[RELEASE] reFocus 0.9.5

Crashes are due to a bug in SVN that others skins haven't been hitting.

It's fixed in r31196.

Great work as per usual Jeroen - clean and elegant. One thing I found a bit odd was you couldn't go right off the menu items on the homepage. Perhaps I'm too used to confluence, but this seemed a natural thing for me to do.

EDIT: Another issue: Settings.xml doesn't exist, or is just black. Might be good to activate window elsewhere should you not want it as those coming from other skins might have issues.

Cheers,
Jonathan

So, so beautiful. Very tasteful, clean, and elegant. Thank you sir.

matt1697 Wrote:I presume I cannot use this with the latest Official XBMC Live build? Without all the new addon stuff. Having troubles updating it.

Could I just change the addon.xml to whatever it was before the change?

I forgot to include the "old" skin.xml that is used in older versions of xbmc. I'll put that in shortly. That may solve it for you, but yeah a recent build is definitely recommended.

MaDDoGo Wrote:Your work is awesome.
I have a question: What weather fanart do we need to download?

And I have found a bug:
...

Link to the weather fanart is in the topic start. That bug is a known issue.

harry3001 Wrote:loving the skin!
the intial view for movies is a bit confusing - i thought the xbmc had crashed the first couple of times i went into it, until i hit right and realised it was the full screen fanart view...!

The initial view is not something I control. The way it works in xbmc is that every viewtype gets a "universal" name. So, for instance "list" or "icons". This name is the same in every skin. So that when you use the listview in let's say Confluence and then apply reFocus, it will look what viewtype in reFocus is the equivalent and go to that first.

Quote:a pop up came up saying and add-on had been updated, but couldn't read it because the clock was in the way.

Which screen were you in at the time? Because the clock should hide when a notification comes up.

Quote:speaking of the clock, it seems a bit wierd the way it looks different (better imo) when you actually go into movies/tv.

Different from? The homescreen?

Quote:not keen on the pressing left to go back to the main menu after having clicked something - is there a way to have it recognise the back button to do that?

Unfortunately not.

Quote:similar thing for when you're in in the library and hit back, i'm used to it taking you to the home screen, and if i want to see the order by genre/year etc screen, using ".." to get there...

This is intended, if you want to go straight back to the homescreen use escape.

Quote:just read all that back and realised it sounds kinda negative, it's not meant to
be - reFocus just became my default skin!

No worries

nitio Wrote:I'm absolutely amazed! It's beautiful Jeroen!

I feel the changes from one fanart to another in the Gallery view isn't as snappy as the rest of the skin but I've been living with Alaska not being snappy either

Yes that view is probably the hardest on resources. It's really smooth for me, but of course systems vary.

shahid Wrote:Great looking skin!
Silly question-when i change to the skin in settings; it say the skin is not compatible (ver 2.10 rqd.)?
Assistance please.

Probably related to the first issue in this reply.

kryptonyte Wrote:The only recommendation I have is possibly transitioning the fanart slideshow or extending the transition time if there is a fade.

There is a fade on the transition which should be quite noticeable. I'll look into extending it a bit.

Quote:Also a texture to diffuse fanart on the home menu would be nice as it can be overwhelming on the eyes.

I'm not to keen on diffuses but I'll consider an option for it.

ekim232 Wrote:I got to say I disagree with everyone. This skin is sooo basic it feels like I just modded my xbox. Even PM3 has better features and more flexability. The views are worthless to anyone with a collection greater than 100.

I am not surpised though, all skins are now catered to low end systems and people who want no eye candy or design. I will be the one to say it that I am pretty much asleep after putting this on my 65" inch 1080p.

What this comes down to is just a matter of taste. I am fine with this skin not being "your cup of tea" But to say this skin is catered to people who do not want eye candy or design is quite unfounded.

Design is not a matter of complexity or cramping loads of textures, labels and unreadable icons on screen. I try to put a lot of thought into what's supposed to be on screen at any given moment, which imo has a lot to do with design. Buzzwords would be KISS and form follows function instead of the other way.

I can give you countless examples of what's wrong from a design standpoint in the the skins you prefer. But I won't, instead I'm just happy there's different skins for people with different tastes/priorities.

My design philosophy is that the user's media is what comes first. No sense in having blocks of tiny text to cramp in everything you can. After all, at the end of the day I am using a media center, not a screenshot generator.

jmarshall Wrote:Crashes are due to a bug in SVN that others skins haven't been hitting.

It's fixed in r31196.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Quote:Great work as per usual Jeroen - clean and elegant. One thing I found a bit odd was you couldn't go right off the menu items on the homepage. Perhaps I'm too used to confluence, but this seemed a natural thing for me to do.

At the time I couldn't figure out a way to do that. But I think I'll leave it.

Quote:EDIT: Another issue: Settings.xml doesn't exist, or is just black. Might be good to activate window elsewhere should you not want it as those coming from other skins might have issues.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Hm, that's a good point. I was thinking about having a settings.xml anyway and provide a skin setting that makes the settings entry in the homescreen to go to that instead of using the submenu.

ltmon Wrote:Is a crashlog useful to you Jeroen, or is it just best to wait for XBMC builds to smooth out a bit?

I can't do much with a crashlog. This has been developed on very recent builds of XBMC so it's best to let XBMC smooth out. Hopefully jmarshall's advice will solve this for you.

First of all, it was worth the wait! Beautiful skin Jeroen. That shade of blue just seems to go with every colour doesn't it?

Anyway, I've had a quick play with it and noticed a couple of things.

First a couple of bugs.

The screensaver seems to show your white info bar. I didn't let it go to screensaver naturally, but did a screensaver preview and there's a big white bar across the bottom.

In TV view, I opened my episodes of Life and the view seemed to be a bit screwed. I think this may have been because it wasn't in a "season" folder? I'll get you more info on this if you're not already aware of it, I know this is a pretty crappy bug report as it stands.

And one little feature I'm hoping for:

It would be great if the home screen showed the album art and song like a lot of skins do. Also, is there a way to view the music visualizations? I couldn't find a way.

nickritus Wrote:The screensaver seems to show your white info bar. I didn't let it go to screensaver naturally, but did a screensaver preview and there's a big white bar across the bottom.

Interesting, which screensaver did you use? I just checked with "dim" and "slideshow" but I couldn't reproduce. By info bar do you mean the one that is shown for the OSD and plot information in certain views?

Quote:In TV view, I opened my episodes of Life and the view seemed to be a bit screwed. I think this may have been because it wasn't in a "season" folder? I'll get you more info on this if you're not already aware of it, I know this is a pretty crappy bug report as it stands.

I presume it's related to this:

Quote:known issues
On rare occasions the listview screws up (the movie list will be on the left side of the screen behind a poster). To fix simply use the menu to re-apply listview and all should be good again. This usually happens when you start reFocus after having loaded up a different skin. This one is tricky to solve, needs time and thinking through.

I hate that bug, I really need some time to find a solution for it.

Quote:And one little feature I'm hoping for:

It would be great if the home screen showed the album art and song like a lot of skins do. Also, is there a way to view the music visualizations? I couldn't find a way.

I chose to have this as contextual information in the home menu itself. Previous attempts to do this the "traditional way" didn't look right to me. I might think of a way to incorporate the album art, but it's no given.

Quote:Also, is there a way to view the music visualizations? I couldn't find a way.

If you're talking about in the homescreen, there is none currently. Only in the now playing screen.

For the people that get an "incompatible skin" error when trying to apply the skin, please put this file in the root of the reFocus folder:

http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-focus/down...e=skin.xml

Please understand though that this skin was intended for xbmc skin engine v2.11.