[reksveks]

MetroAlaska
Current Designs

Sorry for the poor quality gif but otherwise it wasn't working, an more high quality animation can be found below Higher Quality Gif on dA

Would like some ideas in terms of the design and whether it is actually creatable. My first question to you guys is whether instead of having a very rounded case/poster so i have a square case/poster to go with the clean design. Album can be found here.

I have recently uploaded more views for the music library, please take a look if you can't be bothered, don't worry i have put a couple below this sentence.

Wall View when Album is selected

Album view of an Artist

There is a profile view in the album but i don't know how useful it would be in real life

[Hitcher]

Nice, I like it.

[reksveks]

That actually means quite a bit to me, nice to get some encouragement

[mortstar]

Looks really nice.

[starcitysecrets]

sweet, kinda reminds me of GAIA09 style

[Stranger]

I think Alaska is pretty damn metro already, and yet this mock up is less metro. I'm a huge fan of Microsoft's metro design, from Zune to phone 7. It's clearly inspired refocus and has become a huge source of inspiration for me. I have a lot of research and think it's necessary to post a selection in interest of a better design (Includes Rainmeter's Metro inspired Omnimo). Also below are links to video development of a great phone 7 app for xbmc by Dstruktiv1. It is yet to be released, but is the most apparent evidence of xbmc yearning for more metro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOKF2cRVaW8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymnD-yOAQ_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EhJ73AKvXM

[reksveks]

Thanks for the positive comments and the ideas Stranger, i think i will redesign the menu and the cases in order to make it cleaner. Might actually remove the black bar and just have a dark text.

Do you know if Dstruktiv1 is making a skin for XBMC because those videos were awesome, ps i guess your youtube username is DockStranger ?

[Stranger]

Do you know if Dstruktiv1 is making a skin for XBMC because those videos were awesome, ps i guess your youtube username is DockStranger ?

I doubt it and yes that is my username. I look forward to following this thread and seeing more of your ideas.

[MaDDoGo]

I think this image is amazing and not too different from the mockups....



PS: Ooops, I meant the Eureka one... (and maybe the daft punk's one for music...)

[reksveks]

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

[Stranger]

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?

[reksveks]

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.

[sweat]

I love it!

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

[reksveks]

Current Designs

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

[D0nR0s4]

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.