[BETA] Shade - A new skin for XBMC

There are some bugs with the new update, regarding the home screen.

On my display the tv episodes are blank writing, but they do show up at the bottom.

The white box at the bottom, should really be something netural to the skin, rather than just plain white, as it does not look very good in my view.

On the home view, you have movie and tv statics, but I cannot see the point of having the system statics there?

This would be better if you had the music stats in place. I personally think it would make it more uniform.

The featured movie, TV show, or music, should change every so often, or at least when you log in, I have had the same movie every time I have booted up.

I must confess I am not a massive fan of the information display, I think in some respects it could be tweaked a bit more to make it look more appealing, but thankfully this is a checkable option in skin settings, so it falls to personal preference.

I think something smaller and better presentation would look good, but I have just turned off the reccently added, and I am back to the view that I love so much, e.g icons at the top, and nothing else, more simplified.

I still feel however that removing the blackness at the top, and having a clear bar with the icons at the top, and removing the the blackness for 3/4 of the screen would look a lot better than it currently does.

I know this is called shade, but if you add a custom piece of artwork, you can only see a small strip clearly, I'm not sure if you have done it this way to stop screen burn on plasma TVs but if you can easily do so, try removing the top and bottom blackness, and see what you think.

Regards

Mark

MarkTaunton Wrote:There are some bugs with the new update, regarding the home screen.

On my display the tv episodes are blank writing, but they do show up at the bottom.

The white box at the bottom, should really be something netural to the skin, rather than just plain white, as it does not look very good in my view.

On the home view, you have movie and tv statics, but I cannot see the point of having the system statics there?

This would be better if you had the music stats in place. I personally think it would make it more uniform.

The featured movie, TV show, or music, should change every so often, or at least when you log in, I have had the same movie every time I have booted up.

I must confess I am not a massive fan of the information display, I think in some respects it could be tweaked a bit more to make it look more appealing, but thankfully this is a checkable option in skin settings, so it falls to personal preference.

I think something smaller and better presentation would look good, but I have just turned off the reccently added, and I am back to the view that I love so much, e.g icons at the top, and nothing else, more simplified.

I still feel however that removing the blackness at the top, and having a clear bar with the icons at the top, and removing the the blackness for 3/4 of the screen would look a lot better than it currently does.

I know this is called shade, but if you add a custom piece of artwork, you can only see a small strip clearly, I'm not sure if you have done it this way to stop screen burn on plasma TVs but if you can easily do so, try removing the top and bottom blackness, and see what you think.

Regards

Mark

Thanks for all your comments Mark.

Can you take a screenshot of the tv issue, it works fine for me.

The white box is fadeable under skin settings.

System Stats are there b/c I did them before I had music stats working. Do you think it should be music instead?

The featured movie is a hack job b/c I couldnt come up with a better way to do it. What it does it take the 8th most recent item and puts it there. The reason yours hasnt changed is b/c you havent added anything.
(IF ANYONE KNOWS A BETTER WAY TO DO THIS, PLEASE TELL ME)

Are you suggesting an option that turns off everything except the icons at the top?

I deffinatly think that it should be music on the home page, it would be dare I say it more uniform with movies and tv episodes.

If for example you had the option of turning off the blackness I personally would turn it off.

You have a fantastic skin here, and is currently my main skin, but I am torn between Shade and also Xperience as I do love the fun factor of Xperience, but I love the crispness and no nonsense of Shade.

Regards

Mark

MarkTaunton Wrote:I deffinatly think that it should be music on the home page, it would be dare I say it more uniform with movies and tv episodes.

If for example you had the option of turning off the blackness I personally would turn it off.

You have a fantastic skin here, and is currently my main skin, but I am torn between Shade and also Xperience as I do love the fun factor of Xperience, but I love the crispness and no nonsense of Shade.

Regards

Mark

I will change it to music and will look into adding the option to turn everything off.

Thanks for your kind words.

Going back to the home view.

You have just watched for movies, but not for music or TV or future music.

The movies is truncated so I love you Phillip, instead of I love you Phillip Morris, having the full title of the movie would be better

And having just added would be reasonably good as well.

I am looking at Shade on a 37 inch TV and there is still plenty of space left over at the home page, so maybe having the stats at the bottom of the page would be good.

My featured movies has updated for some reason, yeah because I updated my movies to add Date Night, and now showing Aladdin.

You have featured and then recently added, it might be nice to have movie or episode so shows Featured Movie or Featured Episode.

Hopefully it does not take too much work so you can see what I mean.

Regards

Mark

Home screen with all images turned off.



Images turned off and alternate menu turned on.



Fixed extrathumbs on poster view 2.

Just downloaded now, but how do I turn off the images like the first picture? I have gone through the options but cannot find a way of doing this?

Hey igotdvds, just wondering where you found the camera with cool colours wallpaper. Can you give us a link please.

MarkTaunton Wrote:Just downloaded now, but how do I turn off the images like the first picture? I have gone through the options but cannot find a way of doing this?

I havent uploaded the new version yet. Soon.

kulprit Wrote:Hey igotdvds, just wondering where you found the camera with cool colours wallpaper. Can you give us a link please.

I dont remember, grab it from the skin folder if you are a beta tester, if not, it will be out soon enough.

Lovely skin. Been trying it out for the last couple of hours.

My biggest problem so far is when I'm navigating to and from the Home screen. The transition has no smoothness and it also takes about 2 seconds. When in 'Movies' and returning to 'Home' (pressing esc) I see the Video-backdrop for about 1-2 secs before being returned to the Home screen.

Also I couldn't find an option for changing backgrounds.

- when at the home screen, at the top right corner there's a "10..."
What's the significance of this?

Great, great skin. (new default)