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[WIP] Metropolis skin - Printable Version

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+---- Thread: [WIP] Metropolis skin (/showthread.php?tid=99317)



- Amra - 2011-09-06

gekados Wrote:Hi Amra.

Really really nice skin! Has a great feel to it, and design is consistent. Most important though: it's smooth and fast !

Any chance of a fixed home menu when using icon view ? And perhaps hiding the subemenus untill you push down, instead of having them displayed all the time ? Would make home screen more 'clean' imo Smile

There is no recently added items availible in icon mode on home screen right ? Would be nice to have that added, perhaps showing by pushing up ?
Yeah, I still have more work to do on the Icon Home Style. I too am thinking about making it a fixed view and, yes I do still need/want to add recently added info. just didn't get to it in time before the Alpha release.

gekados Wrote:In tvshows section, any chance that you'll make an episode view ?

A little bug in visualization, when pusing info, the top bar is still alaska white, though with golden letters (leather view). Perhaps you're considering that as a music issue ;-)

Otherwise, tried it out 'cause the screens looked good, and I liked your big alaska mod. Instantly became default skin here, my wife loved it from the start and now i'm not allowed to swap skins again, not that I would, hehe.

Really looking forward to next release with an updated music section !

And thanks for sharing your work, really appreciate it !
What do you have in mind for an Episode view? Something similar to BIG Alaska?

Music, Pictures & Visualization hasn't been done yet. That'll be in the next release hopefully.

Glad your wife liked BIG Alaska. Hopefully she will like Metropolis too. My wife, 14 year old & 12 year old kids all like it and have no problems using it.


- Amra - 2011-09-06

Be back in a little with more responses. Gotta stop & feed the family. Yes. I'm a full service Dad. Laugh


- Amra - 2011-09-06

metasynthie Wrote:Are you planning on supporting Advanced Launcher with this skin?

Do you have any custom views for Pictures, like coverflows or poster-like views? (Thinking specifically about views designed for folders full of CBRs, since you seem to be a comic book fan -- some skins only have views with square thumbnails or lists, which doesn't work for viewing lots of comic-book covers.)

Any chance of a horizontal menu style?
No immediate plans on advanced launcher... yet.

I haven't decided on exact Picture views yet other than the obvious "Gallery" views that I have for videos. I used to be a Comic Collector many, many years ago. I'm old enough to have bought & hung on to the first comic with Wolverine in it as a little kid. I have a few CBR's but mainly just enjoy the art nowadays. If I can work a Poster view in I will.

And lastly... Not sure about a Horizontal style (I presume you mean like Aeon). I suppose if I could find some way to work around the break in the screen background...


- Amra - 2011-09-06

zepfan Wrote:I finally got power back and checked this skin out. It's amazing, I really love it! I look forward to seeing what you do with it in the future so I'll save my requests for a final version!

Thanks for sharing this!
You are most welcome & thanks again for the previous & continued encouragement. Big Grin

@sialivi
Thanks again for the notes. It looks like I have some work ahead of me. Laugh I will sort thru what you have posted & see what is doable.

@Shinu & zepfan
Regarding PseudoTV. I've looked at it & it's not really something I would ever use but if there is enough call for it & you want to code it, I will certainly add it in. You may want to wait a little til I can update this skin & release the next version though, just in case I make any major changes to any xml that could conflict with what you may do. Plus also I will upload the uncompressed textures at that time for anyone who wants to make their own themes.


- Amra - 2011-09-06

macshield Wrote:This skin is amazing. Any plans to include tvtunes support?
See post#164. A few people have now asked for that so I will have to update my answer & say that I will definitely look into it.

steshell Wrote:How come I've not heard of this skin before?
Just downloaded the alpha and it's already very polished, very interested in seeing what you have planned for the music section.


Steve
Thanks & you may have missed it because I started in March but took 2-3 months off from it & the thread got buried til recently.

The Music section will be a new thing to me as I don't use that on my HTPC. So, to be honest, I'm curious what I will come up with also. Laugh One view I know I want to include already will be the Gallery Square view. Obviously, I want to include more.


- cainecollin - 2011-09-06

Amra Wrote:The Music section will be a new thing to me as I don't use that on my HTPC. So, to be honest, I'm curious what I will come up with also. Laugh On view I know I want to include already will be the Gallery Square view. Obviously, I want to include more.

This is the Part I'm waiting for Big Grin I have a ton of Music Videos and an insane amount of music lol


- odt_x - 2011-09-06

Good job with this skin, Amra! I think you made the perfect font and color choices for this skin - even though the font size is considerably smaller than in BIG Alaska, it's still easy on the eyes even on a smaller screen without giving me a headache from reading the media titles Smile

The only part I'm struggling a bit with is the Plot description, but to work around that I think Ill just manually make the plot font in the Info view bigger, as the plots really only important when you specifically look for it.

Really well done, and as many others here have already mentioned - looking very much forward to the music section. Keep up the good work!


