The Media Center Sandbox

I'm sure you've noticed, but on TheGreenButton we are getting users who are becoming frustrated with only having 2 custom strips at any one time in the Media Center start menu.

Regardless of the fact that I mention this limitation, more and more users are requesting that my applications add to the Start menu as well.

The fact that users are asking for our applications to be easier to launch and directly accessed through the start menu, and that users are starting to ask how to get MORE options in the start menu, I'm thinking we are are pointing ourselves towards a problem in the not-to-distant future.

At the moment, if the user wants to install both of my major applications, they would have NO room for any other. So somebody gets thrown out. And with a number of other applications out there that are prettier than mine, that means that there may be some serious fighting over some VERY limited real-estate. How is the user to choose between the BigScreenHeadlines feeds, viewing their TV series and DVD collections, playing their favourite games and watching Youtube?

Are there any plans to increase the number of items in the Start menu in a future release, and ideally make them either unlimited or add a good number of them? I know they were originally designed for OEM's, but it looks like the users are really starting to want this - and for us, the users are always right, even if they are silly.

Thanks,

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I definitely agree with this, more custom strips is a must for the future.

Personally I've already run into problems with this. I've got myTV and myDVD in my startmenu leaving no room for IIB's Yougle - as a workaround at the moment I've registered the main myDVD entrypoint within my myTV strip (meaning I've now used up my 5 tiles), but that still leaves me without [easy] access to some of the more advanced features of the program.

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More Start Menu strips is a slippery slope of usability -- sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing. :-) That said, we do see this as a common request and are noodling how to improve for the future.

Any brainstorming you can do on the subject (in addition to 'just allow more') would be a good thing -- who knows, your idea might surface in a future version.

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Charlie Owen (Microsoft)

Ok, I'll bite.

Instead of dictating to the end user how many custom menustrips they can have, allow 2 (or whichever higher amount you feel comfortable with) by default, but let them select more in the Configure Start Menu settings screen - i.e. rather than automatically deselecting an item when you go over the magic number, just let them have all 40 if they so want.

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How about when Media Center starts up, it checks to see if there are any new entries in the registry for Start menu strips, and it prompts the users?

Pop up a dialog box saying 'Do you want to show 'xxx' in your Start Menu?' and have three options - 'Yes', 'No' and 'Configure' to take the user into a list of their start menu strips so they can manage the order (and 'show/hide' options) for each of the strips individually.

This gives the user flexibility, control and I think is just the intelligent way around it.

One of the very first design-decisions I ever made as a programmer is if you want to make your software flexible, never restrict a set of options to a number like '2', '5', '8' etc, because it always seems to turn around and bit you in the backside when users start getting annoyed. In my designs, there really should only ever be two numbers that ever come up when it comes to options - they should be '1' or 'Many'. Unless there are hardware or other hard limitations to the system, I NEVER hard-code anything to only have 2 addresses or phone numbers etc. It's always considered a '1 or Many' choice.

Yes, it allows the user to clutter their own system quite badly, but at least then I can turn around and say "Well - you did it to yourself" :).

But I think that allowing an unlimited number of start menu option but involving the user in this process, it solves all the problems and allows the user to control the complexity of their experience. If they want 20 different strips, let them have it.

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100 downloads a day for Yougle Vista - goin' allright!

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Wouldn't it be better to try an understand what these people and applications are trying to do?  The reason they are asking for more strips on the start menu is not neccessarily because they want more strips on the start menu, but because they want to be able to easily get to what they want to get to.

Some better design in applications, and expanded entrypoint access within the Media Center shell may actually do away with the need to have long lists of menu items, and improve the overall user experience.

Cheers,
Andrew

>More Start Menu strips is a slippery slope of usability -- sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing. :-)

Charlie, I get the impression that you feel 2 is "More Than Adequate" would this be a fair comment?

