[GCompris-devel] Balancebox issues

[Holger Kaelberer]

On 17.01.2016 12:48, Bruno Coudoin wrote:
>>
>> Going one step further I played around with the bar allowing for
>> direct level selection (using VirtualKeyboard on mobile). Not sure if
>> this is a good idea, though. If someone else finds it useful I could
>> continue on that track ...
> Hi Holger,
>
> This is a good idea to have a random level selector (intead of
> sequential) but if the user just enter a random level without more
> information it does not help much.

Agreed.

> Taking the geography as an example,
> it would be nice in a random level changer to see the title of the maps.
> In balance box it should show a level preview (which should be renderer
> from internal data without box2d).

So, following this approach, preparing kind of a level preview would be mostly a task of the 
specific activity. Maybe a basic implementation (like simply showing level, plus maybe sublevel 
count) could be added to ActivityBase which would be used unless a deriving activity 'overrides' 
with something more appropriate for its proper needs, like map-titles in geography or a preview of 
the level like maybe in balancebox.

In balancebox this might become a chicken-egg-problem, though, as the direct level-selection was 
intended to allow for faster level selection than via the step-by-step way we have now with the 
current time-consuming async map-generation. On the fly level preview generation in balancebox might 
be too expensive (on slow devices) for such a feature. Will have a look if we can achieve something 
with caching or pre-generation of map previews ...

>
> On the user interface side I don't like the idea to pop a virtual
> keyboard for that. If we have a preview then a level change could show
> it in a small area on top of the level button. Then after a second
> without level change the level is started.

+1

>
> What do you think?

Nice extension of the initial idea and definitely much more state of the art! ;-)

Thanks for guiding me out of the the web 1.0 era :-)

Will have a look,
   Holger