[mythtv-users] 0.22 annoyances

[Yeechang Lee]

ryan patterson <ryan.goat at gmail.com> says:
> > * Most people only have one remote button marked "menu"
> > * Most people . . . etc. etc. etc.
> 
> Yeechang did you recently take a survey of ALL mythtv users?

Yes. A $100 gift certificate to Circuit City, CompUSA, or The Sharper
Image was awarded randomly to one participant. What, you didn't return
your survey? You missed out on a fabulous prize!

OK, maybe not. Yes, I overgeneralized with my "most people"
statements, and should have said something like "I'll bet most people
. . ."

> Personally I have had both the 'menu' and the 'info' buttons mapped
> on my remote since the beginning of time (well since I first setup
> MythTV yeas ago).

Do you also have TV Frontend|DETAILS bound, too? Or did/do you not
have access to the detailed program/file info from a remote button?
For me, DETAILS is far more useful to bind to the Info (well, "DIS" on
my remote); it works in almost all MythFrontend contexts, for one
thing.

> So I thought it was really strange when .23 came out and some
> experienced users didn't know how to access the 'info' menu and
> delete recordings.

I agree with you; I've had DELETE bound to a remote button since day
one as the function's far too useful to not do so. Like DETAILS, it
works in most MythFrontend contexts, including Upcoming Recordings and
anywhere else a recording (or recording rule)'s displayed.

> Likewise I've never used the "delete recordings" page (because I
> could do that from the watch recordings page).

Again, same here. I think I tried the Delete Recordings page exactly
twice in the 3.75 years before 0.22 finally, er, deleted it. Not that
having the size of each recording appear by default in all themes'
Watch Recordings wouldn't be a useful feature, and/or an option to
sort by recording size (Does 0.22 have one? I don't remember, but
don't think so), but having an evil twin of Watch Recordings was
pointless.

> In my experience, I use the 'info' button a lot more then the 'menu'
> button.  For instance it is really handy while playing a recording to
> pop up the on screen display and see how much longer there is to play
> or read the episode description.

To clarify, I have Global|INFO and TV Frontend|DETAILS both bound to
the Info button. This causes the button to behave in the most-logical
way: Display detailed program/file data outside playback, and the OSD
inside playback.

> Maybe I just have a different mindset, but the difference between
> the two buttons ('menu' and 'info') make perfect sense to me.  In my
> opinion it is not bad UI design at all.

Disagree. Another reason Mike Dean's silly one/two-button mice
comparison doesn't work is that the two Watch Recordings menus--Group
List and Recording Options--deal with two separate circumstances that
vary by context. Justin Hornsby's patch context-sensitively picks one
menu or the other depending on which of the two panes has focus, and
also permits easy switching to the other. paulh's refinement achieves
what Justin had proposed: Namely, being able to push the menu button
again to switch to the other menu, as opposed to scrolling to a menu
choice.

Again, though, having two "menu" buttons would be reasonable UI design
*if they were both useful throughout MythFrontend*. In such case, we'd
all have bound Global|INFO to another remote button a long time ago as
opposed to depending on RIGHT, and mythtv-users wouldn't have been
flooded with complaints 0.22 came along. But they're not both so
useful; only Global|Menu is.

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