I personally think it's really strange, and am a bit flabbergasted that a restriction like this made it into the product. I've even heard local Microsoft employees get up on stage and make jokes about the "millions of dollars of useablility testing, and this is what they decide", and that's in front of a large audience.

Is it a technical limitation somewhere? Or someone decided that you'd never want more than 2? It's sort of akin to limiting the number of shortcuts you can have on your windows desktop "just in case some messy users put too many on there and it gets all cluttered".

I agree with IIB on this. If some dork puts 300 shortcuts on his/her start menu, well, they screwed it up themselves, so leave them to it......

My opinion is largely irrelevant to the conversation. :-) But since you asked...

It's not a technical limitation -- we've intentionally made the decision to limit it to two. There are both pros and cons to having n-number of items in the Start Menu. Generally speaking, I agree with the current number of custom Start Menu strips, for a couple of reasons:

1) We definitely skew to being a product more than an operating system / platform. We strive to be the ultra-friendly consumer experience for digital media. Therefore, we do place limits on the customizability of the product. With customizability comes randomness which is usually a detriment to the user experience unless managed very, very, very carefully. Your point about some dork who puts 300 Start Menu strips on the box is EXACTLY the type of scenario we want to avoid. Yes, it's more limiting to power users -- but that's a very carefully evaluated and intentional decision.

2) Having a finite number of experiences on the Start Menu > is < friendlier to the mass consumer market. I've seen, in person, the usability studies that confirm this direction is the right one. That said, we can tweak in the future -- which is why I'm pretty interested in this brainstorming exercise -- let's see if there are ideas and concepts from our users which might be better than ours and doesn't (necessarily) involve adding additional strips. Talking with the customer is a good thing.

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Charlie Owen (Microsoft)

MattyBoy:

I've even heard local Microsoft employees get up on stage and make jokes about the "millions of dollars of useablility testing, and this is what they decide", and that's in front of a large audience.

With regards to the so called usability testing and/or market research they have done, it was either compiled by

• a group of complete morons
• someone who really didn't understand the target audience for this product
• a mixture of the two

Just look at the reasoning behind not letting developers access the 'i' key on the remote (ok, part of the reasoning). "Our usability testing shows most users never use this button" - what a load of bullcrap. Anyone who's had a cable-/satellite- receiver in the past decade knows how to, and uses such a button on a regular basis. He**, even people who doesn't know how to program their VCRs clock knows to press 'i' to see more information about the current program they're watching.

For the question at hand though; Sure, I can see where you're coming from. For the product to be a success with everyone it needs to be easy to use, hard to screw up and generally pretty/functionable/extensible.

I personally don't agree with the "they did it themself" statement, but to enforce such a limit on everyone, all the time, without any means of customization is just shooting yourself in the leg. I know lots of people who have moved away from MC to various other platforms such as Media Portal just because of these limits and shortcomings.

So, my thoughts are still the same - let users who have found their way to the manage start menu screen have as many strips as they want (if you really, really, really wanted to - put an upper limit of 7 - this should still be more than enough for everyone. Sorta like how 640k is enough and all that :p).
Another solution would be to let the users themself create an additional custom strip or two (from within the MC GUI) and add 6 or so items from their Program Library to that strip.

Also, open up the 'i' key to developers. This really shouldn't be too hard. Ok, so there are security risks with it (I personally don't see how, as in MCML apps the key does nothing, but I digress). Let us add to the default enumeration, meaning we cannot change the default items in the menu, but we can add our own items such as more info, reset, settings etc.

</rant> :)

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Thanks for you input, and just as a general point, thanks for all the time/effort you put into the community. I must say, I don't think I could do that job, being the target of many peoples frustration when you're only trying to help out.

I personally strongly disagree with the limitation (and with a number of other limitations, but that's another story), and I really believe you are setting yourselves up for a big fall with any of these sorts of limits that are not technical limitations, but anyway, my opinion isn't going to change your opinion.

