Important Developer Update

[Lilo]

Bart, I completely understand your point of view and appreciate it.

I disagree about the community-vs-company argument (single developers ftw!), I also disagree about the responsiveness of html vs xml based skin. I, for one, think that we could (and should) have implemented the boxee UI itself in HTML (although the client team didn't like the thought of rewriting everything)

I also think that developing HTML apps will be easier debugging and testing wise, since the PC versions reaches their EOL, and testing/debugging on the Box itself is still painful.

I don't think that we'll get to an agreement, there are valid points to both approaches

The fact is that we will not dedicate more resources on python/xml apps front, but we will invest on the HTML front. We try to direct our efforts the best we can based on our resources. I hope you can understand that, even if you disagree.

[bartsidee]

As I can understand boxee has limited resources, so I can somewhat comprehend the drop of the platform versions. And does python/xml support have not already dropped for the half last year? I known the 1.5 release has 1 or 2 fixes, but the majority has not come through or only after mailing a few times with Rob / Shawn / Marcel to remind them the importance of a fix.

My worries are not directly about what is supported and what's not. It is about the climate and the direction boxee is moving. Did you notice the low number of posts in the dev thread the last few months? My personal believe is if you keep your devclimate high the regular users will follow automatically. Without great apps boxee will just be "another" mediaplayer, especially if boxee is targeting only the embedded devices.

Dropping the platform versions will be fine if boxee would come up with an alternative development tool/sdk. It could be as simple as providing a VM machine with the boxee box firmware on it. Now it is as blunt as saying alright guys html5 is the way to go see it yourself. Leave some room for current (and possible new) devs to flourish, please nurture them a bit and keep the climate high!

[jbrodack]

Is boxee dropping support for python/xml development? I didn't get that from the first post like bartsidee did. I agree with dropping the platform version as boxee hadn't even done much with it for a while and development can continue with open source. Plus there are other pc based options. Things change and even xbmc dropped support for its original platform of the original xbox.


However, I hope they aren't just expecting everything to be done in html5 now though. For one hmtl5 apps don't seem to work well on boxee. Crackle, vimeo, youtube, etc either are slow or don't switch focus properly or respond to the boxee box remote.

The apps developed by bartsidee are some of the smoothest and best out there for boxee. This type of development should be encouraged to help grow the boxee community. Html5 if fine for companies that want to cast a wide net and throw in boxee support as well but for community apps you should support native apps. I mean the bartsidee music app puts the default boxee one to shame. With more apps like this that make up for boxee's shortcomings there will be more interest in boxee.

[Lilo]

@jbrodack - python/xml apps will continue to work on the boxee box, but we will probably not introduce new functionality there and related bugs will get a low priority.

We intend to invest in improving the HTML apps, in the browser js api and in the server public api (will be released soon), we suggest that developers of NEW applications will focus there efforts on javascript/html.

[jbrodack]

@jbrodack - python/xml apps will continue to work on the boxee box, but we will probably not introduce new functionality there and related bugs will get a low priority.

We intend to invest in improving the HTML apps, in the browser js api and in the server public api (will be released soon), we suggest that developers of NEW applications will focus there efforts on javascript/html.

So you're not really dropping support for python but focusing on html5? I can agree with that especially since I think boxee html5 support needs to be improved and html is more standard these days so good to support it as its likely what companies would use for their apps.