[rlaursen]

Hello,
I have been trying to get custom menu items on my amber skin for a while now and have got part of it working but am stuck on the submenu item part. I followed the instructions below and was able to customize my confluence mod skin the way i want and get the favorites to transfer to my amber skin and link those menu items to the correct link. For example, my amber skin now has HD Movies as a menu item linked to hackermils 1080P but I would like to have hackermil as submenu item 1 so I can add other hd items under that main category. I think I am just missing the correct favourites.xml code to add sub menus but have no idea what to put. Any help would be greatly appreciated! thanks guys

http://www.xunitytalk.com/archive/index.php/t-4208.html

[rlaursen]

Hello,
I have been trying to get custom menu items on my amber skin for a while now and have got part of it working but am stuck on the submenu item part. I followed the instructions below and was able to customize my confluence mod skin the way i want and get the favorites to transfer to my amber skin and link those menu items to the correct link. For example, my amber skin now has HD Movies as a menu item linked to hackermils 1080P but I would like to have hackermil as submenu item 1 so I can add other hd items under that main category. I think I am just missing the correct favourites.xml code to add sub menus but have no idea what to put. Any help would be greatly appreciated! thanks guys

http://www.xunitytalk.com/archive/index.php/t-4208.html

I am looking to make other menu items act just like the default favorites menu item. When I go to favorites it shows a shelf of all my custom entries. Is there is a way to duplicate and change the name of the favorites menu item? I would like HD Movies menu item then once selected the shelf pops up with my favourites for that category.

[manoj]

Please can any one tell how to call any one installed app through skinning in amber.

for example when i will click on weather button then it should open my another installed app like myfirstapp

Please Reply...........

[denz]

Have a look at PVR related thread there I have mentioned few things about adding sub-menus to live tv so you should be able to follow and add sub menu items for other home items things if you haven't already figured it out.

[Gamblor]

+1 for custom sub menus. I love this skin, it's clean and runs fast on my atom/ion based media PC. What would make it perfect for me would be the ability to add custom sub menus from the ui. I've tinkered with doing it manually with some success. I've tried running ace or aeon mq and while they both have this feature my system becomes too slow and I find most of the other options and view types to be messy. Is it something that you are planning to add in the future?

Thanks for the great work and awesome skin.

[tinnyskillz]

i hope this feature is included in the next update (if there is one).

[kizzer31]

see the post you made lenz but still not clear for me although im sure its simple to do for a noob like me would be complicated hopefully a tutorial can be created of how this is done thank you

[denz]

I will give a more detailed example first step is to open Includes.xml file that is located in skin.amber/1080i. You can use wordpad but notepad ++ is better for editing xml files.

First part is to add a menu to the home part and all the home menus are found underneath this section

<include name="Home.Main.Menu.Items">

Then lets use Custom3 as our base first copy it and paste it.

<item id="23" description="Custom3">
<visible>!IsEmpty(Skin.String(CustomHome.3.Path))</visible>
<label>$INFO[Skin.String(CustomHome.3.Label)]</label>
<thumb fallback="special://skin/backgrounds/default/default.jpg">$INFO[Skin.String(CustomHome.3.Background)]</thumb>
<onclick>$INFO[Skin.String(CustomHome.3.Path)]</onclick>
</item>

Lets make changes to this item

We need to change the id to something that has not been used before and as you can see I simplified the item removed visible tag and then you need to give action of what should that menu do in this example a notification pops up.

<item id="45" description="MyMenu1">
<label>MyMenu1</label>
<thumb fallback="special://skin/backgrounds/default/default.jpg"></thumb>
<onclick>Notification("test",0,1)</onclick>
</item>

So now that we the menu we need to add sub menus to do that we need to find the locations of sub menus and they are underneath this tag

<include name="Home.Submenu.Items">

Then similar to step one we will use existing menu as a base so this time I have chosen "Reload skin" so copy and paste this item

<item id="50" description="Reload skin">
<visible>Container(300).HasFocus(10)</visible>
<label>$LOCALIZE[20183]</label>
<onclick>XBMC.ReloadSkin()</onclick>
</item>

Now you need to give it a new id that doesn't exist. I have chosen 70 then in the visible section we need to change HasFocus(10) to the id we gave to the main menu which was 45. Then all that is left is to give the onclick action

<item id="70" description="MySubMenu1">
<visible>Container(300).HasFocus(45)</visible>
<label>Submenu1</label>
<onclick>Notification("test1",0,1)</onclick>
</item>


For the onclick action there heaps on xbmc forum

Hopefully this helps I am a newbie as well

[Malakesher]

I will give a more detailed example first step is to open Includes.xml file that is located in skin.amber/1080i. You can use wordpad but notepad ++ is better for editing xml files.

First part is to add a menu to the home part and all the home menus are found underneath this section

<include name="Home.Main.Menu.Items">

Then lets use Custom3 as our base first copy it and paste it.

