Trouble getting animated icons in HSTouch

[jjsmd]

I have been using the excellent Motion sensor plugin and I have the attached icons showing up in my HS status page.

When I try to use an element in HSTouch with the status tracking the DooMotion device, I do not get these icons showing up. I have even tried adding them to the status image collection and it still doesn't work.

[Rupp]

HSTouch doesn't work with animated icons.

[cfischer]

Trouble getting animated icons in HSTouch

Are there any plans to make animated icons work with HSTouch?

[Czechmarty]

Bummer!!

I was wondering (after many trial and errors) why I can't get my animated icons to work. I searched the thread and here is this post. That is real bummer as most of my icons are animated gifs. What is the big deal to use animated gifs? They work from WEB pages
(animated radar weather images) so why not from devices? Is there a workaround??
Marty

[Krumpy]

Not even with PNG? How about via a browser?

This is a major limitation for a digital dashboard.

No moving radar, no animating alarm icon, etc?

Rich?

[Rupp]

You can use animated icons if you embed an HTML page in a gadget but that's the only way at the moment.

[Czechmarty]

You can use animated icons if you embed an HTML page in a gadget but that's the only way at the moment.

Any plans to fix this Rupp?? As Krumpy said, that is a major eyecandy limitation!
When I started with HSTouch it didn't occur to me that this could be missing.
We worked long and hard to make all thos animated icons...

[Krumpy]

It's not even an eyecandy thing. Things like this, along with the listing of bugs that still exist, seriously deteriate the usability of HSTouch.

Sorry Rich. I am a huge advocate for your products but some of these things are really starting to concern me:

There are just a few things that really concern me about the usability of this product.

1.) Documentation is very light. I would recommend more focus in this area. I am not a computer novice, but frequently find things that I want to do easier in MainLobby than in HSTouch. Granted, Mainlobby is a more mature product, but I find HSTouch very much like ML was back in 2004. The intent here isn't to bash HSTouch, but rather, to show that documentation is very light.

2.) Graphics - I used to complain on the lack of graphics for MainLobby. Well, HSTouch has less than ML.

3.) Client/Server connectivity. The capabilities between the client and the HS Server. I am looking for a lot more capability and your historical emphasis on automation and scripting.

4.) IPHONE support. It's not your fault and I feel your pain, but darn it, I really really want IPHONE support. HSTouch with HS would kick butt if it had IPHONE support. --- I know you're working on it --- And RUPP, web page technologies do not replace direct (and bi-directional) communication.

Is HSTouch for the DYI market, the novice, or for the professionals? I would think the $$$ are in focus for the professional market.


BTW, I completely retract these statements if HS development is no longer you're primary focus due to economic, healther, or family obligations reasons.

[Rupp]

The iPhone support is coming in the future. I asked Rich and he told me that if you add an animated icon to the web server (html directory) and use the image gadget with the URL image path it should work. I've not had a lot of time to play with this though.

[macromark]

The iPhone support is coming in the future.

Clarification. Rich is working on the iPhone client right now and he's writing it as a native iPhone app.

[Krumpy]

Mark, that is really good news.

From my personal perspective, the HSTouch IPHONE client doesn't need to support all features from the beginning. The basic button and label type of functionality would be fine to start with. Let's call that phase 1.

Phase 2 would be all of the rest of the features.

While I am a huge Windows Mobile advocate. I truely believe that Microsoft has lost all advantages in the mobile market. If not already, they definately will once Apple releases the new IPhone.

Rim is good also, but I hope that the new IPhone firmware/hardware from Apple will reduce the corporate Blackberry usage.

Anyways, Thanks!

[GregKing]

I have expressed the same feelings several times and keep hoping that HStouch is about to reach a mature state any day now, but still no dice.

It's been over 6 months since many of us purchased and the system still doesn't seem like something that "just works". At this point, I have NO interest in all of the new functionality, platforms, etc. that keep being mentioned. I simply want a stable system with basic features. I haven't griped in a while, so today is the day.

Krumpy's points are similar to mine. Docs are limited, graphics support is sub-par, c/s deployment is unstable, and the designer is very limited and buggy.

The last point is my biggest one. I still can't create basic screens due to a fixed set of graphics, transparency issues, z-order problems, and limited designer functionality.

