Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code • Hacker News Board

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#131

Post by philihp » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:05 AM UTC

patrickthebold wrote: post #113

cm2187 wrote: post #9

Lecturing on keyboard shortcuts when windows media player is the only video player in the world not using the space bar as a shortcut for play/pause.

Disney Plus doesn't either, most annoying thing ever. Has me wondering why there's no open source 'streaming website' the only value add is the content.

Have you used Kodi?

Roughly equivalent: why do people shop at Whole Foods when they can get the same food cheaper at a farmer’s market? The produce is washed, curated for imperfections, and marked up.

These streaming platforms are not perfect as no product since Unix has been, but to think altruistic programmers working for free can do an equivalent job is hubris. These interfaces take years of iteration and optimization in subtle ways like Netflix A/B testing thousands of generated cover photos.

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#132

Post by Jare » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

m0dest wrote: post #130

Jare wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Prime web player uses it but does not force keyboard focus on the place where it can detect it, so many times you have to click first before it will pause on space bar. Focus handling is generally terrible in web apps, but few instances infuriate me like this one.

Space bar handling in media players is a particularly hard problem because space bar is also the key that users expect to trigger the currently focused button. Some users rely entirely on keyboard focus. So it starts to intersect with some non-obvious accessibility issues.

This is true as an explanation why it happens. I would expect the focused control to be visible and obviously marked (highlight, rectangle, etc). When all that's visible on the screen is the movie, or when the last thing you did was hit something to play the movie, the app should switch focus to whatever control needs to have it for space to play/pause. This is already a solved problem, many console video players do this, Netflix does it, etc. It drives me nuts that something so trivial in an area of an app that is (comparatively) so simple, remains broken for so long. It is not really important, but it destroys the potential for the app to feel natural and (in Apple parlance) beautiful to use.

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#133

Post by dorkwood » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 6:02 PM UTC

zhangeru wrote: post #118

leephillips wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that pulchritude beats disharmonious for over a hundred years. And even now, it’s half as common as disharmonious, which is a commonplace word. But if you think that a word like “disharmonious” is in any sense rare, then I don’t think I can convince you with data.

Disharmonious just seems common because it sounds similar to a word we're familiar with. Most times I can recall, a writer would craft a sentence using the word 'disharmony' instead, which is many times more common than either. What led you to pick disharmonious as a comparison point, anyway?

I agree. I think if you're going to use "disharmonious" as your benchmark, you should be comparing it with "pulchritudinous" instead.

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#134

Post by InfiniteRand » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

jackewiehose wrote: post #13

The bug here is in media player to listen on key-up events. Mouse-button-up makes sense because the user can move the mouse to cancel the click. But key events should be on key-down and that's how it is done most of the time. So if you use key-up you run into these problems.

There is the case of a sustained key press, where holding down the key might be part of navigation and only on key-up is the navigation finished, is it possible on platforms like Windows to distinguish between the sustained key up vs a normal key up?

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#135

Post by bytesandbots » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #112

ChrisSD wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do like that they are focused on being a collaborative Q&A site, nothing more and nothing less. Some sites care so much about "engagement" that they try to be all things to all people and end up simply becoming yet another generic forum. I have other issues with SO but having a USP and sticking with it isn't their problem, IMHO.

I adblock Hot Network Questions because it always distracts me when I'm looking for programming help.

I do that too! I try to block all kinds of Related/Hot/Recommended stuff on websites. Those can be more distracting than real ads if you ask me. Most useful has been to block the end card recommendations after YouTube videos.