Some upcoming CQC 1.4 teasers

["Dean Roddey" <droddey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey, just wanted to post some snaps to show off new stuff coming up in our
CQC 1.4 release. This release is important because it plugs the last two
really substantial holes in our feature set, e.g. media control and support
for small hand held devices.

The media control stuff is a big one. It's all driver based, so we should be
able to support most types of media repositories and rendering devices. We
won't at first have any repository format of our own, we'll just work in
terms of others. Down the line, perhaps 1.5, we'll provide our own ripping
capabilities and our own repository, cover art lookup and the like. But for
now, we'll support things like the Escient Fireball, J.River, MS Media
Connect, Barix Exstreamer, etc...

Here are some snaps from a customer project being working on in conjunction
with the 1.4 work. These interfaces aren't completed yet, but enough to show
the important stuff. Keep in mind that the look and feel, as always, is
arbitrary. CQC's interfaces have no look, you can design them however you
want.

http://www.charmedquark.com/www2/Downloads/MikesPreviews/MediaOverlay.jpg
http://www.charmedquark.com/www2/Downloads/MikesPreviews/NowPlaying_Movie.jpg

You can see here a lot of new stuff. The scrollable button bar at the bottom
is new, and really helps with space constrained displays. You can put the
most common stuff to the left and the less common to the right and scroll
over to it when you need it. You can see the category browser, and under
that the cover art browser. These interface widgets understand our new media
driver architecture and can work with any media repository for which there's
a driver. In this particular case, it's all working over an Escient
Fireball.


The other big hole being plugged is the support for small, hand held
devices. We are dealing with this with a new .Net based user interface
viewer. It works just like the standard viewer (which is what is displaying
the media interfaces in the previous examples), but it's written in CE.Net
and therefore can run on things like PocketPCs, Smart Phones, and various
CE.Net based tablets and touch panels.

http://www.charmedquark.com/www2/Downloads/PPCCap1.jpg
http://www.charmedquark.com/www2/Downloads/PPCCap2.jpg

These have a similar look to the previous examples, but that's just by
chance. Mark, who is doing the .Net viewer, chose that particular look for
his demo interfaces.

We have a 1.3.13 release coming up early next week, and in conjunction with
that, we'll be putting out the first beta of the .Net interface viewer for
folks to play around with and comment on, so that we can incorporate that
feedback into the 1.4 release.

-------------------------------------
Dean Roddey
Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems
www.charmedquark.com