Project is really coming along fast pace now, while im waiting slot in DVD-rom to arrive, ive been implementing the software side and things are really coming together much faster than i dared to expect. I thought that xlobby would never make it to be the first frontend of p3rvette, i was certain i would have to take some more conventional carPC frontend and slowly adapt xlobby towards the purpose. 1st stage goal for the project on software side has always been: music playing, navigation and handsfree support for gsm. Handsfree is based on phoco and with phoco developers help i got software finally installed and running, ive quickly written a pervtalk device for integrating it to xl and ive almost built the features for it in the pervette skin. Theres still few things to do to have music part of skin ready, but as we know this is hardly any pioneering work. Navigation part (map monkey) will have to wait till i can get pervette on the road, otherwise its awfully hard to test. So the 1st goalstate will be achieved soon software wise, but its better be almost ready anyway, cause spring is only month away... By now it has became clear that xlobby is simply the best choige for carpc frontend also.
Ive needed to make few changes to the p3rvette skin, first of all i couldnt get powerstrip to cooperate, and i have come to conclusion that it disagrees with mobos integrated graphics chip... well atleast thatll save me licensing cost of the strip. but skin needed to be converted to 800x600 so i added letterbox style black bars on the backgrounds. Bigger change is the name of the skin... itll be now on know as Shark skin. For anybody who knows anything about vettes the change is obvious... Ill take CHAOS back to be used later as concept it was originally conceived for -- a car oriented FEEdpack for Frontend Engine device (P3rvTalk's own frontend). Theres still no tribal designs used on the skin yet, but i havent scrapped to idea yet if nothing else i hope to use them to give last bit of the style, but on the other hand ive included new influence from cartoons. See CAR-toons, it all fits together, neat huh
Ok lets take a little sneak peek to the main layout of the Shark. Reason im doing this im hoping to get some feedback how to improve it, mayby some bunch of fresh ideas and also to hear will my own ideas work or not. As u prolly see first there are two big menus both left and right hand side. As i stated early on i targeted to static design, however i had to lax on the goal a little, Left hand menu, mainmenu, is static but the righhand menu, submenu is not. Menu is database which has six sub categories set to stone: music, pics, nav, sys, misc and com, each subcat can hold 6 mods, so together skin can accomedate 36 mods, 6 for each six subcats. the choige of six items is based on the fact that monitor has six hard buttons, in the hope i can somehow use these on later date. But also six sub cats are definitely needed, sure u could merge music and pics to one heading ent, but that would be too huge cat it would certainly have more than 6 mods. where as in car use u can merge pics both static andmoving kind under same heading without much of a problem. So what is this talk about mods? mods are short for modules, and they will be selectable from right hand menu and will "load" in the middle of screen space. Ive been for long preaching here about modular skins and im now set to implement one myself. whole point of modules is to wrap certain kind of functionality, which goes together and might be offered by one or several plugins to bite size package which will be swallovable by the end user. Lets face it u have to be a computer scientist or atleast the guy who fuels the rockets up at NASA to be able to use xl-plugin, where as mod can be downloaded by anybody, and more importantly functionality can be comprehended by anybody and just plugged and played... xPerT will be at later date equibbed with all needed code to support mods.
Ok enough about preaching mods for now... As u can see theres corvette butt at lower part of skin, im planning to use it as player, i still have to see if the idea will workor not, but as i see it u need 4 buttons to implement player functionality, and tail lights of vette can very well serve as play/pause, stop/eject, prev/rewind, and next/ff... ill just need to look for american taillights and digitally replace them because P3rvettes euro lights dont kinda fit the color scheme of Shark. also im planning to use "corvette" text as progres indicator and license plate for now playing, and mayby that "cats eye" for volume level, but we'll have to see how all that goes. Also im planning to have butt rise from down there, as i told u guys, i've implemented possibility to move xl element to the internal version of xPerT and although it wasnt success i was hoping it to be, because of speed, but it can handle one object very well, and i can raise the butt and just hide/unhide everything else that comes with in... no strings attached so to speak.
EDIT: i've got lot more ideas planned but while im catching my breath again... ill let u guys chime in... i leave u with this small brain apetizer to ponder upon: what could be 4 letters max name for music subcat, best i've come up with is "hits" but its not quite it... im sure u native english blokes can come up with better term to fit the slot.
by P3rv3rt B3ar on Sat Feb 09, 2008 3:04 pm 
!!
)
