[RELEASE] Alaska Revisited (not 100% Eden compatible)

PantsOnFire Wrote:My impressions of this skin.

Really nice overall, the nicest change for me was the font(s), much much nicer with these new ones. The media Info screens are lovely. Quite quick too. Love the icons in the settings screen. Makes me almost wish we could use them on the homescreen. The red colour is perfect with the white/grey. Ive found lately that I like xbmc just to be the hub, neutral, limited amounts of art on display (seems to be what this skin is all about). -(an argument for allowing the icons to be homescreen icons perhaps)?

A few thoughts/criticisms:

1) I like to browse music by files, always have, probably always will, I'm the master of organising my music. Is it possible to make the MUSIC homepage link take you to music files mode? (by the way, love the party mode dropdown/submenu idea, much needed IMO!)- quick, easy access to a variety of tunes.

Simply change line 79 of the Includes_HomeDefault.xml to <onclick>ActivateWindow(MusicFiles)</onclick>

2) Browsing music/pictures in the grid. Its just my opinion, but for me, the items which are un-selected just look a bit too washed-out. I think most of the skin is elegant and subtle, I think this viewmode lets it down a touch. Would it be against the design ethos to have them all in focus? (full colour), and to indicate the highlighted item, just increase its size (as in posterview).

I like it but you can do whatever suits you.

3) Maybe this is too drastic a change, but I cant see any way to remove Programs entirely from the homescreen. That would be good. I dont use xbmc for tv library either, (just movies). -wish I could remove homescreen items basically.

It takes a lot of code to do that for the main style home in Alaska and one of the things I wanted to do with Revisited was keep the code down so I could run it on my Xbox as well.

4) Video OSD is good enough, always appreciated the 'Time ending' detail of Aeon/Mediastream though, miss that. (so and so video will end at...)

It's still there on the OSD Info screen.

5) Updating the homepage section images. Quite a hiccup caused by loading them all in at once (asrock 330). Would it be less clunky to load on 1 by 1? ie:
music ---> movies ---> videos
from left to right kinda thing. Maybe the menus items themselves could pulse a bit as if receiving new life (think xbox 360 menu items). I think this would be good.. as I think perhaps the homescreen is too static/bare?

Take a look at Alaska's home code if you want to change the time per image as that's the only way to get it staggered but it means the gaps increase and they eventually catch up and overtake each other. Or you could try resizing the images used as they don't need to be fullscreen size.

6) Maybe it could do with a powerdown/favourites area at the bottomleft (like Xperience). (i guess it might conflict with the whole up and down scroll on the icons tho).

They'll get added to the submenus some when.

7) Could the up-down (sub-menu?) item/texts be made to visibly scroll instead of just change from one to the other? Might look nicer.

Tried this before with Alaska but could only get the submenu items scrolling and not the main labels as they were separate.

8) Browsing images in files layout. Maybe the display size of the image preview is in a nice proportion to the rest of the screen, but if think it should be bigger. I know this will vary from user to user, but if you take the recommended viewing distance (to which I think I adhere); I sit 6 feet away from the 40" screen and I find the images too small to be satisfying to glance at.

Transitions in this viewtype, I think imageviewing is not given enough attention by xbmc in general. I recently discovered Moovida and their approach to transitions was beautiful. If youve not seen it, do check it out, it makes viewing the images much more enjoyable (even for such simple transitions).

example (at about 3mins in):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrAslOCLYwA

Maybe the files viewtype (for pictures) could shuffle the images off to the left as you scroll down, replacing with the new image. (imagine it fading out as it moves away). I think it could look nice/subtle.

You can see the image in the background as well.

9) There's no 'play disc' menu item when you have a CD/DVD/BD in the drive.

Scroll down the Video menus.

10) Seems to be no onscreen keyboard or audio settings menu (latter, when accessed from the video OSD). -just noticed there are a few notification box graphics parts not present in this skin, I guess these are still to be done.

Haven't needed to use them myself yet so they're not done.

11) Problem when moving around menus? left left, right right (on settings or homescreen), highlight seems to double-back on itself? Not sure how to describe (anyone else see this?)

It's an animation thing.

12) Rocky 6 failed to add to the database so I selected SetContent to add it using imdb instead of themoviedb... black screen followed by crash, log:
http://pastebin.com/ncGEbdXd

Again - not needed, not done.

13) NowPlaying details, any plans to add duration (elapsed/total) infos?
(I currently get some text overlapping issues in my nowplaying area (artist overlaps song title), just to say.