<item id="23" description="Custom3">
<visible>!IsEmpty(Skin.String(CustomHome.3.Path))</visible>
<label>$INFO[Skin.String(CustomHome.3.Label)]</label>
<thumb fallback="special://skin/backgrounds/default/default.jpg">$INFO[Skin.String(CustomHome.3.Background)]</thumb>
<onclick>$INFO[Skin.String(CustomHome.3.Path)]</onclick>
</item>

Lets make changes to this item

We need to change the id to something that has not been used before and as you can see I simplified the item removed visible tag and then you need to give action of what should that menu do in this example a notification pops up.

<item id="45" description="MyMenu1">
<label>MyMenu1</label>
<thumb fallback="special://skin/backgrounds/default/default.jpg"></thumb>
<onclick>Notification("test",0,1)</onclick>
</item>

So now that we the menu we need to add sub menus to do that we need to find the locations of sub menus and they are underneath this tag

<include name="Home.Submenu.Items">

Then similar to step one we will use existing menu as a base so this time I have chosen "Reload skin" so copy and paste this item

<item id="50" description="Reload skin">
<visible>Container(300).HasFocus(10)</visible>
<label>$LOCALIZE[20183]</label>
<onclick>XBMC.ReloadSkin()</onclick>
</item>

Now you need to give it a new id that doesn't exist. I have chosen 70 then in the visible section we need to change HasFocus(10) to the id we gave to the main menu which was 45. Then all that is left is to give the onclick action

<item id="70" description="MySubMenu1">
<visible>Container(300).HasFocus(45)</visible>
<label>Submenu1</label>
<onclick>Notification("test1",0,1)</onclick>
</item>


For the onclick action there heaps on xbmc forum

Hopefully this helps I am a newbie as well

Everything here makes perfect sense and I can follow it fine.

Do you know how to create a submenu to open a specific smart playlist. Not to start playing just to open it so I could choose a file in it to start playing. I'm not sure what to put in the onclick section for this.

Thanks for this guide, it is really helping.

[kizzer31]

struggling with that guide all thou looks like a great one and very simple m8....am using a ouya so dont know if that makes it harder anyway of a video guide or is that just asking to much lol

thanks never the less for the well written guide im just useless when it come to this stuff unless i can follow a video guide lol

[denz]

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Smart_playlists this is a simple guide now just have to figure out how to do oncall action

This is what i found in some forums

Yes It's possible, for a video playlist you could use somthing like this..

XBMC.ActivateWindow(video,special://profile/playlists/video/playlist.xsp,return)

if you are unsure of the path to the playlist just save it as a favourite and check the favourites.xml located in the userdata folder.


kizzer31 I had no idea about ouya you will need to do bit of searching however all xbmc files are the same regardless of platform.

[hstegeman]

A nice workaround for making use of submenus in amber is making use of the addon super favourites. With this addon you can make folders within favourites or nested favourites

[kphammond9]

A nice workaround for making use of submenus in amber is making use of the addon super favourites. With this addon you can make folders within favourites or nested favourites

This sounds like what I'm looking to achieve. First off, Amber is awesome, thanks pecinko!

hstegeman, I saw your post in the super favourites thread asking about this. I haven't been able to figure it out... if you can point me in the right direction, here is what I'm trying to do:

I want to have a main menu item called "music" that pulls up a list of playlists. I can currently select the default music button and scroll down the menu to playlists or make buttons for each individual playlist. But I'm trying to eliminate text menus and clutter wherever I can for my wife and kids. The part I can't figure out is how to point the home screen menu button to the folder that contains the music playlists (so it lists all of them and not just one).

thanks :-)

[hstegeman]

A nice workaround for making use of submenus in amber is making use of the addon super favourites. With this addon you can make folders within favourites or nested favourites

This sounds like what I'm looking to achieve. First off, Amber is awesome, thanks pecinko!

hstegeman, I saw your post in the super favourites thread asking about this. I haven't been able to figure it out... if you can point me in the right direction, here is what I'm trying to do:

I want to have a main menu item called "music" that pulls up a list of playlists. I can currently select the default music button and scroll down the menu to playlists or make buttons for each individual playlist. But I'm trying to eliminate text menus and clutter wherever I can for my wife and kids. The part I can't figure out is how to point the home screen menu button to the folder that contains the music playlists (so it lists all of them and not just one).

thanks :-)

You have to create a new super folder music.
Create favourites from the play lists you want, move those favourites to the folder music. Create a favourite from the folder music, use that favourite to make an amber menu item. On this way you have a menu item named music containing the play lists you want.

[kphammond9]

Awesome, I'll try it at home tonight. Thanks so much.

I have to reiterate, too - amber is an awesome skin. I'm using it on my RasPis and I've fiddled with about 10 different skins based on various recommendations and I keep coming back. It's super fast and customizable. Now, paired with super favorites, it does literally everything I want it to. And the live TV/EPG functionality is just as good as confluence, despite pecinko's claims that he doesn't care about live tv. ;-)

many thanks!