Snakeoil Firmware 1.2.2 Testing Builds

[agent_kith]

• On system, poor contrast in colours (see above), buttons appear to be ok, but not tested systematically
  

The blue and blur themes still have some issues. Switch to light/dark/cosmic where the colour schemes are better. Will fix Blue on official release.
 

• Browse.  Buttons at bottom lose icon before word, when firefox on laptop not in full screen mode (e.g. 2 Ram buttons). + Ram makes sense, but tick ram does not. + folder, +file sort of make sense as does delete. Need to rethink buttons, not intuitive enough?  Quick test of load a track to Ram and can play music
  

Agreed. Create a ticket here so I don't lose track of this.

• SnakeOil.  Not sure I like 2 layer approach, having to click another icon to get to say system services, and then have to double click back to Dashboard. 
  

Going to add the side navigation buttons back. That way it will make navigation easier. As for the sub-snakeoil menus. I'm thinking of having "Snakeoil - kernel", "Snakeoil - services", "Snakeoil-XXX" from the dashboard. That way users can swap in/out between them easily. What do you think?

• Music player needs more work; initial impression is that it has gone backwards.  Suggest putting legend up page, quite easy to miss.
  mympd working with MPd 0.22.9 No check on SQ
  plus, minus buttons, overlap with available music players
  Confused by "Selected Software to Start";  are you suggesting that this is what we should start as a player?  Confusing that I can add Mpd and LMS at the same time?  There are no rules behind it. I need to spend more time testing the players.
  

What do you mean plus/minus overlap with available players? Can you do a screenshot? As for running LMS+MPD, that is by design. This wasn't possible before, but now it can. It wouldn't make much sense for 99% of the users out there, but then there may be somebody out there who wants to run LMS with MPD on one machine, and have a second player running Squeezelite running on another computer/Pi somewhere. This way the library resides on one machine, play out via MPD, and a remote Squeezelite can also play the same music library.

This new system kind of opens up for more powerful uses. Whereas in the old days, when you select LMS, you can only select Squeezelite and nothing else. This new system just makes it more flexible. The downside is new users who are completely new to Linux world will have no idea what needs to be there. Hence there is a panel on the top right (content yet to to be finished) that will have some help text, as well as links to the Wiki.

There are some rules, e.g. you cannot run 2 different versions of MPD. But the system should be in place to add more refinements. Unsure whether to lock it down like old, or make it open to be easier to manage. It's kind of one or the other, as I don't want to complicate matters with basic/advanced modes.

On Samsung phone, quick test appears ok.  Dashboard button from each section needs to take user to the top of page (currently, seeing the bottom).  In SnakeOil "tab", no description e.g seeing the words SNAKEOIL_SERVICES.INTRO

Will fix the translations soon (currently working on this). Have created a ticket to make sure returning to the dashboard will go to the top of the page.

I am not thrilled on the looks and not convinced that the navigation is better, will post more when I am satisfied that functionality is all there.

Overall, a good start, at least we have something to play with.  Good that the technology behind is up to date. I have yet to find a compelling reason to go back to 1.2.1 (fingers crossed!).

Hopefully navigation will improve with the return of the side bar. Will also try and see if I can improve the dashboard to give it a "wow" kind of first impression. Right now just not getting that. I want the tiles to be bigger than before (make this more like an application, when compared to " admin portal" of old)... But when something is big, it's pretty difficult to make it pretty.