[ZIOLele]

If you need a tester on linux... just drop me a line :-D

[MindTooth]

Like the concept a lot, though all lowercase is not for my liking.

[Jeroen]

Hey everyone,

So even though my head is about to explode (caught a bad cold) I managed to come up with an idea that I think would be cool. Or maybe it will go nowhere, we'll just have to see.

One feature (well, feature is a big word maybe, more like just a nice touch) in reFocus is that there will be a multi-language greeting on logging in and/or starting up, and during startup random backdrops will be shown depending on the time of day.

I know, you're not going to be spending a whole lot of time in those screens, but I thought it would be cool either way.

There will be different pictures for morning, afternoon and evening.

I have already included a couple of nice ones, but I was thinking maybe there are some talented photographers around here willing to let their pictures be included on release.

So, if you are interested send me a link to your picture(s)

Three rules:

1. The photo has to be made by you, no edits of other people's pictures either.
2. Your photo should symbolize either morning, afternoon or evening. This doesn't have to be a scenery picture of a sunset or something. It could be anything really, as long as it symbolizes a time of day. Be creative But of course a picture of your country/city/town during either time of day would be cool too
3. It needs to be good quality (hard to define I know)

You would of course be fully credited.

Greetings,
Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Moving along, as you may have noticed, the official nightly builds have started to be released as of yesterday.
As said before, this means a release of reFocus is close.

I will be pushing for a release this weekend, however I cannot give a 100% guarantee. I still have some things to fix, and I feel like crap atm. So, hopefully I'll recover in the upcoming days and I will be able to finish and release.

If I fail however, the release will come in the days after the weekend, or possibly in that weekend. Not any later. That's a promise.

Also, this week reFocus will be making an appearance at LinuxTag where Team-XBMC is represented. Coverage on LinuxTag will be posted on xbmc.org in the next couple of days.

I know... boo! boo! for not releasing publicly at the same time, but this came up as an opportunity, but I really want to finish up some things before going public.

Greetings,
Jeroen

[Avigrace]

Looking at the work you have posted I am very much looking forward to your release, you have a great eye for design and it looks like it will perform nicely on lower end hardware like Asrocks.
That said, get well and release it when you are ready.

[Bram77]

Looking forward to this skin!! I still think Focus is one of the best skins created for XBMC.

[Handa]

Will it be possible to add format buttons (720p, 1080p etc) to the poster / list librarymode shown in the screenshots?

Looks amazingly good.

[theophile]

Hey everyone,

So even though my head is about to explode (caught a bad cold) I managed to come up with an idea that I think would be cool. Or maybe it will go nowhere, we'll just have to see.

One feature (well, feature is a big word maybe, more like just a nice touch) in reFocus is that there will be a multi-language greeting on logging in and/or starting up, and during startup random backdrops will be shown depending on the time of day.

I know, you're not going to be spending a whole lot of time in those screens, but I thought it would be cool either way.

There will be different pictures for morning, afternoon and evening.

I have already included a couple of nice ones, but I was thinking maybe there are some talented photographers around here willing to let their pictures be included on release.

So, if you are interested send me a link to your picture(s)

Three rules:

1. The photo has to be made by you, no edits of other people's pictures either.
2. Your photo should symbolize either morning, afternoon or evening. This doesn't have to be a scenery picture of a sunset or something. It could be anything really, as long as it symbolizes a time of day. Be creative But of course a picture of your country/city/town during either time of day would be cool too
3. It needs to be good quality (hard to define I know)

You would of course be fully credited.

Greetings,
Jeroen

Neato! I'm an amateur photographer so this appeals to me. I have a few shots you can look at that might work well for this idea.

These would probably be good for evening:


If you see anything else you like in the photostream, let me know. I can get you any resolution you need if there's anything you find suitable.

Looking forward to this skin!

[Jeroen]

Will it be possible to add format buttons (720p, 1080p etc) to the poster / list librarymode shown in the screenshots?

Looks amazingly good.

Yes, those have been added in the meantime.

Neato! I'm an amateur photographer so this appeals to me. I have a few shots you can look at that might work well for this idea.

If you see anything else you like in the photostream, let me know. I can get you any resolution you need if there's anything you find suitable.

Looking forward to this skin!

Impressive, those look awesome Definitely would like to use them.
I'll take a look in your photostream too. I'll get back to you.

Thanks

[aart]

Great to see you're back in the game. It's looking great so far!

[Jeroen]

Thanks Aart, in my mind I was never out of it

Preview of the now playing screen. I'm not completely sure about it though. Tried several things and this is what I felt most comfortable with so far.
Here you see the fanart and visualization mixed. You can choose whether to see the fanart, the visualization or both mixed though.

[D0nR0s4]

Great, looks nice and clean and goes nicely with the rest of the skin.

[xbs08]

reFocus just gets better and better
Tks for all your work Jeroen!

I wonder how reFocus will perform on a low power system?! Like revo single core.

[Jeroen]

reFocus just gets better and better
Tks for all your work Jeroen!

I wonder how reFocus will perform on a low power system?! Like revo single core.

I have no idea to be honest, as I don't really have a good idea about how the performance of that kind of system is. I imagine and hope it will be comparable with most skins out there.

The textures are quite a bit larger than in Focus to keep as much quality on bigger screens.
That said a lot of the textures are re-used in a lot of places, and there is room for more optimization in that area. The amount of textures isn't that big either.

Development and testing of reFocus is done on a E6750 Core2Duo with 6GB RAM and used on an htpc with a T6500 Core2Duo with 2GB RAM

I guess I can also give it a try on my laptop from work which is an HP elitebook with a 1.6Ghz Core2Duo and low-end graphics card. Still no single core, but closer

[iainmacleod]

Use SpinRite to fix the drive, it cost $80 - but it is what professional companies use for hard drive recovery.

Not only is is a recovery tool, it also functions in a maintenance capacity.