I have experience in various web development technologies, but I'd like to learn about developing user interfaces for televisions. I have played around with simply using a webpage, but I'm fairly certain that is not at all the best way to go about it. I'm thinking that building an app in maybe python or something with a full screen user interface might be the way to go. Curious if anyone here might know of either some good websites or books that talk about this sort of thing.
When you say "UI for TVs", do you mean you're developing an app that will run on the TV? The UI for the TV itself? Something else? I have no direct experience, but assuming it's the first thing you're talking about, I would think the TV manufacturer would have to give you some kind of SDK to get you started.
Basically I'm looking at starting a little project for an App that would run on a PC and be displayed on a TV. Not something that would run directly on the TV firmware itself. I guess as I think more about it, it would be like running a full screen app or game. If I'm using a TV as the monitor, I guess that's not really any different right? I should still be able to probe resolution and display size and all that just as I would in a webapp to ensure my layout stays constrained to the screen. I think whats throwing me a bit is I'm used to designing for a scrolling webpage layout with user interface. And what I'm looking at trying to do now is more of a display interface that will work across a variety of TV sizes that doesn't exactly have user input. It's more just display information that I want to stay constrained to the display size.
Yep, that's correct. There's very little difference between a TV and a monitor these days at any level. From the browser they should behave exactly the same way. If I'm using a TV as the monitor, I guess that's not really any different right?
Yeah but I want to get away from using a browser and html/css. I haven't had great success in getting a full screen webpage to display properly (not just left to right, but constrained top to bottom as well) on various TV sizes. So I wanted to develop something more like an app since it seems that those work just fine on various TVs. Thinking of things like say a ROKU interface or something like that. I was just wondering if there were different methods/practices that were used in developing a full screen TV type interface as opposed to developing for a browser window. Where elements are placed around the screen, fixed and constrained to the viewable area of the TV.
There are TVs that run Android, and an Android TV api. If you're used to writing apps, that would probably be an easy-ish platform to start on.
Well after doing some research today, looks like what I was thinking of doing was rolling my own Digital Signage (just figured out that's what it's called) application. Didn't realize there were already so many applications and services out there already. So at this point, not sure if I should attempt building my own. Looks to be a decent open source cms that does pretty much what I'm looking for already. Probably give that a try. edit: for anyone else that finds this thread that might be interested, here is a link to an article about some open source options for digital signage. http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/News/Marketing/5-open-source-digital-signs-for-small-businesses.html I'm going to give Xibo a try I think, that seems to be similar to what I was thinking of attempting to build.
Ah, Ok. I guess if I don't make any headway or developing an app doesn't seem to be a more appropriate route, I'll try this. Thanks.