[WIP] XBMC Surfaces
#16
Without having any intention of sounding judgmental, and no offense but, dude... this 90% rip-off of the Xperience 1080. Furthermore, and i am talking in general... please guys... please, please, please... no more metro themes. For a couple of months now most of the new WIP themes are in metro-win8-style. Did we had enough advertising of the new Microsoft's OS ;

And that's me being grumpy...Angry and i am done Big Grin

Cheers
Nessus
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#17
A lot of people really like the metro styled layouts. I find them sorta ugly but to each their own.
(2012-10-28, 01:55)nessus Wrote: For a couple of months now most of the new WIP themes are in metro-win8-style. Did we had enough advertising of the new Microsoft's OS ;

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#18
I had a brief play with this and I can honestly say it looks nothing like my Immersive skin. Although some element have been heavily borrowed - the splash-flip animations and weather are almost directly copied - this skin has more in common with Xperience, as Nexxus brought up, or Microsoft's new Video / Music apps which fall under the umbrella of the Xbox design.

Having said that, there's no reason why this can't exist among the other Metro-inspired skins. The only things this need are some finishing pieces and a lot of polish - two things I'm hoping to bring with my Immersive skin.

Just thought I'd weigh in with my two cents since there was a comparison with Immersive brought up.
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#19
(2012-10-28, 01:55)nessus Wrote: Without having any intention of sounding judgmental, and no offense but, dude... this 90% rip-off of the Xperience 1080. Furthermore, and i am talking in general... please guys... please, please, please... no more metro themes. For a couple of months now most of the new WIP themes are in metro-win8-style. Did we had enough advertising of the new Microsoft's OS ;

And that's me being grumpy...Angry and i am done Big Grin

Cheers
Nessus



Xperience 1080 is heavily influenced by the first Xbox metro dashboard, Immersive by Windows Phone 7 and Surfaces by the new Xbox Music UI. While they are all insanely derivative they do not claim to be anything other than that, so therefore are not ripping each other off. The reason there has been such a huge influx of 'metro-win8-style' concepts is because the style is undeniably simple and intuitive. Although some of the metro skin concepts have been carelessly designed and predominantly rely on borrowing existing metro elements, I, for one, welcome the direction users are going in.

XBMC skins are notoriously busy, and ignore very simple design etiquette. Over time I've realised this is because most skinners are more interested in code than design, and thankfully as a result the skinning engine has come a long way. Unfortunately this is also why skins suffer, for example Aeon. Originally a beautifully conceived design with a great initial release, followed by a number of Frankenstein mods that trade off design for function. Luckily Metro promotes a very simple philosophy of less is more, focusing on typography and navigation instead of ugly textures, sloppy gradients, intrusive overlays, excessive icons, unnecessary text and unessential images.

Although I can sometimes sympathise with dislike towards metro's overall aesthetic, i'll gladly sit back and watch it's ideology evolve and infiltrate XBMC.
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#20
It borrows elements from a few skins, and looks great so far. Definitely looks like something I would use, hope you reconsider development!
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#21
(2012-10-28, 01:55)nessus Wrote: Without having any intention of sounding judgmental, and no offense but, dude... this 90% rip-off of the Xperience 1080. Furthermore, and i am talking in general... please guys... please, please, please... no more metro themes. For a couple of months now most of the new WIP themes are in metro-win8-style. Did we had enough advertising of the new Microsoft's OS ;

And that's me being grumpy...Angry and i am done Big Grin

Cheers
Nessus

I don't think this comment is warranted, I personally don't care how many Metro Skins there are for XBMC. We could have 20 different Metro themes all with slight variations and that would be perfectly ok, we're always open to new development and creation no matter how similar it is. I think here at XBMC, no one should ever dishearten young developers and designers as everyone is welcome to their own interpretation and experimentation with skinning/developing. Being that XBMC is open source, all the skins are open source as well and even if he forked 90% of the immersive code it is still his variant and there is no dibs on code around here. How many Confluence mods are there??

I feel the comment has demotivated our young friend and I completely think that is really horrible. Never should anyone ever do this to young developers, no matter how grumpy we may be, as they may one day contribute something amazing to the XBMC community, instead inspire them and share knowledge and impart constructive criticism when applicable.
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#22
I am sorry you feel this way about my comment. That was not my intention at all. Of course is very good to have more and more developers working on themes or any kind of addons. Although is an open source community is very different to rip-off parts from other skins (like many developers do), from rip-off the 90% (Xperience 1080 not Immersive) of one skin without (judging from Black's comment) even ask for the permission of the original developer. Yes we could have 20 or even 50 Metro themes, or 20-50 Aeon, or 20-50 Xperience and so on, but like you say they have to be in some way different. Ripping off and changing some animations or graphics is not... a developing.

As for particularly the new-Metro-wave style, maybe in MS's new OS is looking cool but in a Media Center environment IMO is ugly and is looking like... a brochure. I will never like to turn of the lights ready to enter to the magic world of Cinema and see some ugly-squared-boxes in my screen like to prompts me to buy something. THE MAGIC IS GONE. Sad

And again that is my opinion and it's not need to be the correct one. So... if anyone feel different please ignore my comment.

Cheers
Nessus
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#23
All credits to black and xperience were mentioned in the deleted and then edited first post.
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#24
For those that like Metro inspired themes and are looking at all the different options, is there a link to download this? I notice that it's gone from the original link's Skydrive folder.

Would love to try this as love all the different Metro looks with the big, bold fonts - makes viewing on smaller <32" TVs a lot easier as a lot of skins use too small fonts to view from a couch!
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#25
Ok, so I thought I shall throw in my opinion too Smile

So as far as I see this, some people made some comments which sounded harsher than intended and therefore the creator took down the skin?

As someone who didn't even get a chance to see screenshots, let alone try this, I have to say, it's a pity that anyone would say something along the lines of there being too many skins of a certain type.
I think there was a time when we had like 5 actively maintained versions of Aeon and since they all were different in some way, nobody really cared.

Also, if a skinner had some great ideas in regards of UI-Design, it should, or better has to be acceptable to implement them in other skins. (Again, haven't seen the skin so I'm not sure how similar they actually were)
That's one of the great benefits of FOSS-Software, one can fork and create works inspired by other stuff without getting sued into oblivion.

And as the creators of both skins yours has been compared to, said they are fine with it, there really should be no reason for you to take your skin down.

So dgm1960, put it up again, I want to test Big Grin

Edit: Holy hell, that Big Grin smiley looks creepy
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#26
Agree! And especially as I'm someone who is a fan of both xperience and Metro I'll definitely give it a whirl!
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#27
Thank you guys to your support on this. I am in new jersey and have no power, etc, but I will begin work on this once we are back up and running. I am, however, going to restart coding from the beginning without using parts of any other skins. I will repost screens as soon as I can for those interested.
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#28
(2012-11-02, 19:53)dgm1960 Wrote: Thank you guys to your support on this. I am in new jersey and have no power, etc, but I will begin work on this once we are back up and running. I am, however, going to restart coding from the beginning without using parts of any other skins. I will repost screens as soon as I can for those interested.

Yes, yes, yes !!!!! Nod
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