For example, I expect that I should be able to choose a basic button, set its color, scale it, rotate/flip it, and position it anywhere on the screen with it still looking good. I would then like to be able to modify the color based on state. This is all stuff that ML did pretty well.

Instead, we have graphics in like 5 colors, in 5 or 6 sizes, and not necessarily available in all colors. I do think the graphics look nice, but the rigid mechanism that we have to work with them is disappointing.

Maybe I just don't know HOW to do these things (see documentation issue), but we certainly can't manipulate graphics (rotate/flip), like I expected. Also, the best I can seem to do is attempt to swap a graphic, but I can't even seem to make this work. Apparently, the approach I am taking is not the correct one.

With that said, I do like things such as the sliders being composed of separate parts, but this too seems buggy and doesn't work quite right. A simple example of this is that when dropping a slider on the form, it doesn't work due to the graphic being vertical and the property being set to horizontal, so it actually tries to slide sideways. This is the kind of "death of 1000 cuts" that keeps making me stop trying to create screens. Everything I seem to do just "kinda" works and makes for a bad user experience.

I've tried several times to communicate my frustration with this product and that I really want it to be good, but my feed back is always ignored. I hope this finally gets the point of usability issues across.

gk

It's not even an eyecandy thing. Things like this, along with the listing of bugs that still exist, seriously deteriate the usability of HSTouch.

Sorry Rich. I am a huge advocate for your products but some of these things are really starting to concern me:

There are just a few things that really concern me about the usability of this product.

1.) Documentation is very light. I would recommend more focus in this area. I am not a computer novice, but frequently find things that I want to do easier in MainLobby than in HSTouch. Granted, Mainlobby is a more mature product, but I find HSTouch very much like ML was back in 2004. The intent here isn't to bash HSTouch, but rather, to show that documentation is very light.

2.) Graphics - I used to complain on the lack of graphics for MainLobby. Well, HSTouch has less than ML.

3.) Client/Server connectivity. The capabilities between the client and the HS Server. I am looking for a lot more capability and your historical emphasis on automation and scripting.

4.) IPHONE support. It's not your fault and I feel your pain, but darn it, I really really want IPHONE support. HSTouch with HS would kick butt if it had IPHONE support. --- I know you're working on it --- And RUPP, web page technologies do not replace direct (and bi-directional) communication.

Is HSTouch for the DYI market, the novice, or for the professionals? I would think the $$$ are in focus for the professional market.


BTW, I completely retract these statements if HS development is no longer you're primary focus due to economic, healther, or family obligations reasons.

[macromark]

At this point, I have NO interest in all of the new functionality, platforms, etc. that keep being mentioned.

But others (like Krumpy) do, specifically iPhone support. We're getting a lot of requests for that.

Docs are limited

Do you need something beyond the help file? If so, what are you looking for?

graphics support is sub-par

Please explain what you mean by this

deployment is unstable

Not going to argue that point. We know there's a problem with this but we haven't been able to recreate it reliably. Still working on this.

I still can't create basic screens due to a fixed set of graphics, transparency issues, z-order problems, and limited designer functionality.

Version 1 does not support layers. We're looking at adding that in the next version.

when dropping a slider on the form, it doesn't work due to the graphic being vertical and the property being set to horizontal, so it actually tries to slide sideways.

Properties (like 'orientation') are not saved with sliders and the default property for a slider is horizontal. For now, you just need to change the orientation property to 'vertical' when you drop it on the screen.

I've tried several times to communicate my frustration with this product and that I really want it to be good, but my feed back is always ignored. I hope this finally gets the point of usability issues across.

gk

NOBODY'S feedback is being ignored. We might not be able to address everybody's problems/bugs/requests in the timeframe that they (or we) would like, but we are working on all of these issues. Rich has been working solely on HSTouch for the better part of a year now and it has come a LONG LONG way since the beta was first released.

[cbryan]

Trying to get an imbedded URL animated icon in an image box.

I set up an image box with ImageURLNormal set to http://192.168.2.200:8081/animations/fan.htm (animated ceiling fan). A box with a red X appears but no image.

If you open a browser with the address http://192.168.2.200:8081/animations/fan.htm the rotating fan appears.

Any ideas?

[jjsmd]

I have it working by pointing it to the actual animated gif like http://192.168.xxx.xxx/fan.gif where fan.gif is in the html folder


I also found that you also have to set ISVideo to True to get some animation.

It doesn't look grat, but it does work