Armchairware blog

So things have been somewhat quiet on Photato over the last few months, mainly because I’ve been working on a third party Media Center add-in (details to follow shortly). I am now working to get the Photato beta into a reasonable state for release.  I’m mainly looking at improving the performance for users with lots of friends and photos and ensuring it works on Windows 7, but I’d also like to improve the login experience.

The main problem with logging in is that Facebook require desktop apps to use their own login web page.  This makes it difficult for Media Center add-ins and pretty much impossible to enable a true 10 foot login experience i.e. using just a remote control. The current beta uses a Media Center HTML page with the Facebook login web page embedded within it.  This does work (with some limitations) but is difficult to implement and even though it does display within the Media Center app you still need a keyboard to enter your details.  Early versions of the beta used a seperate popup window for logging in which worked well but was even less integrated into Media Center.  I’m thinking of going back to this approach to keep things simple, but it’d be good to get some feedback on this.  Logging in is only something that is done occasionally so it’s not too big a deal, but I’d still like to make as easy to do as possible.  So, if you have any views on this, please add your comments below.

Thanks.