Just as a general comment, I must say I found the whole media center plugin message at the start a bit strange. I read things that said "Hey we want your plug-ins to look quite different to the media center UI", well I really wanted users to think my plug-in was written by the same developers that wrote media centre. By opening up the API, and allowing developers to plug their apps into your framework, you are ALWAYS going to have users blame you guys for some crappy looking/functioning component some developer wrote. On the flip side, a good developer adds a lot of value to the Media Center experience by extending and seamlessly integrating their apps in. A library of standard controls that you guys use would be nice, MCMLLookalike was supposed to be a community start, but I don't think much progress has been made on that.

I think the mass consumer market generally won't download plug-ins at all. Only people that know there are plugs-ins (probably more technical users). And someone is going to get very confused when their shortcut (probably the first one they found, and the only one they are aware of) disappears. They are not going to know to look in the program library.

>I've seen, in person, the usability studies that confirm this direction
Yeah, but sometimes it depends on exactly how the test is structured and who is the 'victim'. I'm sure if I got a start menu with 300 items, and one with 2, 90% of the people are going to say "2 is better".

>dork who puts 300 Start Menu strips on the box is EXACTLY the type of scenario we want to avoid
I reckon you are penalizing the 99% of the target population here by the actions of the stoopid 1%. But I'm sure you've already heard from lots of people about this.

I think my MAJOR problem with this limitation is you need some way of us developers to get our applications into an easy to use area. "Online Media" is about the worse name for that top-level menu. By the way, did the same person who did the useability testing and came up with this 2 item restriction come up with that name too? ;-) . What about a "Plug-Ins" start menu strip, or a 3-level (almost tree structure) approach to the strips? (but then someone is gunna want 4-levels :) )

At the moment, it just doesn't work. Say I want the weather plug-in, and I want a mobilewares plug-in, and I've brought an acer laptop, and they've already added their crappy start menu strip, and I want to add the home automation plug-in (a user is NOT going to do 50 clicks to change the light, no matter what the 'useability' guru's say).


What about adding some customisable shortcut keys to the remote, like the teletext buttons, just a set of colored buttons, and they mean different things depending on the context (you'd have to have the key on the screen), we could hook into those to do certain functions in our apps, and maybe also use the buttons as a 'quick launch'.

Given the fact that developers have been mentioning this particular limitation since Windows XP Media Center 2005, I'm sure this '2 strip' limitation isn't news to anybody, and it's been a frustration since day one...but it's worse now, since there are many more people beginning to develop.

But I can't understand why you would hard limit the number of Start menu entries. It's MY Media Center, I should be able to screw with it if I want to :).

Put in a warning, a suggestion, an official recommendation...but why PHYSICALLY PREVENT it? There's a fine line between helping people keep their systems neat and being intrusive and restrictive...and I personally think that yes, after the "640k of Memory" comment that people are still laughing about today, Microsoft should have learned that they aren't terribly good at assigning maximum numbers :)

You must remember two things...

   Usability studies can be WRONG (I know this is blasphemy when management is concerned, but it's true).

   And Usability studies are made - like the Windows Media Center SDK itself - with certain assumptions in mind about how it is going to be used and who is going to be using it. You've got to remember that your target audience is not always going to be exactly who you think it will be.

   I'm assuming that your usability study was based on the concept of a mum and dad-kind of arrangement. Simple users, just using their box as a TIVO. This is cute, this is the kind of audience Media Center will eventually get.

   But right now, Media Center is still a little rough to get going for some people (I had to install PureVideo to get rid of a bug in the Microsoft MPEG2 decoder yesterday, and it STILL randomly locks up when I insert some DVD's). You have to install software from Windows, meaning a mouse and keyboard must always be available etc. At the moment, Media Center appeals to enthusasts and geeks. And you honestly expect either one of these groups to NOT want to push their Media Center to get as much out of it as possible? Did the usability study look at the people who are actually using media center now?

