Proposition: SimpleBox

[adamti91]

Alright, I know RockBox for H10 is nowhere near the level that is is on other platforms, and it will be some time before it is. However, I would like to put forth a suggestion, and an outline along with it. I am by far one of the least technical people on the moderating staff, and my experience and know how with RockBox is limited. I'm sure the same can be said for the majority of the MisticRiver community. Therefore, I am proposing a less complicated approach to RockBox, that will hopefully increase awareness and usage.

Notes: All buttons below refer to the iRiver H10, but SimpleBox will hopefully be able to be used on all RockBox supported players.

The Idea: Have an offshoot of RockBox, called SimpleBox. SimpleBox would run on the same code as RockBox, but would offer a much simpler, streamlined approach to the interface.

The Plan: Let's face it. The majority of us don't use/don't know how to use the majority of the features of RockBox. SimpleBox would streamline the interface, and focus on simplifying the UI of the player, but including some of the more sought-after features RockBox adds to the original firmware. Creating a simple, graphical main menu, with sections like 'Music', 'Pictures', 'Radio', 'Recording', 'Text', 'Games' and 'Utilities' (and 'Video' should it become functional with sound) (and 'Settings') would be essential, with it being the same (obviously screen sizes and color restrictions would be taken into account) across all platforms. More advanced equalizer settings would be customizable through the current (iRiver firmware) procedure, and the keymap would be the same. You would be able to change the playback settings/EQ on the fly by holding down the "o" key on the 'Now Playing' screen. Album Art would be available, as would an option to turn it off.

On startup, the player would boot to the SimpleBox firmware by default. If so inclined, other firmware could be booted by holding down a button, let's say "<-", during startup. If this button was held, the user would be shown a GRUB style selection screen, with the options "[insert player here; e.g. iRiver; iAudio, etc.] Firmware (and the version of the currently installed iRiver firmware)", and "SimpleBox" (and "RockBox, more below). The user could then pick witch firmware to use.

While there would be a cross-platform default skin, here would be other complete "skins" made for SimpleBox (not RockBox), that changed the look of everything from the USB connected screen to the main menu, to the 'Now Playing' screen. These skins would be included with each final build.

The Excecution: While RockBox is far away from being optimized for the H10, I believe if we get a team of people commited to SimpleBox to pick and choose features as they become available for RockBox, we could have a functional version of SimpleBox sooner rather than later. Features would only be added to the stable builds once they were absolutely optimized for the [target player] and SimpleBox. Usability would be the main objective of SimpleBox, so only plugins that functioned at 100% would be added, with keymaps that actually made sense (unlike some current RockBox plugins). The plugins would be added to either "Games" (Pong, Snake, etc.), or "Utilities" (Calculator, Stopwatch, etc.). Plugins like "Plasma" or "Fire" would be available through the 'Now Playing' screen's "o" menu (the one where you can change EQ and playback modes), as "screensavers".

There will be an optimized build of SimpleBox for each player.

I have no coding experience, so I couldn't really contribute to the coding of SimpleBox, but I would test daily builds, and give critiques along the way. I try to spend as little time on MR (and the internet) as possible, but I would try to stay updated until a final version is released.

Who's on board, and could we get an official endorsement from RockBox possibly?

Edits/Additions:

• When booting with "<-" held down, a regular/customized RockBox (non SimpleBox) boot option is added, in addition to iRiver Firmware and SimpleBox
• Revised suggestion to add cross-platform compatibility, not only for iRiver H10. Because RockBox is already very stable on other platforms (iRiver H3xx for example), progress could begin on making an H3xx optimized build of RockBox, off of which other builds (for the H10, X5, etc.) would be based, using the same 'Utilities' and 'Games' (as mentioned above).
  

-Adam

[bagder]

could we get an official endorsement from RockBox possibly?

You speak of what we call a "custom build". Rockbox officially does not support any custom builds. Rockbox is the one and single "product" that the Rockbox project produces. We do not have the means nor the will to support lots of different builds and flavours.

By all means, make whatever custom versions you want (as long as you adhere to the license rules), but do not expect it to be endorsed by the official Rockbox project or get worked on by the core Rockbox developers.

[druidfire217]

This sounds like a great idea. I like the setup you described, but would add a section allowing Rockbox as well as SimpleBox and iRiver.

[Mad Cow]

It sounds like a good idea, but it seems that it will require too much interface changing. I'm not even sure if it's possible without redoing the whole interface code.

[musichound]

Sounds like a great idea, Adam. How much money do you think they should be paid for developeing this?

[adamti91]

Hopefully there will be enough interest in it that a few leaders will emerge...

-Adam

[musichound]

A suggestion: You might want to put this suggestion in the Rockbox forums. If it is interesting to one of the developers someone may take this on.

[Oolon Coluphid]

I don't know. People who are technical enough to develop something like this are not likely to think that Rockbox is too complicated.

[adamti91]

Originally Posted by musichound

A suggestion: You might want to put this suggestion in the Rockbox forums. If it is interesting to one of the developers someone may take this on.

Good idea... After all it was me who posted the original iRiver H10 thread way back when on the RockBox forums, which really got the ball rolling on RockBox for the H10 (ironic since I'm one of the least knowledgable ones out there ).

-Adam

[Warhawk]

I agree. I know nothing about Rockbox, I installed it today and it seems like a piece of crap. I mean the interface is ugly and its really confusing to operate.

I'd help but ya know, I know nothing. But it would be really neet to be able to change the background and themes, aswell as having games and video with sound...ect.

