[Mockup] MetroAlaska

reksveks Wrote:I have no idea about the coding yet, but is it possible to create a "profile page" like the daft punk one, with different sections for the top played tracks and the albums.

If so i probably will do something similar.



Prefer the menu barless

I imagine you can create something similar with the bio info people have for their artists as well as some library stats. But whats the point? Most music library's are far too broad to expect user's and scrapers to find fanart and bio's for every artist. I think I have over 6000 artists in my music library, I have never imported it into xbmc because I know it will be impossible to get artist thumbs for even half the artists and most skins rely on artist thumbs. Look at the actual Zune library, 3 columns one for Artists, one for albums and one for songs. Another great example is Windows media center's music section, they nailed it. XBMC needs an iPod experience from the sofa, some skins while using file views to navigate music do get pretty close. The only thing a music section should rely on is album art. Of course this all a matter of opinion.

Instead of artists thumbs would it be possible to preview album art from the artists your navigating through? Could you even display a selection of album artwork while browsing artists within a library? I'm not sure if this would be a big library change or just a script (all you would be doing is replacing artist thumbs with album artwork), would be interesting to hear skinner's views on music librarys.



The menu without bar is great!
Have you done any font test's?

Stranger Wrote:I imagine you can create something similar with the bio info people have for their artists as well as some library stats. But whats the point? Most music library's are far too broad to expect user's and scrapers to find fanart and bio's for every artist. I think I have over 6000 artists in my music library, I have never imported it into xbmc because I know it will be impossible to get artist thumbs for even half the artists and most skins rely on artist thumbs. Look at the actual Zune library, 3 columns one for Artists, one for albums and one for songs. Another great example is Windows media center's music section, they nailed it. XBMC needs an iPod experience from the sofa, some skins while using file views to navigate music do get pretty close. The only thing a music section should rely on is album art. Of course this all a matter of opinion.

The menu without bar is great!
Have you done any font test's?

You have raised some good points on the artist profile, let alone getting it correct albums thumbnail for my albums so getting a correct profile for the entire music library will be nearly impossible; also the Windows Media Centre music library is pretty much spot on how it should look.

I love it!

I'm a huge fan of alaska, but this looks uuhm... more abstract or something.
Way cooler anyway...

Sorry for the poor quality gif but otherwise it wasn't working, an more high quality animation can be found below
higher quality gif

Ok, we definitely need a possibility to show track lists of albums without leaving album view.

But amazing work so far, I love the design, even though I'm not sure if all is possible.

Oh and btw, how come everyone seems to like those overlaid 5.1 and dts icons? I don't know why but I really really dislike them, they kinda destroy the clean look of this skin.

D0nR0sa Wrote:Oh and btw, how come everyone seems to like those overlaid 5.1 and dts icons? I don't know why but I really really dislike them, they kinda destroy the clean look of this skin.

I do like the overlaid sound icons but I agree they are not really needed. I don't understand why users need so many media flags in library views (this isn't a criticism of your concept work). I think technical media flags belong in the info pages, like they would be on the BACK of a DVD cover. Rating, Source, studio and maybe resolution are necessary. I guess it's because there are a lack of user's who use the info page. I think I've spoken about this in another thread. I constantly use the info screens. I think a poll would be a good idea for this topic.

Edit: This got me thinking about info view's and how much I love Aeon's info view. It looks like a full DVD cover, as in front and back (I like to think that was it's inspiration) Such a tangent but aeon is so inspired, the font choices are completely reminiscent of traditional movie poster's

A pretty simple and near perfect take on artist thumbs from Boxee

For Your Information Segue UI Light is the font used by Microsoft

Fraincs Wrote:For Your Information Segue UI Light is the font used by Microsoft

?

The one used currently in most of my text according to my knowledge is the Zune version Zegoe UI Light, i will hopefully find an "open" version font that looks as good if i think Microsoft will give me grief.

I have kinda created a list view for the artist, very simple bordering on lazy but i sort of like but kinda having problems on what choosing an arstist leads me on to.
The wall view will have basically have the artist thumbnails in a box but made black and white and lighten with the name in black and when a mouse is hovered over a particular box the text will dissappear and the thumbnail will go back to its original state.