2 small feature requests

I've not tried the new 2.0stuff (I'll wait for it to come out of beta) but here are 2 small things that I'd like:

Kill the menu rotation animation. Very cool at first, but I'd prefer instant response.

Adaptive menus.The more the menu is used the closer to the button it is. I.E. I bring up the menu. The item with the most times I've decended into is highlighted. To the left and right are the next two common ones.

Mine would look like:
[ ... | Power Off | PLAYLISTS | Visuals | ...]
with values of ... | 7 | 10 | 8 | ...

This should be done for each menu.

Alternately, it'd be nice if it remembered where it was left in each menu, to a point. I realize that there is limited flash space, but even if you do this for a few menus, it'd still be great.

If the "rotation animation" you speak of is the animation of the player's menu items, it has sped up for 2.0b7, but it's still animated.

I don't like the adaptive menus idea because you never know if a menu item is going to be in a certain spot or not. This is a car product and selecting menu items shouldn't require looking at the display, and taking your eyes off the road. Under your scheme, if you've got two items that are "tied" in terms of the number of times you've viewed them, and you select one of them, it's going to move to somewhere else in the menu. I'd be much more receptive to user-definable order (in config.ini maybe) so each user could set a permanent location for the menu items. But having them automatically positioned by the player software is a bad idea from a usability standpoint.

And finally, in 2.0b7, it remembers where you are in the Playlists sub-menu as long as you hold down the "down" front panel button when you enter it. It's a little less valuable to do so on the other menus since they have far fewer options.

BTW, the Wish List forum is a much better place for this, and is more likely to be read by the developers..

Don't take this the wrong way, but the LAST thing we need is a Microsoft-like implementation of "adaptive menus". That's one of the FIRST things I turn off when I install Windows and Office.

do we not need it because it's "microsoft like" or because it's a bad feature

I pretty much only use the playlist menu so I don't think I would care if they had a feature like that or not

Probably a little of both. I'm not necessarily anti-Microsoft. I really hate that menu thing though.

We whacked this one to death a long time ago; have a look for a thread on "learning meus" from about two years back; I can't remember the conclusions, but it didn't go into the software.

With the influx of new users I think there will be a tendency to recap discussed to death topics (candy bars?).

Calvin

I also think that menus that you can't know ba heart would be a very bad idea. OTOH, configurable menus would be cool, but with only 10 or so entries it is not *that* pressing, either

BTW, you *do* know that you can access top-level menu entries directly, by a number button on remote (e.g. 'Visuals' are Menu/OK, 4), and deeper (e.g. within the list of visuals) a 'letter' button brings you to the first entry beginning with that letter, don't you?

Hmm, yes, it isnt necessarily antiMicrosoft, but the reason I would turn off an adaptive menu feature - although I see the use of it, what happens if another 4th feature I use frequently bounces around with the other 3, then its position is always changing, and I need to adapt to what it adapts to for me, and I would rather not have to get used to a new position each time it adapted to me.

This is one of the main reason I turn off the similar feature in Office and Windows. I get used to the position something is in in a menu, and it doesnt help for that to be changed. Then I need to look for the item in a new location. I eventually usually learn the keyboard shortcut, however.


BleachLPB
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You guys are all missing the most important reason not to have adaptive menus:

This product is meant to be used in the car. It needs to have as many features as possible designed so that they do not require you to look at the screen.

It's very important to be able to get to certain items on the menu totally from memory. That way, the driver spends more time with his eyes on the road instead of getting in accidents.

Scorp, did you know that if you use the remote control to access the menus, you can use the number keys as shortcuts? Check out the Button Guide at www.riocar.org for more details.

That's exactly what I said in the first reply to this post, but apparently nobody read it.

I really wish people would be patient and read the posts. I know there's a lot more posts these days with all the newbies about, but having the same question answered six times by six different people shouldn't be necessary!