A few months back, I announced that I would be stopping work of the GameTrailers.com RSS app for Boxee due to personal issues. Realizing I was being a total wuss and had a nice thing people liked, I decided it was time to bring it back to life. Only one thing: It isn’t the same as before.

A Little History

Originally, GameTrailers.com RSS was an RSS-based Boxee application. As it was my very first Boxee app, it made sense to go the easy route with version 0.1 of the app. It was a way to ease myself into developing for the platform. Although easy to set up, the RSS method was limited in what could be done with the content.

A while back, I was working on developing a new version of the app that never saw the light of day. GameTrailers.com RSS 0.2 was going to be the first skinned version of the app, dropping its RSS-only roots for the more flexible skinning options available in Boxee.

Have A Look Around

When reviewing the code in GameTrailers.com 0.2, I felt it was being a little bit too ambitious. Thus, 0.2 was scrapped. As this is my first Boxee app in quite some time, I was a little bit rusty, needless to say. So for Version 0.3, I’m working on bring basic functionality.

First off, a name chance. Nothing big. Just dropping the “RSS” in the app name and adding “for Boxee”. So the official title of the app is “GameTrailers.com for Boxee”. It will still show up as “GameTrailers.com” in Boxee due to the limited text spacing in the Apps Library grid.

As for the layout, I decided to stick with as close as possible to what a core Boxee app looks like. Lately, I’ve had the mentality of “stick to what people know”. So why make something that looks completely different from the rest of the program?

The home screen is split into the three main sections used on GameTrailers: All Media, Platforms, and Channels. All Media lists all the media available in specific categories, such as the newest media or reviews. Platforms focus specifically on individual game consoles and platforms. Finally, Channels contains all original GameTrailers.com content, such as GT Countdown and ScrewAttack.

Once you navigate into any section, you will see a list of all available videos on the left, similar to the TV Episodes listings in the TV Shows section of Boxee. Just like that section, available information on the selected video appears on the right, including the title, description, and date of the video.

It’s very basic and no frills, which is all most people would need.

A Little Rusty, A Little Buggy

As I mentioned, it’s been a little while since I’ve worked on a Boxee app. I would say this app is really a very basic app. Even then, there are going to be bugs. Nothing app breaking but more of a “huh… that’s weird”.

On the home screen, you may noticed that a border still appears around the last selected item in the Platforms and Channels list even if that is not the active list. I don’t think it’s too noticeable as the currently selected items in those lists will zoom to make it stick out more.

When you’re browsing a section, the title of the section will appear at the top of the screen. But if you view a video and come back to the list of videos, the title defaults to “GameTrailers.com”. Not sure why this is happening, but I don’t consider it a major problem.

Also while browsing, there is no scroll bar. That’s it. There just isn’t a scroll bar. It’s still a bug.

What’s Next?

Sorting Platform Results

Another feature I would like to implement is the ability sort each Platform by the available sorting methods provided by GameTrailers.com (such as newest media, popular items, only reviews, etc.). This is where things are getting a little tricky for me, so don’t expect to see this for a while. By default, all items in Platforms and Channels are sorted by Newest.

Thumbnail Images for Items

When browsing a section, one of the things on your mind is probably “Hey. Where are the thumbnails?”. That is something I’m trying to figure out. The GameTrailers.com feeds use specialized tags to distribute images, called <exInfo:image> for the selected item. Unfortunately, when trying to call this tag using ListItem.property(exInfo:image) in Boxee, it returns a empty value. I have a feeling the colon is throwing off the call, but I’m not sure yet. Once I figure this out, there will be thumbnail images. (Any suggestions as to what I’m doing wrong?)

Extra Information

Speaking of the <exInfo:image> tag, there are actually even more tags like that within the GameTrailers.com feeds. For example, when viewing items in the All Media section, how do you know which console a game is for? This information is hiding in a tag called <exInfo:platform>, but as before, I have no idea how to get Boxee to realize it’s there, even with the ListItem.property call.

How Do I Get It?

If you want to play around with the new GameTrailers.com for Boxee app, you will need to add the InternalServer.net repository to Boxee.

In Boxee, navigate to Apps. In the left sidebar, scroll down to and select Repositories under the Extras section. In the left sidebar, select Add Repository and enter the Repository URL of apps.internalserver.net. Select the newly added InternalServer.net repository to access GameTrailers.com for Boxee app.

 

I hope I don’t let anybody down this time around. I welcome any and all suggestions and recommendations. That’s if I know how to implement whatever recommendation you make that is.