[mythtv-users] UI feedback in 0.22

[Jim Stichnoth]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 5:12 AM, Daniel Kristjansson
<danielk at cuymedia.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-10-15 at 03:22 -0700, Jim Stichnoth wrote:
>> Preview generation is a separate issue (btw, thanks mdean for the
>> r22456 commit!).  While you're waiting for preview images to be
>> generated, at least you can see that you're at the Recordings page.
>> The problem I'm talking about is a multi-second delay going from the
>> main menu page to the Recordings page, in which it appears that you're
>> still stuck at the main menu page.  It wasn't a problem in 0.21
>> because the text on the main menu page would be erased while the
>> Recordings page was being rendered.  I hope that's a clear enough
>> explanation.
>
> I understand the issue and we made some effort to address it for 0.22.
> This screen needed to be largely rewritten to port it to MythUI, so
> correctness was of larger importance than responsiveness. Because of
> the flexibility offered to MythUI themes for the watch recordings
> screen, more data is loaded than in 0.21 and we have not yet made a
> number of anticipated speedups. Going forward I anticipate there will
> be more on-demand loading, and themes that load a lot of data and need
> high end processors and themes that load less data and will be less
> processor intensive than even 0.21 was.

Apparently I was confused about the 0.21 behavior.  I rechecked, and
like 0.22, the UI "freezes" for some time until the Recordings page is
shown.  The major difference is that on my ION system, 0.21 takes 2
seconds whereas 0.22 (blue-abstract theme) takes 7+ seconds.  The
Mythcenter and Mythbuntu themes took longer than blue-abstract.

A simple workaround could be an interstitial "Please Wait" screen.  Or
a nicely designed button image for the "pushed" state that conveys the
"please wait" message.  Or maybe it's possible to use a progressbar
widget somewhere.  I (and more importantly, the WAF...) can live with
a 7-second delay, as long as I have some feedback that the frontend
likely hasn't frozen and that the remote control button press was
actually received.

Jim