The Future of HFS Live 2

[TSG]

I am trying to make contact with Alvaro (Chrno) to get permission from him to rebuild his template from the ground up. We actually talked quite a lot over MSN in the past, I am sure he would be happy for me to take the reins. The first thing I would do is re-write the entire template from the ground up, and use his image sets to create 3 themes on a switch like RAWR-Template. Atleast it will be more accessible this way. It is on a creative commons license, I could go ahead and redo it right away, but I respect Alvaro and will get his permission first.


EDIT: I have the source files and the permission from Alvaro to do the Live template reboot. I will get onto it when I have the chance.

[TSG]

I have sat down this afternoon and worked out my plan for Live 3.

Basically I will write the template code from scratch, the template will be written properly in simple HTML and I will use CSS for as much as possible. I honestly do not need JavaScript for anything with the current plan. I cannot guarantee IE6 support for a lot of the template, but that is the case with most modern websites. We are up to IE8 now anyway, YouTube is currently dropping support for IE6. It doesn't mean it wont work though, I will try to make it work as best possible.

Live 2 has A LOT of JavaScript, the template is practically built using it, its too much of a bandwidth requirement and has too many files for such a simple HFS template. It makes it too complicated to edit and the image server idea was just a bad design decision. (no offense to Alvaro but I think he would agree with that).

Hopefully my version of the template will make it more accessible to newbie users and I like the addition of the template as its interface was specifically designed for handheld portable devices, which is something we are lacking to offer at the moment, other templates will work but they are designed for a PC web browser and resolution.

I will keep the name, so people still know the templates history, but I will remove the windows branding and replace it with something else. I believe the template has a market and it will continue to be a popular choice for HFS users.

As for multi-language support, I noticed Live 2 supported Spanish and English, I will take it into consideration. I could possibly integrate language files like RAWR-Template and ToG but I think its best to start off basic and polish the template first.


I just noticed the template has a flash player in it, however it appears to be broken and buggy... I might replace it with RAWR-Player, but we'll see.

[DarkSide]

Excellent cant wait.

[TSG]

Like most developers the source files are sorted in a way only the author understands so I spent tonight digging through it all looking for the major source files i need, like the navigation.

Expect a blue version released first... sorry for the live black fans... but I am having trouble finding that in the folder, will look more tomorrow.

I have designed it a bit differently, my version has the glass effect above the logo, so on iPhone or PSP you will only see the glass effect as the header, the logo will not be seen so it doesn't interfere with the navigation appearance. I hope anyway, I am just using Google, I might use my sisters PSP to test that... possibly her boyfriends iPod for the other most popular...

EDIT: dw found black.

Also does anyone actually like the Live Red? I like the Blue and Black but the Red is a bit hard on the eyes this early in the morning I might still include it, depends on the reaction.

[TSG]

Ok here is the progress so far, I quite like how it is turning out, for now I have rigged up some macro to the old icons provided by Alvaro, but hopefully when we have access to 32x32 icons I can simply link them in and I wont need so many different things. Its a very light template, and fits in the PSP browser perfectly. Also doesn't look too shabby on a PC browser.

Unknown to me but I found out today that iPod and iPhone use zooming in the browser. So I don't have to worry about that so much. Other phones I can't test but I am not going to get paranoid about it.

I think it might also be the first template to only use DIV and CSS markup. No TABLE markup at all

I rigged up a macro to search for generated thumbnails from our generator, if none, load the original image. To prevent massive lag with some pages I have not included tif or bmp. Our generator does compress these filetypes but for the web they aren't a smart idea.

There is differences between mine and Alvaro's version, mostly because I am avoiding unnecessary javascript or errors as much as possible.

All I have to do now is make the upload section and the blue version of the template will be complete!

I haven't hooked it up yet but its looking like this template should support the RAWR/ToG language files... so that will be good. I like the simplicity of this template (never thought I would say that about Live template...), I am in two minds about including previews, it'll just complicate things and the portable devices most likely wont work with the code anyway.

[mysoogal]

so no video thumbnail support 

[Sapphirescales]

Wow.  I must say I'm VERY pleased that you've taken this up TSG.  I've always loved the simple look of the Live2 template, but when I went to edit it......let's just say my view of how simple it was changed.   Holy Sheesters!  I don't know you you're even making sense of any of that.

I can't wait to see your code.  All I gotta say is it better be easier and more understandable!  If I could make a suggestion, I'd like it to be able to have native image preview support.......meaning no preview generator program.  That's the #1 thing that was so great about that template.  It's a real pain not to be able to view the images without generating them.  If you can't do that at least make it so you don't have to click a button to see each and every image that you want to see a preview of.  That's what really gets me in the RAWR template.

[TSG]

I have made a macro that will show the original image as the thumbnail unless there is a generated one, until rejetto gets EXIF thumbnails working for JPG, then I'll need another check of sorts. I tried to implement the preview box last night, but it wont work at the moment. I am tempted to leave it until the new preview box is finished. So for now it will only have thumbnails.

[Sapphirescales]

How about showing the files differently?  All that blank white space seems like a real waste to me, especially if you've got a lot of files/folders to display.

[TSG]

Well the main problem would be filename lengths, and also the thumbnails are a larger div... by mistake I did make it work kinda like windows tile setting, but it was all uneven, they have to be all the same size for it to work correctly.

[Sapphirescales]

Well can't you make it so if the filename is too long it would just run off?  Sort of like thisisalongfreakingfilenamethatissogre........

All that blank space is just so wasteful.  I bought a 28" monitor for a reason.  I want to be able to make use of every pixel I've got and it'd be a real shame if you had to scroll down when there's all that useful tempting space just waiting to be used on the right side of the screen......

[TSG]

yeah I'm using a 24" here but you gotta remember there is only so much you can do.

[Sapphirescales]

My knowledge of what you're doing is limited, I do admit, but couldn't you implement something like a table to force the sections to be a certain width?  Perhaps specify the width of each section in the DIV?

[TSG]

you can pay me later I just need to configure it so that all the parts are the same size now, then it should work just fine.

Only thing is the white space used is now at the bottom on larger resolutions. I guess with more files it will work better...

[Sapphirescales]

That's great!

Now what about the video preview?  You're not going to include it with this template?  I don't think you should be looking at this as an exclusively mobile device server template.  After all, who puts up their entire server only to serve portable devices?  It's neat that it works so well on portable devices, but frankly I don't think that should be your main goal here.  Live is a very nice template and it has much potential.