DeviceGuru

The Navi-X Team has just issued the beta release of an enhanced version of its popular Navi-X app for Boxee. The updated app boasts greater UI sophistication and significantly enhanced ease-of-use.

“Today we are releasing the long awaited Navi-X Beta application for Boxee to the public,” writes Navi-X project coordinator, iRoNBiLL in a post on the Boxee user forum. “While the application is technically still considered beta, don’t let that fool you!”

“A lot of time and effort has gone into refining a newer, easy to view interface with some fancy bells and whistles built in,” iRoNBiLL adds. “Essentially, it’s a brand new application built from scratch and re-engineered by our good friend and head of Navi-X development for Boxee, Bartsidee.”

What’s Navi-X?

As described by iRoNBiLL in an earlier article, the Navi-X Boxee app is a “media browser” or “content aggregator,” which gives users access to link and playback all kinds of multimedia content available on the Internet. Content collected by Navi-X includes commercial sources, independent video hosting sites, and user-contributed listings of media in the form of playlists for browsing and selecting media.

Multimedia content indexed by Navi-X includes TV shows, movies, music, podcasts, pictures, RSS /XML feeds, webpages, live streams, text, and more. Users can add their own links to a playlist and optionally share them with others.

What’s new in this update?

There had been some user feedback indicating the original Navi-X Boxee app was a bit too complicated for beginners, explains Bartsidee (the app’s developer) on Boxee’s user forum. Consequently, he set out to create a new skin, simplify the UI, and make the app more user friendly.

Bartsidee lists the following key enhancements in this first major update to the app:

• New Skin
• Code Optimization
• Url caching
• Subtitle support
• New list views (detail, thumb, list)
• New sort options (newest, oldest, asc, desc, rating)
• Parental Support (default code 0000)
• Downloader (local or usb storage)
• New favorites (online storage)

From our preliminary tests, we’d say his effort was a great success. The screenshots below give you a sense of the updated app’s UI and ease-of-use improvements.

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“During the skin development I discovered that it was actually easier for me to redesign the entire app and build it from scratch,” adds Bartsidee. “This allowed me to add some requests from boxee users. Now almost 3 months later (and a lot of spare time), I think I’m ready to hand it over to Bill and release it to the public.”

Installing the Navi-X update beta

Here’s how to add the Navi-X update beta to Boxee on a PC/Mac, laptop, or dedicated Boxee device:

• From the top-level Boxee menu navigate to Apps > Extras > Repositories > Add Repository
• Add a new repository with this address: “http://tinyurl.com/navixbeta”
• Now, select the added repository and add the Navi-X update beta to your apps as shown in the screenshots below

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Installing the Boxee Navi-X v2 app beta
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Following the above procedure, the Navi-X app beta should appear in Boxee’s list of apps on your system or device.

Further info

For more background on Navi-X, read our earlier article introducing the Boxee Navi-X app and visit the Navi-Xtreme Media Portal, which includes support and chat forum areas.
 

[This post was initially published on DeviceGuru’s sibling site, BoxeeBoxTips.com]