   And finally, whatever happened to "The Customer Is Always Right"? If customers are complaining about a limitation, isn't it Microsoft's responsibility to look at the complaint and see if anything can be done to meet the customers needs? I understand that if there is a REAL limitation involved, it requires real work and time to overcome. But in this case, people are complaining about an artifical and arbitrary condition that Microsoft imposed, one that could very easily be removed.

But let's take a serious look at the product and see how easy it is to make our addins intergrate.

We can appear on a 'TV' or 'Pictures' strip - but only one plugin (the last used one) will ever appear there. So we can't make sure we are always available, and if it turns out that the users has TWO plugins that they use to manage their pictures (let's say BigScreenPictures and another one to manage transferring the pictures to their PSP), they constantly have to go to 'Online Media' to and several buttons later they can launch the plugin. Ugly.

The plugins are all stored in 'Online Media', when that's IS the silliest name I've seen for an 'Addins' folder. I've got users who can't find the my addins because of the name of that option. What happens if my addin is not an online one? EMUCenter (my games plugin) is all about what is locally installed on your computer, so users have no reason to expect that the addin is there. The same applies to home automation software etc. And I must agree with the previous poster - if your usability study suggested that this is a clever name for your plugins to appear under, you MUST consider questioning all of the results of that study.

And of course, although we can have custom strips, we a) can only have two, b) can't modify them at runtime, c) can't change their order from the XML file and d) are hard-limited to only have 5 items on each strip, while the 'TV + Movies' option itself has 6. (although admittedly I don't think the 5-item limitation is so bad, I mentioned it as another restriction).

 

More Integration Options:

   If you really don't want to add extra start menu items (and I REALLY think you should, but this is an 'in-case' proposition), then there may be other options.

  Firstly, renaming 'Online Media' to 'More Programs' would help the users a little, and reduce our support requests.

  Add an 'Addins' start menu strip allowing you to launch your addins. I'd suggest that there should be (assuming the full 5 entries), 3 entries that are your most FREQUENTLY used addins that do not otherwise appear in Start menu strips. The 4th and 5th should be the two most RECENTLY used addins that are NOT the three that already appear.

Ideally, the 5th option should eventually be replaced by an 'Install Addin' button that allows you to choose from a list of Media Center addins and install/uninstall them from the Media Center interface...but that's a "Future Features" thing.

If you have Start menu strips that have been 'knocked off' the group of two, then these should appear as a collapsible group on the Start menu strip. For example, let's say you've got two Start menu strips already, and you then add 'Yougle' to your Media Center. It would appear on the 'Addins' strip as the NAME OF THE STRIP, using the image from the FIRST entry on the strip. So, in the case of Yougle, the button would be marked 'Yougle', but clicking on it would 'drop down' a list of the options that would normally appear in the Start Menu strip.

Also, I think you should be able to optionally add your 'Online Services' groups (other than 'All Programs') into your Start menu. For example, you should be able to have a Start menu strip for your 'Games' category, which shows all entry points registered to the games category on the strip.

Anyway, those are my ideas, based on a few minutes of thinking about it.

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100 downloads a day for Yougle Vista - goin' allright!

Check out http://www.thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/Blogs/developer/default.aspx and http://www.push-a-button.com.au/products/mce

"Having a finite number of experiences on the Start Menu > is < friendlier to the mass consumer market." : Charlie

I VERY strongly dissagree with this statement - and I would normally phrase that in MUCH harsher terms. Having FEWER strips on the Start menu is friendlier to the mass consumer market, there is absolutely no doubt. But that has nothing to do with having a FINITE number of experiences.

It's all about PURPOSE. If I want to use my Media Center to control my lighting in a Home Automation network, do you think it's friendlier to have to scroll down to 'Online Services', find the one entry point to bring up the menu of items, THEN click on the item (at least 5 button presses to switch on a light), when they could just go to the 'Home Automation' strip and press 'Loungeroom Lights'?