No, and you can't be using a newer SVN XBMC build.

Hitcher this skin is awesome/


One quick quesiton/advsie.

I am running my xbmc on an ASrock ION 330 with 4GB ram. I am having the problem of the fanart slowing down the scrolling. Since i dont want to lose the fanart, i read above that you asked him to resize the images. How do i go about in doing that? Is there an easy way i can do this for all my movies/tv shows? to have a smooth interface like yours?

PS: how do i get the shutdown menu on my asrock? what key?

Thanks a lot in advance, and keep up the good work. This is the greatest skin i have ever seen.

Hi. I have found the problem with adding or modifying sources of the library. The XBMC crash. Workaround is to change skin to other one, make a changes and than switch back to alaska.

rossoneri711 Wrote:Hitcher this skin is awesome/


One quick quesiton/advsie.

I am running my xbmc on an ASrock ION 330 with 4GB ram. I am having the problem of the fanart slowing down the scrolling. Since i dont want to lose the fanart, i read above that you asked him to resize the images. How do i go about in doing that? Is there an easy way i can do this for all my movies/tv shows? to have a smooth interface like yours?

PS: how do i get the shutdown menu on my asrock? what key?

Thanks a lot in advance, and keep up the good work. This is the greatest skin i have ever seen.

Hi, I have ASRock 330HT too Anyway multiple image resizer is the utility category you have to look for. For example pixResizer or Multiple Image Resizer .NET. The resolution of the Alaskas's backdrops is 640x360 pixels in compare with 1080 backdrops 1920x1080.

If you press the keyboard key S you get into the menu with SHUTDOWN. Just map the S key on your remote button.

BrAtKo Wrote:Hi, I have ASRock 330HT too Anyway multiple image resizer is the utility category you have to look for. For example pixResizer or Multiple Image Resizer .NET. The resolution of the Alaskas's backdrops is 640x360 pixels in compare with 1080 backdrops 1920x1080.

If you press the keyboard key S you get into the menu with SHUTDOWN. Just map the S key on your remote button.

Thanks for the help, i will give it a go. What size do you resize your images? Are these the .tbn files located in the xbmc folder? 1280x720? Do you have the same problem? Also can you point me a source on how to map my remote?

Thanks in advance

rossoneri711 Wrote:Thanks for the help, i will give it a go. What size do you resize your images? Are these the .tbn files located in the xbmc folder? 1280x720? Do you have the same problem? Also can you point me a source on how to map my remote?

Thanks in advance

From the zip, the folder MCE Remote is the solution for remapping, it is needed to understand how it works.

About resizing I meant the backdrops sets (XBMC\skin\Alaska Revisited\media\backdrops\) on the home screen each of menu (TV Shows, Pictures...), The recommended size (resolution is important not so bytes) I wrote you already. The default backdrops are ok, but you wrote you set up your own set which is changing repeately on home screen and slow down the XBMC.

BrAtKo Wrote:From the zip, the folder MCE Remote is the solution for remapping, it is needed to understand how it works.

About resizing I meant the backdrops sets (XBMC\skin\Alaska Revisited\media\backdrops\) on the home screen each of menu (TV Shows, Pictures...), The recommended size (resolution is important not so bytes) I wrote you already. The default backdrops are ok, but you wrote you set up your own set which is changing repeately on home screen and slow down the XBMC.

Oh sorry i wasnt clear on the images. What i mean to say is how do i make fanart faster? Thats whats slowing down.

rossoneri711 Wrote:Oh sorry i wasnt clear on the images. What i mean to say is how do i make fanart faster? Thats whats slowing down.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=70313

Hitcher Wrote:
3) Maybe this is too drastic a change, but I cant see any way to remove Programs entirely from the homescreen. That would be good. I dont use xbmc for tv library either, (just movies). -wish I could remove homescreen items basically.

It takes a lot of code to do that for the main style home in Alaska and one of the things I wanted to do with Revisited was keep the code down so I could run it on my Xbox as well.
[/i][/COLOR]

Hitcher: I wanted to ask you how well it runs on the XBOX as Im still using the XBOX as my media centre. Any issues or does it run quite easily on the XBOX, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Downloaded the RAR twice, but when I extract it, it says the file "media/filter.png" is corrupted. Therefore, it won't extract that file, and the skin is broken.
I tried to force it to extract, but the image is very broken and unusable. Guess you uploaded a broken version?
(Downloaded the file from the SVN though, but for other users it can be a problem)

edit: tried the skin, but it seems that the TV banner view is broken. I see no images when I select this view.