[djh_]

First thing's first: inspiration for this did come from theDeviL's great mockups posted in Xephyr's normal thread. That said, the design direction of both this skin and that concept were pretty well aligned from the start, so the whole glass panel thing was already in place. Combine that with the obvious requirements of a panel view and there weren't that many alternatives to choose from. So here it is, the first of Xephyr's Wall views. Scraper info can fit into the extended glass highlight, though I'm more concerned with the basic functionality.



Question is: how can it be done? Here are the technical requirements:

- it has to create a "plane" of icons which scrolls in all directions while the focus position remains fixed
- the icons have to fill the screen, so if the view runs out of objects it has to repeat like a wraplist

The only available option in XBMC today seems to be the Icon panel, which has neither the fixed focal point nor the omni-directional scrolling required. What think you, JM?

[SleepyP]

It seems like this would require a new control type.
The actual skin code would be relatively minor, as you would only really need to specify how big each tile is and aspect ratio method to use on each title. Maybe a "wrapping: yes / no" option.
The under the hood coding would seem to be pretty tricky.

[Livin]

Who posted the 'Movies' view in one of the recent Xephyr patches? It is very simular just does not take up the entire screen. Maybe it can be adapted?

[jmarshall]

I've posted on this many times in the past, though perhaps not in public fora - check the fluid thread for a start perhaps?

First off, yes, it's semi-doable already with a bit of hackery (using a wraplist) but it'll only scroll in the one direction (horizontal/vertical). Effectively you use the coverflow style Container(0).ListItem(offset) trickery for the extra rows.

Secondly, it has to be of fixed number of rows or fixed number of columns, otherwise there is no well defined way to wrap.

Thirdly, you can't have it movable infinitely in each direction as you need to be able to navigate off the control.

To summarize:

You need a fixed column count (say 3 for illustrative purposes). You then don't allow wrapping left and right so as to allow exiting of the control. It does however allow wrapping up and down.

And ofcourse you need a new control. I've had it planned for sometime, just haven't as yet had the time to deal with it - look for it in the new year.

Happy holidays,
Jonathan

[djh_]

Well that was a doddle. Big thanks to jm for pointing me in the right direction. The Poster Wall's up and running on XBMC, though as suggested it's a fudge based on what can currently be done. It scrolls left and right, with the icons shuffling across the top, then across the center wraplist and down across the bottom row. All in all, it's quite seamless, though I'm doing this on a laptop with limited GPU power, so I can't tell if the animations are all smooth. They should be. When you navigate off the control (up or down) the usual Xephyr media menu (pictured in the mockup) slides in from the top. All the usual sorting and filtering options work 100%. Next step is to decide on a lettering style for the scraper info, which occupies the rest of the glass panel.

Oh, and could any comments be left in the usual Xephyr thread? This thread's as good as closed.

Here's a screenshot: