Just installed OSMC on a Raspi. Plugged in a USB hard drive with all my music… honestly guys, who’s in charge of this project? The user interface is a disaster! This thing is so unuserfriendly, it’s even hard to describe how bad it is without using bad language. Seriously, I see all these topics in the forum about all these advanced features that are on the table but you know what, I suggest you sort out the basics first. This thing is truly shocking. I am a very tech savvy person and I cannot use this thing, it’s so off putting… I just want to create some playlists based on the files and directories on my USB hard drive… what the hell.
Can I help at all? As a dev I think I can contribute but I wouldn’t know where to start…
That old chestnut. I’ve something to complain about, I’d work on it (if I had time | if I knew how), I’m a developer in my day job which allows me to qualify this product as bad, despite the fact that I’m paid in my day job, and people working on this project aren’t.
You need to explain what is ‘truly shocking’, ‘offputting’, a ‘disaster’, etc. What is so wrong? What can be improved? Perhaps you should make some suggestions first so we can pass it to the UX team.
What is your opinion on the new interface? Which skins work well for you?
After an introduction like that, your first contribution needs to be an absolutely huge home run to maintain any credibility (read: repair your self-sabotaged reputation).
I, for one, hope you manage to do it. Given the massive step forward in design it would require, we could be on the precipice of a huge paradigm shift in mediacenter interfacing.
So after what I am assuming to be 5 -10 minutes of use with an interface that you have never experienced before, you have come to the conclusion that you shouldn’t have to learn how to use it or find your way around?
Look dude, if there’s one reputation at stake here it’s that of OSMC. The look n feel of the UI is cool and mostly there but functionally IT JUST DOES NOT WORK in a lot of places. And no my first contribution won’t be a huge home run, that would require me to quit my job and be on this full time. Getting this thing sorted is an iterative process. Surely I’m not the first and only person who’s noticed the shortcomings of the current version. I may be the one who’s very strongly expressed his disappointment. You know why I did that? Because I very much want this thing to be epic! There’s a huge opportunity here for the open source community to create something that’s actually user friendly and works reliably.
I believe you have hit the nail firmly on the thumb there …
I think what people are expecting is not for someone to have spent less than a day playing around with something and then come into a forum like this saying how utterly awful everything is and how it should be done so much better.
It took me longer than that to find my way around it and I’ve got 35+ years of development experience … Heck, depending on what your internet connection is like, it might not even have downloaded any updates (or information from add-on repositories, or …) yet!
I suggest that if you have specific problems, issues, or recommendations, it might be a little more useful (for everybody) for you to detail what those are (and if they include things which “JUST DOES NOT WORK” then include log files to demonstrate the problem).
The description of the activity makes me wonder whether this is actually an issue with the OSMC interface design, or with the way Kodi in general works.
That’s kind of the point (well, at least one of the points) - if it takes people such a long time to figure out how a media player works that kind of shows that somethings not right, no? As I mentioned earlier, a few tweaks here and there will probably do the trick, as opposed to a full front end overhaul (which according to someone is what I am suggesting lol). The other thing is the functional part. As I said, I will elaborate on this but some of us do actually have full time jobs and other interests aside from IT.
I think some people are a bit pissed off because I commented on their work, which I can understand. All I am wondering is, how many people have given OSMC a spin and ditched it without mentioning their user experience?
Depends - if it’s a media player and someone just wants to plug in their USB drive and play some media then you’re quite right; it should be fairly obvious.
If, however, you’re trying to stream content from your friend’s house over a VPN via a kernel mounted PFTP directory and expecting that to be “obvious” then … no, not so much.
And that’s the problem. You haven’t even said what you’re trying to do and what isn’t obvious, isn’t working, … despite several people asking you.
“I’ve used this for less than a day and it’s awful and I’m a developer and I’m sure I could make it better (and do a better job than the people who have been working very hard on it)!” - That, to me at least, is how you’ve come across so far.
“I’ve tried to do X, Y and Z; I think X isn’t working for me (and here are some logs), I couldn’t work out how to do Y, but Z worked perfectly. Oh, and where’s the forum for suggestions please?” - that might have been a better approach if you didn’t immediately want to annoy people.