And it would have to be freeware..lol

[Llorean]

I don't think you're likely to get any core developers interested in it. Most people involved with core Rockbox tend to like to work for things that can benefit multiple/all players. Trying to clone the interface of an existing player is pretty much the opposite of that.

If you post in the Rockbox forums, remember this does not go into the Unsupported Builds forum until an actual *build* exists. (Edit: Saw you posted over there now /edit) You *could* get it started by beginning to maintain a build with current patches that you see as "essential" to your Simplebox project. A base modified build upon which you hope to get people to help build.

From the description of your project, I think you'll find it's going to be more work than you're expecting.

It also wouldn't just have to be freeware. As with any GPLed project, you're obligated to keep your own copy of the source available (full source, not just patches) for anyone who asks to be able to download. I would in all honesty try to get *something* up and running first, and then look for people to help you with it, rather than this approach, which will get a lot of support from people thinking Rockbox should look more like the H10 firmware, but I'm not sure how many will have the skill to help much.

Another thing you might consider is attempting to design a simplified User Interface that's NOT based on the H10. Try to improve the Rockbox one to something good and unique, that can be used cross-platform. You can get a lot more support among the community as a whole if you don't intentionally restrict your ideas to one player.


Also, suggesting a name change to H10box, or something that reveals it's intended for the H10 only, because "SimpleBox" in no way suggests that it's going to be extremely platform specific.

[adamti91]

Thanks Llorean, I revised the preposition to include all platforms. I guess this would mean that it initial work could begin with say, the H3xx series?

-Adam

[Llorean]

I think you're missing some points. Things like the User Interface, and really pretty much everything but the hardware, are actually mostly the same code on all targets.

If you made a graphical or simplified menu structure, as long as you coded it to deal with different sized screens, and created graphics for it that worked on grayscale targets for it to substitute in, it would work on all of them out of the box. You don't really have to "start on X" and then "move it to Y."

Think about Windows. If you want to change windows somehow, you do it the same way whether you're on a Dell or an eMachines or whatever. It may look a little different because of screen size, or whatever, but in the end it's still windows.

Or maybe I'm missing something. I don't really see much in your original description that is stuff you would do different depending on what player it's on. I mean yes, the buttons you pick to do stuff will differ slightly, but that seems like the most of it.

[adamti91]

So if you code for one (not bootloaders obviously), you code for all? Sorry, I don't really get what your saying. The code is pretty much the same, and if you add graphics to menus, that will (partially) complete some of the plan for SimpleBox?

-Adam

[Llorean]

Yes, Rockbox is basically just one program that *runs* on all the players.

For example, if I were to add an option "Games" into the menu, because the menuing system works for all players, "Games" would show up on all players. With graphics you have to be more careful (though if you design for the 128x128 screen of the H10 5gb, it's smaller than all other screens, so then you just have to add in centering code or something)

[adamti91]

Sound good.

-Adam

[Didgeridoohan]

Adam. I read your post over at the Rockbox forum, and I think that if you want this idea to come to anything, you really should be taking part of the discussion over there. Since this idea sounds like a rather big change to the Rockbox code, getting it going or finding people that are interested is gonna be a lot easier if it takes place in the proper place.

[Febs]

Originally Posted by Warhawk

I agree. I know nothing about Rockbox, I installed it today and it seems like a piece of crap. I mean the interface is ugly and its really confusing to operate.

I don't see how you can judge the entire firmware as "a piece of crap" without actually using it. If the aethetics of the interface is all you care about, then really, Rockbox is not for you.

Adam, I want to re-emphasize Llorean's point: if you want to have any chance of your idea being implemented, you should consider how it will work on all supported Rockbox platforms. For example, you need to take into consideration that iPods have fewer buttons than some of the other platforms.

Ideas for new UI's get proposed all of the time, but they never get anywhere, and I believe that is in part because these proposals tend to be player-specific, and therefore inapplicable to Rockbox as a whole. (It's also in part because people lose interest in their own proposals.)

If you want to see one of many discussions that have taken place in the past on the UI design, you might want to look at this wiki page: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/vie...youtDiscussion

Actually, this wiki page relates to the menu layout, and not the UI per se, but your proposal touches on both.

[druidfire217]

The interface Adam is referring to would work well on multiple players, due to it being iRiver's "new" interface. I believe the same looking firmware is on th Clix as well as the H10, and is really just reordering the menus into something a bit more simplistic instead of the technical changes that can be made in Rockbox. I konw that is why lots of people like it, but it can be a bit overwhelming to a casual user.

[pelinkovac]

That's a good idea but there are problems lying ahead.
The biggest and most important one is if you simplify rockbox, you are basicly killing it's potential.The beauty of rockbox lies in possibility to change or set almost anything.The main problem would be how to preserve all the goodies of rockbox without making it to complex, and there a lot of goodies for rockbox.
Maybe the best way would be to look on example of ipodlinux and try to recreate something similiar on rockbox.

[colo]

Originally Posted by pelinkovac

The biggest and most important one is if you simplify rockbox, you are basicly killing it's potential.The beauty of rockbox lies in possibility to change or set almost anything.

Well, looks like that one thing can be a goody for someone on the on hand and only confusing for someone else on the other hand. Seems like the many options you and I appreciate aren't approved by users like adam or the ones agreeing with him. So this issue shouldn't be a major concern creating something like simplebox.

[musichound]

As for me, even though I agree with Adam it's a nice idea, I love the fact Rockbox has many features and options. The reason I am agreeing to this is because it would appeal to the people who want less bloat.