The previous products could be customized by writing plugins to the server, the information on the display was sent over the network and put on the display.
In the new devices the screens are primarily controlled by the local processors but I think data can still be displayed from the server. This gives the option of writing third party applications the same as before (as a server plugin) or as an "applet" that runs on the local processor. Even if you retain a "plugin" and tried to use it directly without modification on the Touch it would be barely visible. The screen is much higher resolution with a very different aspect ratio, thus if you directly used existing plugins they would display as a little rectangle, probably not what you had in mind. What Logitech chose to do was give developers the option to either modify existing plugins to display properly on the Touch screen or start from scratch writing a program that runs on the local processor. If a program is primarily working with the music files, searching, taging etc its probably best to run on the server as a plugin, if its primarily a graphical interface such as a visualizer its probably best as an applet where it can quickly draw to the screen. A plugin that works with the database and just has a simple menu and or button interface should be easy to convert over. Something that has a complex graphical display may be a little tougher. So I don't think its quite fair to say that all third party work has to be redone from scratch, some developers may choose to do so, some may quickly convert existing plugins. It will be interesting to see what direction this takes. John S. -- JohnSwenson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=71637 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
