Topic: About the current beta...
I think it is perhaps the best update for the Chumby yet, and can't wait for this to be out of beta.
The volume slider on the main CP screen is great, and I am happy to finally see that on my Chumby. Definitely a better use of screen real estate than the "Hide Control Panel" button considering how that functionality was duplicated on the main screen.
Of course, the big feature is the addition of Pandora. THANK YOU! However, this is where the "can't wait for this to be out of beta" comes into play. I just rebooted my Chumby, and immediately went into Pandora.
The first thing that strikes me is that the station (and every other similar area in the Pandora subWidget) area sliding action isn't immediately obvious. All of the other music sources built in have you using scroll buttons scroll. The Pandora widget does provide you with a scroll bar as an INDICATOR, but what occurred to me immediately upon seeing it was to try to use that to scroll. I even grabbed a stylus and attempted to use that to scroll before I realized that the list moved when the stylus was off the scroll bar. It is, to me however, an odd inconsistency, and in my opinion the subWidget would be better if it worked in a manner consistent with the rest of the built in CP subWidgets.
The second thing is performance. Doing anything with the Pandora subWidget seems a little slow. Entering in my login info for Pandora, there was a noticeable lag between input and register. To the point where I would tap a several letters and then see the indicator appear on the on-screen keyboard/show up in the input area. Scrolling seems sluggish also. Switching songs and rating them, however, does not. It is, yet again, another glaring inconsistency with the rest of the built in CP subWidgets. If there is ANYTHING you can do to speed the Pandora subWidget up it would significantly improve the experience.
I understand that getting Pandora fully running on the Chumby must have been no small feat. The UI issues inherent in getting almost every element of Pandora usable on a 3.5 inch screen must be pretty difficult to deal with. Overall, I do have to say, that UI wise, you guys did a great job. Save for scrolling, everything is immediately and (in my opinion) intuitively placed.
The exact same can (and should) be said about getting Pandora running on the Chumby at all. I have no idea what technical snags you guys have managed to run across while getting Pandora running on the Chumby. In the end, I am very happy with what you guys have managed as is. But, as I said earlier, I think there are two things that (if possible) should be changed before the end of the beta period for the sake of delivering the best possible Chumby using experience.