So what did you try to do and couldn’t work out how to; what sort of set-up do you have there; what do you feel might benefit from improvement (and why - that sort of thing should go here); … that sort of post might get you somewhere. Coming onto the forum with <24 hours of using what can be quite complex a system and accusing everyone else of not doing their job, then basically refusing to say with what you’re having problems or issues … No, not going to get you anywhere.
With increased flexibility comes a steeper learning curve
I still haven’t heard what is really wrong, just start listing and we can discuss it and this post can become beneficial. I’m not pissed off, I’m genuinely curious. Kodi and OSMC can definitely be more user friendly, but we need to know how. The situation is similar to countless users who come to this forum and tell us something is broken and ask us how to resolve the issue. We need the details.
I also, have a full time job. It does not prevent me from working on this project. You don’t need to contribute anything or overhaul anything, but in the time it has taken to craft the last reply you could have told us what we can improve
To start. Using the mouse to scroll through lists is really awkward. Its very hard to click on the thing you actually want to select. The only way seems to be to keep hovering the pointer over the central (highlighted) item and use the scroll wheel on the mouse. Any up and down movement of the mouse makes the list scroll in a way where you just keep chasing the option you want to select.
Now, let dig a bit into the ‘Music’ menu.
Let’s start with Playlists > New smart playlist.
When I type a name for the new smart playlist in the textbox, the text in this box is orange when hovered over with the mouse, if you move the mouse away, then it looks like the text disappears. At first I thought the name I just typed is lost but in fact I can see it is just about visible, it’s a slightly lighter shade of grey compared with the color of the box itself. Not great UX.
When I then hit the ‘OK’ button at the bottom of the screen I assume it’s to save the list but instead I get promoted to give the list a name? Again? I’ve already given it a name, it’s the first thing I did. Why is it prompting me again?
So, the ‘smart playlist creation’ workflow is a bit messed up I’d say.
How do I delete playlists??
In the ‘New Playlist…’ menu option, this opens the playlist editor. When I hit ‘Open playlist’ at the bottom of the screen, it does not allow me select the smart playlist I just created? how do I get rid of that playlist?
Right, neeeext. Music > Playlists > New Playlist. This gets me back to the playlist editor. How do I add files to a playlist? If I select ‘Files’ under ‘System music files’, surely I can browse my files but how do I select the files I want to add to the playlist? When I click on one of my music files, music starts playing How do i stop it from playing. I just want to create a playlist aaaaarrrgghghhh.
Whenever I hit save playlist it prompts for a name, I type a name and hit ‘done’. Then I click on open playlist and the list I think I just saved does not show up… How does this work???
Playlist editor > open playlist > Music Playlists. I don’t see the smart playlists I created?
What is Music add-ons? Why is this music add-ons thing showing up everywhere? I just want to create some playlists and play my music lol.
Now (this is getting worse every minute). Music > Files
I now browse to my USB hard drive and select a song. The song starts playing. How do I stop it from playing? Where are the controls? Whaaaat?
Music > Files. Here my external drive shows up in the top level menu. When I go into ‘Add music… > Broswe’ the drive is not listed? Why not?
In that same ‘Browse’ screen when I go to ‘Music playlists’ nothing shows? I mean, I do have one playlist which I somehow managed to create yesterday (not a smart playlist, just a regular playlist). This playlist shows up in the Music Playlists folder in the playlists menu but in the current screen where I’m browsing through files it does not show in the Music playlists folder.
All this time music is playing in the background and I cannot stop it. WTH guys? KODEKArnage is defending this product?! Is he serious? I don’t see why all the above needs explaining? It’s all bloody obvious when you try using it.
Argh, f*** it. I am going to stop here, this whole thing is way too dysfunctional to start describing all that is wrong with it. The list of stuff that either does not work as expected, or not at all, or menu options and screens that don’t make sense is waaaaay too long.
I’d love to give you a live demo via screencast or something but to be honest I think that is not necessary. I just gave the controls to my girlfriend to experiment for a bit with this media library/player. She’s just laughing. She can’t believe what is happening
I want this thing to be good so I’m going to pull the code off github and I’ll have a look. It may be more work then I initially thought to straighten this one out. I’m sorry Karnage, all the stuff I mentioned earlier on and today is true, this thing is unusable as it stands, unfortunately. You’ll just have to put these facts in your pipe and smoke 'em dude.
