Lithium - Yet another skin in development for XBMC

Memory usage is to high for the xbox. The XBOX locks up regularly.
I've read that using a xpr file for the textures decreases memory usage.

I do like the path you've chosen for this skin! It could be perfect for smaller PAL and NTSC tv's. Readability is great!

October 11, 2009 - NEW VERSION UPLOADED
- new view: song
- new highlight for list view and episode view

Bram77 Wrote:Memory usage is to high for the xbox. The XBOX locks up regularly.
I've read that using a xpr file for the textures decreases memory usage.

I do like the path you've chosen for this skin! It could be perfect for smaller PAL and NTSC tv's. Readability is great!

Thanks for testing that out for me Bram77! It's probably a combination of the texture size and the fact that I haven't been optimized any of my code yet.

Just out of curiosity, are most of the xbox's locking up problems in the Fanart view? I think that throwing 8 720p backgrounds, masking them, resizing them, and then transforming them is probably making XBMC cry.

Since designing in a vacuum is never good I thought I'd shake the tree up a little bit and ask everybody two questions:
1) What do you not like about Lithium's interface?
2) How does Lithium measure up against your favorite interface?

I love Lithium, it's certainly up there with Rapier (or will be when it's done).

In terms of what I don't like, I'm not keen on the darker columns for episode number and watched status. There needs to be some differentiation, but not keen on the columns. Perhaps changing the color / size of the episode number and ditching the column might look better? Then maybe a subtle tick / green light for watched state?

I'm not home where I can check this out yet.. anyone care to upload some screens of the new version?

reddragon220 Wrote:Since designing in a vacuum is never good I thought I'd shake the tree up a little bit and ask everybody two questions:
1) What do you not like about Lithium's interface?
2) How does Lithium measure up against your favorite interface?

1) I don't like that it's so memory consuming (obviously). I think it should be a extremely light weight skins. Especially since it's only a few MB's in total size.
2) The skin is hard to compare to others since the approach is different. There are quite a lot of people I know still using small, non-widescreen PAL tv's. Text is always hard to read with the currently available skins. This skin could be an excelent solution for them, if it will run well on the XBOX!

reddragon220 Wrote:1) What do you not like about Lithium's interface?

I don't like that the scroll bars are shorter than the vertical content area. It's an unexpected visual that at first made me wonder if it was actually a scroll bar.

reddragon220 Wrote::
1) What do you not like about Lithium's interface?

In the TVSHOWS screen, on the fanart view, it seems to take a while to load the fanart. Thats my only complaint.

PS I registered on the forums just to post, cos I thought you deserved feedback.

Luke

DaveHope Wrote:I love Lithium, it's certainly up there with Rapier (or will be when it's done).

In terms of what I don't like, I'm not keen on the darker columns for episode number and watched status. There needs to be some differentiation, but not keen on the columns. Perhaps changing the color / size of the episode number and ditching the column might look better? Then maybe a subtle tick / green light for watched state?

I definitely agree that the watched tick could be implemented much better on the episodes screen. Right now my best idea is to remove the watched check column, put the checks behind the episode number, and lower the opacity but I'll keep on thinking about it right now. While the dark columns do take up alot of space it does serve the purpose of guiding the eye, I tried it without and it just make the screen a bit appear to be more jumbled.

Bram77 Wrote:1) I don't like that it's so memory consuming (obviously). I think it should be a extremely light weight skins. Especially since it's only a few MB's in total size.
2) The skin is hard to compare to others since the approach is different. There are quite a lot of people I know still using small, non-widescreen PAL tv's. Text is always hard to read with the currently available skins. This skin could be an excelent solution for them, if it will run well on the XBOX!

Just because I don't have so many graphical assets (yet) doesn't mean I can't be doing a bit of magic behind the scenes in the code! But right now since the skins in alpha my first goal is to skin all of the windows. Right now the code is pretty much a mess, in the beta I'll begin optimization and hopefully with the help of some xbox users we'll hit that goal performance-wise.

paularms Wrote:I don't like that the scroll bars are shorter than the vertical content area. It's an unexpected visual that at first made me wonder if it was actually a scroll bar.

I'll take care of that.

birdie101 Wrote:In the TVSHOWS screen, on the fanart view, it seems to take a while to load the fanart. Thats my only complaint.

PS I registered on the forums just to post, cos I thought you deserved feedback.

Luke

Thanks for registering just to give feedback! That really means alot. Fanart view is a bit of a drag on the system because of all the background images being loaded at the same time. I'll see what I can do to speed up the process.

Here's the latest mockup that I've been playing with in photoshop. I've started toying around with the idea of the top bar containing static XBMC alerts & information while the bottom bar contains the dynamic information related to the user's media.

Looking for help!
Are you an artist or coder looking to work on a skin? Post or send me a pm! Lithium is still in a very early stage and could be greatly influenced by your work! Only the very basics have been set in stone and Lithium is still looking for its visual identity.