[ALPHA RELEASE] Lightbox Skin

(2012-04-20 14:44)da-anda Wrote:  @tree_jammer - I know it's a alpha release and you know about the most obvious bugs, but here are some things I noticed from sections that already look pretty finished. That's why I decided to report them:

season panel
I think it would be better to display the season posters in a continous strip instead of a 5col grid, so that you can browse all seasons from left to right and don't have to also scroll up/down (one doesn't expect this seeing only one line of posters).

movie panel, music panel
browsing the poster feels a bit awkward, having to navigate left/right and up and down. Would be cool if there would be a automated "line jump" once you reach the outermost poster of a line. So that when you continously press left/right you automatically browse the posters line by line. But I think this might be a limitation in the skinning engine and would probably lead to other navigational oddities (like how to get tot he left menu again)?

grids (home screen, genres)
On the home screen you use some grids, f.e. for the recent movies or the settings. There are some visual glitches with those:

• dummy shapes disappear suddenly when they are in the last line and you scroll up (so that they move down). They already disapper before the grid moved them out of focus.
• it's a bit odd in the settings grid that when you scroll down to the third line (while 2 are displayed at a time), that the grid scrolls up to the third row even if it's the last one. This leads to a empty row at the bottom which looks odd. So scrolling the rows should stop once there are no more rows "hidden"
  

Info panel
To simplify the UI a bit, I think you can remove the buttons for "refresh", "get thumb" and "get fanart" from the info panel view and "hide" them behind a "edit" button. Gui should only show frequently used options and "hide" the advanced features from average joe. But that's just my personal taste - feel free to ignore it

The season left to right I think I will give that a try I guess it makes sense.

The line jump seems like great idea and I wish it was possible but unfortunately that is a limitation of the skinning engine, unless anyone else knows otherwise? If so let me know!

The way the list items in recently added disappear/appear is an engine issue I'm not sure if there is a workaround for it. I use preloading but that only effects the down scroll not back up.

In the tiles I'm not sure why it scroll to the lowest row leaving the bottom row blank. Like you say I would prefer if it stayed at the bottom.

Dude all these things that youve spotted are things I need to figure out, so don't worry they were annoying me too! So if anyone knows some solutions to these, let me know

Ever since i saw the first screenshots, i really liked this skin. Now i found the time to give it a try.

There are three things that i noticed:

• No PVR-Support: Some people already mentioned this. Consider my post a +1 to that request.
• No animations when scrolling through episode lists: Felt a little weird especially since everything else about this skin is so beautifully animated.
• When stepping through those big box-lists, for example on homescreen->movies on the right ("All movies" etc.) those highlight-transitions could bee a little shorter/faster. For me it currently feels a little sluggish.
  

Only the first of those is really crucial for me.
Perfomance-wise the skin does a pretty good job. On my htpc machine (Shuttle XS35GT, Atom D525, 2GB memory, nvidia ION-graphics, ssd) its sometimes a tiny but sluggish, but still looking gorgeous.

But all in all i have to say, this looks and feels really really great and not at all like something i would call "alpha". I am really looking forward to future releases.
If in the future pvr-stuff is supported, this might actually replace refocus for me

Man some of these people are so demanding. Please ignore everyone who's complaining about the skin and stick to your vision.

This skin is shaping up to be the most professional looking skin available in xbmc.

Also please do not support pvr. Its the least used feature of xbmc and contains the most annoying username.
Keep up the awesome work.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express

(2012-04-16 23:47)tree_jammer Wrote:  

(2012-04-16 21:18)Elixxen Wrote:  Looks amazing and works really good for an alpha release! Love it!

Generally I would say the the fan art in both the home menu and in the TV shows and movies views is to dark. Also the posters of the movies that aren't selected are also too dark. You can barley make out what movie it is before going over it.

The music viz is amazing! The video OSD is disappointing tho. Doesn't look as good as the rest of the skin. The green gradient is not good looking imo

Im seeing a lot of complaints about the unfocused thumbs being too dark, and darkness in general. I would just like to state that the thumbs are not too dark, I think a lot of people need to correctly calibrate their monitors/tvs. You either have the contrast too high or have brightness/gamma set to dark. There are colour charts etc to check your screen with. Heres a good straight forward site for your Computer monitor Monitor Calibration.

From the test image below you should be able to distinguish every step in colour. none should blend together.




As For the video OSD. I like it therefore its staying. I have a version with a black gradient i was toying with so i may change that.

My TV is professionally calibrated but okay. In the end it's up to you how you want your skin to look. For me brighter thumbs would look better as the background is dark. It just becomes tot dim overall. Nothing but the fonts really pop out.

That's fine I'm not changing it. At the end of the day this is a personal project which I decided to share. Therefore take it or leave it. I'll only implement what I feel adds to the skin.

(2012-04-21 19:54)Elixxen Wrote:  

(2012-04-16 23:47)tree_jammer Wrote:  

(2012-04-16 21:18)Elixxen Wrote:  Looks amazing and works really good for an alpha release! Love it!

Generally I would say the the fan art in both the home menu and in the TV shows and movies views is to dark. Also the posters of the movies that aren't selected are also too dark. You can barley make out what movie it is before going over it.

The music viz is amazing! The video OSD is disappointing tho. Doesn't look as good as the rest of the skin. The green gradient is not good looking imo

Im seeing a lot of complaints about the unfocused thumbs being too dark, and darkness in general. I would just like to state that the thumbs are not too dark, I think a lot of people need to correctly calibrate their monitors/tvs. You either have the contrast too high or have brightness/gamma set to dark. There are colour charts etc to check your screen with. Heres a good straight forward site for your Computer monitor Monitor Calibration.

From the test image below you should be able to distinguish every step in colour. none should blend together.

As For the video OSD. I like it therefore its staying. I have a version with a black gradient i was toying with so i may change that.

My TV is professionally calibrated but okay. In the end it's up to you how you want your skin to look. For me brighter thumbs would look better as the background is dark. It just becomes tot dim overall. Nothing but the fonts really pop out.

Also - don't forget for those who have professionally calibrated TV's (mine is too), each input and source should be calibrated individually. Chances are, most people calibrated their main input using a BR player, and if you are using the same input for your HTPC (again like me) it's likely going to be 'out of spec'. I would recommend adjusting brightness and contrasts, color, etc, using your graphics card utilities to address any brightness/contrast issues you have. That way you can have a brighter skin, but not mess with your TV settings.

Just offering some alternate suggestions.

(2012-04-21 20:37)tree_jammer Wrote:  That's fine I'm not changing it. At the end of the day this is a personal project which I decided to share. Therefore take it or leave it. I'll only implement what I feel adds to the skin.

Its understandable to now want to change your vision, its just a shame as i think brightening those tiles would make it so much better. But like you said, people can take it or leave it. Personally, with a properly calibrated I (well my other half) cant use it as it is, so im probably gonna leave it. However as a compromise would you consider telling us how we could change it ourselves?

(2012-04-22 23:13)d_hero Wrote:  

(2012-04-21 20:37)tree_jammer Wrote:  That's fine I'm not changing it. At the end of the day this is a personal project which I decided to share. Therefore take it or leave it. I'll only implement what I feel adds to the skin.

Its understandable to now want to change your vision, its just a shame as i think brightening those tiles would make it so much better. But like you said, people can take it or leave it. Personally, with a properly calibrated I (well my other half) cant use it as it is, so im probably gonna leave it. However as a compromise would you consider telling us how we could change it ourselves?

It is all in the XML files. If you need to familiarize yourself what corresponds to what you may want to take a look at Hitcher's Foundation Skin.

First i would like to say tree_jammer , FANTASTIC skin. I have downloaded around 40-50 skins and this has to be the nicest. I love the square look reminds me of the Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 Metro UI. I dont want to seem like im pointing at any bugs/missing stuff but here is the list of things i have found so far. I would even like to help, I dont know much about skinning in xbmc, but i do know some about xml.

Volume scroll is hard to see (black on black)
for watched movies and tv shows there is no indicator you have watched it, except to go to options and see if it says mark as "unwatched/watched"
No additonal views, like list as i see with a large list of movies it can become sluggish scrolling through 100+.
When selecting movies, always prompted for a choice "Title, Year etc..."
Not able to add or remove catagories from the main menu (music removed, or addons menu added)
Shutdown menu, could have an option to quit/restart XBMC
When selecting tv show episode information the information window is transpartent on top of the season list and makes it hard to head the text and there all smushed together.
The scroll up and down arrows in the episode and movie information overlaps the movie logo information (720, H.264, DTS etc...)
Able to add a folder of movie/tv show backgrounds and have them rotate on the main screen


If you would like me to help in some way, let me know

lilham,

40-50 skins... really?

and if you'd read the thread you know that this is ALPHA... And you'd also know that 90% of everything you just said has already been mentioned... Or tree_jammer is aware of. You'd also know that, it's ALPHA.

loggio.