[SOLVED] Ongoing status updates with new UI for Gear Isolation

[Bromf]

In other news, for some reason it does appear I may not land that new job that is closer to home. While the recruiter still sounds hopeful, reading between the lines and her tones I am feeling less confident.

If all else fails tell her you're not interested for anything less than 125% of what they're offering.....

You're a valuable asset...back yourself !

(But just don't post your hopes and plans on a publicly searchable website like....oh.. )

All the best and we have our fingers crossed here....

Bob and family. (and our little dog too ! ) sending our love and support.

[agent_kith]

(But just don't post your hopes and plans on a publicly searchable website like....oh.. )

What can I say, I like to jinx myself unnecessary . Me and my risk taking phase, ROFL. To be honest I will still be very reserved had it not been for Covid. This whole thing makes me realise life is too short. I need to at least try and dream. Sure I may well fail to achieve what I set out to do, but at least I can proudly say although I failed, I wasn't afraid to step up and try.

In other news, been hammering away on the Keyboard trying to suss out the Snakeoil menu bits in the new UI. Probably around 80% complete at this stage. Already finished the disk management bits. So that means only the player menu is left. Having said that, it's probably a good idea for me to do a few alpha/beta first in the test sections first before doing a public release.

Just very happy to see the automated build system working again. I still have no idea why the WebApp suddenly failed to build (something to do with this tool called sass). Hopefully this doesn't happen again in the future.

[Bromf]

Erk! sass.... there are so many ....
https://github.com/sass

unless...
https://www.sassclothing.com.au/
lol...at least that one is from Skippy-land !

[agent_kith]

Erk! sass.... there are so many ....
https://github.com/sass

unless...
https://www.sassclothing.com.au/
lol...at least that one is from Skippy-land !

It's node-sass. If you click on the link, it says the module has been deprecated (Meaning , but it should still work. Except it doesn't. Did spent two days a couple of months ago trying to fix the problem, but didn't manage to get it work. Besides, the WebApp was coded with Angular 4, and Google has since released Angular 12.

It's a huge leap moving from Angular 4 to 12, so might as well bite the bullet and update the code to the latest and greatest. Angular is really a pleasure to code in so the time invested in re-writing the WebApp isn't lost. I wasn't that great of a Web developer when I started with Angular (You can tell from the pics in the first post), but I certainly can hold my own now .

[agent_kith]

Saving the worst for last.

And I just jinx'ed myself. Merely a few hours ago I'm mentioned that I think I'm much better web developer compared to 2 years ago. Not!

This page looks absolutely horrible! Absolutely, totally, completely horrible! Way too many colours, and they're spread all over the shop!
 

The other Snakeoil sub-menus do not look as messy as this. Will have to clean this sub-menu aesthetically before I move to the last component - players.

[agent_kith]

Still need some cleaning up, but at least it's not as messy as yesterday.
 

So now it's down to Music players, and potentially File Manager.

1. System
   
2. Disk/NAS Management (Music library)
   
3. Music Players
   
4. Snakeoil
   
5. File Manager (If I have time)
   

[agent_kith]

GUI design can be very difficult. Especially when trying to consolidate a desktop experience together with mobile/tablet experience.

Exhibit A: I am trying to create a UX where users can click on the items from the list on the left, click on >> (Add) to move it to the middle box.
Now when you click on a item in the middle, the item will be selected, so you can << (Delete) the item from the middle list and move it back tot the left.

The problem I have now, is I also want to click on an item in the middle, so I can configure audio output options. So every time you click on an item, it will be pop up the config panel, and also selects/deselects the clicked item.
 

I probably havn't described this UX well enough so you guys probably do not understand it. But in real life this experience sucks. Now I can try and do long press or double click, both options are deemed undesirable IMO as that hasn't been used anywhere else in the Snakeoil WebApp.

Unsure at the moment how to best make this work well, but I guess the brief is to get this new WebApp out ASAP and focus on improving UX later.

Anyway, to summarise, this is the new way media players are gonna work now. You select the players you want to start, move them into the middle list, configure them, and click start. So this opens up a lot more flexibility and what not. Notice also the list is not sorted alphabetically, it never was as I was imposing my own sort order before. May consider improving sorting down the road. Will also consider doing things like clicking a item on the left will pop up a brief information panel describing the player, and link to the maker's site, and to the Snakeoil Wiki.

So bear with me while i get this out. Might actually take a break for a few days, gonna jump on the "Squid Games" bandwagon, so gonna see if I can get a new trial to Netflix, binge that show, recharge my creative batteries, and then get right back into this.

[agent_kith]

Taking a break from the players section, instead started work on the file browser. Yes I did say I will make this optional, but was kind of stuck with how to proceed with players, so decided to take a break from that and work on this instead.

Functionally remains the same as before, just updated to use the latest components. The only thing that's not working right now is the "Add File" button, I'm trying to use a new upload module to simplify things, and simplify the web server (no more PHP dependency) if it works.

[agent_kith]

Pretty good progress so far past couple days. Didn't get to work on Snakeoil as I took one day off to help a mate with her kid's education laptop. Things are happening at a very good pace so far.

The new upload module is now completely javascript based and thus we can do away with running PHP on the web server. This is going to save some memory (and possibly improve latency). Only downside is IE11 and below is no longer supported and will be dropped. This is not that big a deal since Microsoft don't support IE any more.

The only outstanding stuffs are the entries that hasn't been struck out. Took some time for Music Players because I need to work out how to move the old configuration into the new configuration.  Not that easy to do because music players configuration and startup is actually pretty integrated into the API server. And it was done during the days when I am a web noob (see first post!). So there's still a fair bit of cleaning up to do.

• System
  
• Disk/NAS Management (Formerly known as Music library)
  
• Music Players
  
• Snakeoil
  
• File Manager
  

If I  have time:

• Network
  
• Wizard
  

I think I will release a early alpha preview once I finished "Music Players". Then will test and work on wizard and network while testing.

Hopefully you guys will love the new WebApp, when it's ready .

That's probably all the work for today, will continue tomorrow.

[agent_kith]

Here's a sample of the new & improved error message. This is in dark mode. Including more information this time to aid troubleshooting. And this is now done globally rather than in individual components. Making error handling simpler and easier.
 

Enough procrastinating, now back to the hard work of re-vamping how players are configured, started and stopped.