[New Project] Zephyr

Xephyr [ALPHA]: Release Thread

Kudos, first of all, to all the other skinners still faithful to XBMC. It looks like skinning engine 2.x has really caught the imagination, and stuff like Clearity, xTV, Vision etc is fantastic.

I'm hoping this will be too. The screens here are just mockups, the result of a few hours playing around this evening when I should have been doing work. The watchwords here are grace, lightness and minimalism. Everything should either fade or slide quickly and without any juddering, and every font and edge should be crisp.

So here's what happens. I'm not someone with a wealth of free time, sadly, but I get a few hours here and there. The last time I did anything substantial for XBMC was back in the early XBMP days, so it'll take a short while getting used to the new skinning engine. For my part, I'll be entirely selfish and make this simply for my own use, designed merely for 720p resolution with minimal features. If all that works out, then I'll sort out an SVN and leave it in other hands.

Most importantly, let me know what you think of these and whether any of it seems impossible. Things to note are the frosted glass overlay between GUI and background video, and the fogging on unfocused objects (not sure if that's doable). And this is all very early concept stuff - much is missing and much will no doubt change. I'll shut up now.

Tweaked the movies page a bit.

And the Home page:

the mocks ups look really nice mate...the only thing I would be concerned with is colour burn on old CRT TVs...Im not sure that this is an issue on HDs, but I think more people are usiing the older CRTs still at the moment.

I agree, the white will be harsh on a plasma, have you tried doing a mock up with black, I'd like to see it.

Nothing seems impossible from what I see, the only thing that makes it not very friendly is the fact that to get non focused menu item to frost over, they will have to be pictures, which is great if you like English, not so great for our foreign friends. And the side scrolling home screen will take you a little bit more time to code because it moves in from off screen, and flows off the other side.

I like simple minimal skins too.

I'll help if I can, but will be on vacation in the sates for 30 days in about 3 days, so my internet activities will be limited. Glad to help when I get back.

Okay, have rejigged it to use glass panels rather than fullscreen backdrops, and intensified the glass effect so it's visible on an LCD TV.

it does look good mate...seriously...I think McGyver will be the man for the job to help you out...but PLEASE get rid of the Halo background, as it's only really relevant for a games section!!!

The Halo pic's actually just there to represent a video playing in the background. Not sure what the standard background would be yet.

The Home screen's up and running in XBMC now, btw. Looks identical to the concept pic.

Here's an example of the different fullscreen backdrops for each menu option. Haven't put it into practice yet.



And the overlay for when a song/video's playing in the background.

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