- espengaasemyr - 2011-09-06

Love this skin dudeSmile is it possible to add some more views to the program section? i`m using advanced lancher. playing old nes gamesBig Grin


- Bkam - 2011-09-06

Amra anything about my question , a bit annoying that i have to stop the movie if i want to now the current time , and ending time on the osd would be a nice bonus Smile


Bkam Wrote:one thing i miss is the clock in the OSD , want to be able to se current time when i am watching a movie.



- Amra - 2011-09-06

Bkam Wrote:Amra anything about my question , a bit annoying that i have to stop the movie if i want to now the current time , and ending time on the osd would be a nice bonus Smile
Oops, sorry. There were a lot of questions in the couple days I was gone. Yeah, that could probably be done, at least as an option.


- Amra - 2011-09-06

espengaasemyr Wrote:Love this skin dudeSmile is it possible to add some more views to the program section? i`m using advanced launcher. playing old nes gamesBig Grin
Yes, that is something I want to do. just didn't get to it for the Alpha.


- Amra - 2011-09-06

odt_x Wrote:Good job with this skin, Amra! I think you made the perfect font and color choices for this skin - even though the font size is considerably smaller than in BIG Alaska, it's still easy on the eyes even on a smaller screen without giving me a headache from reading the media titles Smile

The only part I'm struggling a bit with is the Plot description, but to work around that I think Ill just manually make the plot font in the Info view bigger, as the plots really only important when you specifically look for it.

Really well done, and as many others here have already mentioned - looking very much forward to the music section. Keep up the good work!
Thanks and yeah, the fonts are smaller than BIG Alaska since I've moved from a 32" CRT to a 40" LCD at my home. I've tried to keep them bigger than some other skins, though.


- otcho - 2011-09-06

An option to hide plot in every view would be nice!


- gekados - 2011-09-06

Amra Wrote:Yeah, I still have more work to do on the Icon Home Style. I too am thinking about making it a fixed view and, yes I do still need/want to add recently added info. just didn't get to it in time before the Alpha release.

Was thinking of 2 green arrows, one pointing up for recent/random and one poiting down for submenu. And fixed view, that would be really nice and clean.

Amra Wrote:What do you have in mind for an Episode view? Something similar to BIG Alaska?

Yes, i'm a big fan of the alaska episode view Smile

Amra Wrote:Glad your wife liked BIG Alaska. Hopefully she will like Metropolis too. My wife, 14 year old & 12 year old kids all like it and have no problems using it.

Was actually Metropolis I meant. She liked it from the start, otherwise she usually hates when I test a new skin Wink Thanks again, the more I use it, the more I enjoy it !


- metasynthie - 2011-09-06

Amra Wrote:No immediate plans on advanced launcher... yet.

Thanks for responding to all these inquiries, Amra! You have a ton of requests but it seems like when you get to v1.0 it'll be a really amazing skin.

Quote:I haven't decided on exact Picture views yet other than the obvious "Gallery" views that I have for videos. I used to be a Comic Collector many, many years ago. I'm old enough to have bought & hung on to the first comic with Wolverine in it as a little kid. I have a few CBR's but mainly just enjoy the art nowadays. If I can work a Poster view in I will.

Thank you! The "Gallery" view you have right now for Movies would work really well for comics, and makes for a really nice display of all the comic book cover art. Since it's got a portrait orientation thumbnail, kind of like Poster, Poster Fixed, and Coverflow also does for Movies. A lot of skins only have a square thumbnail for Pictures, and it just doesn't work well for comics since you end up not being able to see the title at the top of the thumb. Comics don't really need much else besides the filename visible, well at least until someone does a scraper for Pictures views from Comicvine like Angelscry just did for Advanced Launcher.

Quote:And lastly... Not sure about a Horizontal style (I presume you mean like Aeon). I suppose if I could find some way to work around the break in the screen background...

Yeah, I was thinking of Aeon or many other skins that have a "horizontal menu" option (Neon, Night, Cirrus, etc). I'm using the Icon view right now because your icon art is so gorgeous -- but I kind of miss seeing the big backdrops of the other view, since I usually have that set up with folders full of big HD backdrops I've collected. I guess my ideal would be a horizontally scrolling menu that shows one of your icons at a time with the section name, superimposed on a backdrop like you've got for the main view Big Grin but that's just me, probably not a widely requested home screen option!

After using it for a while here are my other comments
- the digital font being used for the RSS newsfeed on the homescreen is really hard to read compared to any other skin I've used. It's neat looking but unpleasant to use.
- your art-deco weather icons are awesome
- the little arrow "hints" are so useful (left to browse the random / recent media lists, right for submenu). I kind of wish I could have those little arrows somewhere without the text saying "submenu" etc. Half-hints.
- I find myself wishing to be able to control the darkening/opacity of the background fanart in a lot of views. It's nice to see fanart in the smaller inset windows, but the big background (again, I have lots of 1080p backdrops for every movie, tv show, etc) are so dark & muddy that they often just look like murky shadows. If there was a slider to control this opacity or darkening or both, that would be awesome.