I do this on my own by creating a "menu" subdirectory under SageTV\SageTV\ and put all of the sageMCmenu.xml files in there with descriptive file names. I then can load them in an instant to change the menu on a whim.

[Zippster]

Excellent ideas, the "My" definitely have to go. I always thought sage has way too many menus, sub menus for regular users, just too much to get lost in.

[briands]

Originally Posted by othy

I agree with the OP--the current My Menu page seems extraneous. In my opinion, everything that doesn't get used frequently should go in one submenu.

That said, I don't think you'll find a setup that everyone likes. In fact, the major selling point for me is how easy it is to customize the menus.

In my case I remap "My TV" to point to what would be considered the "Recordings" menu--since 95% of the time that we turn on our tv we're going to watch recorded shows. I then make a "Live TV" menu item that points to the traditional "My TV" screen (Guide, Search, Recordings, Schedule, etc) . Live TV isn't the right name of course, but it makes sense to my wife. Go to "My TV" to watch stuff we've recorded, go to "Live TV" for other TV stuff.

I'm not suggesting that as a change, just pointing out that people will have different opinions of the best layout.

Tim

I like this part too - those crazy people who watch live TV... I just don't get it, even for sports I prefer to wait about an hour into a game so I can skip commercials.

[HelenWeathers]

I rarely use the Live TV choice. When I do watch Live TV I usually (99.9%) launch that from the Guide Menu.

EDIT: I'd also like to have choices of This or That rather than My This or My That.

[toricred]

Originally Posted by Brent

<snip>My suggestion would be to come up with 1 basic "default Menu" you see at installation, but include 2 or 3 other dynamic menu layouts with differing styles that the user could just "load" from the "main menu options" - in other words have those 3 or 4 menu files part of the SageMC install so the user doesn't even have to create them themselves... they would already be there. I do this on my own by creating a "menu" subdirectory under SageTV\SageTV\ and put all of the sageMCmenu.xml files in there with descriptive file names. I then can load them in an instant to change the menu on a whim.

This idea of having multiple dynamic menu layouts come with MC is exactly what I was thinking. I'd also like to see if people would be willing to share their menu layouts like we do with themes in another thread.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by toricred

This idea of having multiple dynamic menu layouts come with MC is exactly what I was thinking. I'd also like to see if people would be willing to share their menu layouts like we do with themes in another thread.

To minimize confusion with the existing menu layout files (.layout), I suggest that we be more careful in referring to these as menu definition files. Sorry to be nit-picky, but I can just see the confusion for new users later.

Aloha,
Mike

[toricred]

Sorry about that. You're right, of course. How about calling them menu structures instead.

[briands]

Now maybe you can explain the difference between themes, .layout, menu structures

Thanks!

[Brent]

Originally Posted by briands

Now maybe you can explain the difference between themes, .layout, menu structures

Thanks!

I'll take a stab at that. I understand it can be confusing.


Menu Definition (structure) Files = You can customize the items in your menus. This is primarily what we're talking about in this thread. For example, you can change (rename, add, remove, reorder) the items in your menus (Videos, Music, Online Video etc) you can add submenus to your hearts desire etc. You can also change the icon that goes along with the menu item using these. This functionality comes from nielm's awesome dynamic menus plugin which is built-in to SageMC.

Layout Files
Layout files are all about the look-and-feel plus user interface experience. Layout files let you switch between the standard text type menu, the icon layout, horizontal text layout etc. You can also now move stuff around, and change a bunch of things within the menu to make it look just the way you want.

Themes
Themes are pre-packaged files that typically included different layouts (see above) as well as different graphics, backgrounds etc. I have a few themes that I'm working on that will include all of the above. Once downloaded, you can switch between themes fairly easily within SageMC settings.

Flachbar and Meinmaui (and Nielm) have done a ton to make SageMC menus very customizable. You can do so much now it's very very nice. You can't yet (as far as I know) make the menus change based on the media you are viewing/browsing and you can't have different backgrounds based on the menu items you are viewing, but other then that I think it's pretty much there.

I feel a blog post coming on with lots of screenshots and examples
And I'm working on a "how to create a theme" how-to as well. But still have a lot to learn myself before that gets finished.

[MeInMaui]

Brent pretty much nailed it.

I would just add that every theme contains a theme.properties file that allows customization of visual items like per-screen backgrounds, selection bar insets, guide category colors, pop-up menu color, etc.

Aloha,
Mike

[Brent]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I would just add that every theme contains a theme.properties file that allows customization of visual items like per-screen backgrounds, selection bar insets, guide category colors, pop-up menu color, etc.

I've just started messing with that. Speaking of that theme.properties file, I'm not sure I have a copy of one that uses all of the options available. Do you have one I could work with Mike - or one you could suggest I use as a starting point?

[briands]

One more clarification - the screens are actually defined by the STV, correct? If you want to change an internal screen "TV Screen" for instance to show current recordings at the top with alphabetical list below, you would have to go into Studio and make the changes. These changes would be lost whenever the base STV is updated. Somehow you could create an STVi that would allow for easy reimporting if the STV revisions don't get in the way... Is all of that right?

If someone created a revised internal screen, how would that be shared? STVi?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by briands

One more clarification - the screens are actually defined by the STV, correct? If you want to change an internal screen "TV Screen" for instance to show current recordings at the top with alphabetical list below, you would have to go into Studio and make the changes. These changes would be lost whenever the base STV is updated. Somehow you could create an STVi that would allow for easy reimporting if the STV revisions don't get in the way... Is all of that right?

If someone created a revised internal screen, how would that be shared? STVi?

That goes a bit beyond my knowledge. But from what I understand yes, you need to modify the STV to change one of the internal screens themselves - unless that STV maker makes it possible within his STV that is.

Now that you mention it, that seems like a good idea - but something that wouldn't happen until quite a bit of work...

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Brent

I've just started messing with that. Speaking of that theme.properties file, I'm not sure I have a copy of one that uses all of the options available. Do you have one I could work with Mike - or one you could suggest I use as a starting point?

Take a look at my SagePro HD Theme for SageMC. Sage Pro MC theme (There's also one for the default STV.) You'll see examples where I have used different backgrounds for the Main screen and the other screens. This might be a good study.

Gerry