Notices

First of all, Canola is fantastic—thanks! Now that I've been using it for about 5 months, I thought I'd make a few suggestions.

Photos:

1. In thumbnail view, the left/right of the dpad should move 1 screen in the corresponding direction
2. In full view (black bg mode), you must use on-screen buttons to rotate a photo. If up/down on the dpad rotated the pic clockwise/counterclockwise, then I wouldn't have to tap the screen twice.
3. Also in full view, the +/- buttons (on top) could be used to zoom in/out
4. How about a settable preference for autorotating portrait oriented photos to better use the screen?

Podcasts:

1. I'd like to specify a folder to scan (in addition to the podcast feeds) so that individual podcasts that I download could be grabbed automatically.
2. I'd like an ordered list of my recently played podcasts and/or a list of podcasts that I haven't played to (or skipped to) the end. This way I could better remember what I was last listening to yesterday.
3. It is too easy to accidentally hit the forward/back buttons or skip to a different part of the track and lose your place. It would be handy, perhaps, if after 10 seconds of inactivity you had to tap something (like the album art) in order to "activate" the other controls.
4. [Bug] Sometimes when I "lock touch screen and keys" (power + center button), Canola thinks I've pressed the center button to play/pause the audio. That click should be ignored...

Hellow

Let's go through and see how they match with our plans / ongoing dev (I posted some in the upnp thread) anyways..

Photos : Canola was since the beginning made for touchscreen only usage. We indeed have all the rules for the hardware support ( a movement specially for those with the 770) but we think this is lower in priority The good news: we have other project that need this, so canola may win the code finally.

2. Yes, the same.

3. Indeed. (it's full hardware support)

4. this was discussed since canola 1 but we have deep problems with people power x priorities you get the point

Podcast:

1. yeah, it's a nice idea, but it needs to be well thought to not create a clutter. Also it's not podcast it's a list of episodes, then we need to generate a xml etc etc.

2. This is a nice idea. I will add to the queue

3. If the screen is dimmed, it should not send commands, if it's sending it's a bug, apart from that to have a 2 touch when the screen is on is complicated. Anyhow you reported a problem you have, and I will do the default process, add to my list and this can grow on importance as other users complain about. The highers are the one solved first.

4. Yeah, we are aware of that, it was supposed to be fixed, but I think podcast is not following the rules we set. This will be fixed (again)

Thanks for the real valuable comment. I know it sounds that We don't want to do anything but actually we want it's just that we have now more limited development power, as everyone is working on several projects. But I'm working in a new small team that is being trained and I will have a nice Youtube new plugin just as first work of this team )

BR

Marcelo

One more thing... (haha, the day is so close)

1) It would be very nice in Podcast reproduction that you can decide to stop at the end of the episode (very usefull when you listen podcast in bed, haha) or to continue with the next episode automatically (just like now).

2) And it would be nice to save the episodes of each podcast on a specific folder with the podcast's name inside of downloads podcast folder.

Thanks a lot for your work

Marcelo, as always, thanks for taking the time to respond. You represent the project well!

I agree that touchscreen should come first. But since you already support the dpad in other ways, it could only improve things! Glad to hear that there may be progress on this. I hope you'll keep my #1 and #2 interface suggestions in mind.

I've been thinking about this issue more (the problem of losing a place in a podcast so easily), and it seems to me that the iPhone has a pretty elegant solution to this same kind of problem. After a certain amount of inactivity, the screen dims; when it is next touched, the screen restores, and you see an overlay with a button that you must touch and drag across the screen. Very clever! (You can see this in the first couple seconds of most iPhone ads, like this one.) I think this feature might only be useful for podcasts.


You could always opensource the project... Then the problem would become managing all the contributions. I'm not trying to snipe here at all. I just think that a project like this might stand to benefit, as would the organization that managed it. However, I understand if this isn't an option, and I know you must have discussed it before!

This is a very good idea. Most podcasts have strange, non-human friendly names. This would really help organizing. In some ways I'd even like Canola to rename the file based on the metadata, but I'd be pretty happy with folders. Sometimes I want to save a really good episode to my computer for future reference and to free up some card space, and it can be tricky to find the right one.

And Marcelo, one more minor bug... I do like the option to prevent screen dimming when plugged in, but I don't think dimming should be prevented when Canola isn't in the foreground. I often keep Canola running so I don't have to wait for it to start up, but when I minimize it, the screen stays lit while plugged in with this option set. (As an aside, is there any risk of burn-in on a NIT?)

Take care!

Marsh

I'd like to choose which directories to scan for photos.

Right now I have a lot of record albums on it and my photo folders are hard to find among all the record album folders.

graabein : go to settings : media library = photos and choose (mark with the V) only the folders you want

is that what you need?

Oh yes, thanks! I found the setting earlier but I thought it was limited to just checking internal memory, card and that other option. It works just like I want it now