Having a FINITE number of strips FORCES ME INTO THIS SITUATION. It means that I can only do two things quickly and easily with my media center (other than the base media functionality) and for everything else, I've got to go digging in the menus, by which time I could have gotten up and turned the darn thing off manually.

There should be a Start menu strip for every category of task I frequently want to do on my Media Center. By having only the strups we need, we make things easy and efficient because I don't get confused by the number of items or irritated by the number of strips I have to navigate through. But by having a finite number of strips simply means that you are reducing the usability of Media Center for 3rd party applications.

So please, don't get "Clean" confused with "Restrictive" - we need either more strips, or other ways to make our apps quickly accessible from the Start menu.

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100 downloads a day for Yougle Vista - goin' allright!

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IgnoranceIsBliss: "Having FEWER strips on the Start menu is friendlier to the mass consumer market, there is absolutely no doubt."

Be careful what you advocate for -- you've just made and argument for having fewer Start Menu strips, and the first place that happens could be yours. :-) <-- Really, really big grin.

I purposely chose 'finite' because I'd like to set your expectations it's highly unlikely we would get an infinite number. I can certainly advocate in certain ways on behalf of the community, but Start Menu is determined by a group here in eHome much larger than just me -- it is a very important part of our product and so has a ton of thought put into its design from multiple people here in eHome. It's very high profile and as such goes through an immense amount of scrutiny to make 'just right' in the eyes of the product group as a whole.

On a more personal note: Aaron and I went to bat for this community to get custom Start Menu strips available for everyone (not just OEMs) in Windows Vista -- it was very tough and hard won. Please keep that in mind when you give your feedback. Given unlimited time, resources and latitude we'd do everything you guys want. The reality is we have limited time, resources and latitude. Also, think very carefully about what you make 'the most important issue' here in the forums. Is the availability of custom Start Menu strips really the most important feature for the platform? I'm thinking if you *really* thought about it you'd be advocating for many other things.

So, coming back to the topic at hand: I believe it's in the best interest of the community to focus on brainstorming 'other ways to make our apps quickly accessible from the Start menu.'

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Charlie Owen (Microsoft)

IgnoranceIsBliss, I did want to follow up and say that I read your suggestions and thought they were FANTASTIC ideas -- keep them coming...!!!!!

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Charlie Owen (Microsoft)

I don't want you to think these comments are levelled strictly at you, Charlie. It's one of those "Designed By Committee" products, so when we say anything against these sorts of decisions, we are raging against the committee itself, not you personally.

I (and obviously a good number of your developers and an increasing number of your customers) simply feel that dictating what we can and can not do with our Media Center in respect to what's accessible from the Start menu is just odd, that's all.

I'm trying to understand what the nett benefit of it is to Microsoft. Are you reducing the usability of Media Center 3rd party applications for users as a marketing exercise, so that the people we show our Media Centers to don't think that they are complicated or difficult to navigate? Or trying to stop Dell from installing it's token 4000 pre-installed applications that would give you a mile-long Start menu (which admittedly frustrates the hell out of me!)

I suppose it's always difficult for outsiders to understand committee thinking (and after the meetings, it's sometimes quite a challenge for INSIDERS to figure out how the hell THAT decision happened!) and as developers/customers who would like this functionality, it's frustrating to have the committee's word override the customers...because we are the ones who are actually using the product, and having someone else tell us that 'It doesn't fit with our idea of how your start menu should look' just doesn't sound like a good enough reason for stopping us from doing what we want to do with the product.

Oh, and one of the reasons there may be a little more passion on this topic is unlike some of the other advanced features people want - overlays, corrected exception messages, libraries of components etc, this one would actually require the removal of what may be a half-dozen lines of code (OK, probably more after you've sorted by timestamp) rather than the addition of complex new code. It's the difference between "Oh we never thought you'd want to do it that way" and "NO! WE FORBID IT."

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100 downloads a day for Yougle Vista - goin' allright!

Check out http://www.thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/Blogs/developer/default.aspx and http://www.push-a-button.com.au/products/mce