[WIP] DroidTV - Inspired by Android TV and Leanback Launcher
#31
Will it be possible to change the thumbnail for menu items as well?
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#32
Damn this skin is awesome! Would love to see a beta or alpha or somethingBig Grin
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#33
Shhh! Asking for a beta may get you shot around here Rofl

I must say, it is a beautiful looking skin. I have never used an android tv nor the leanback launcher so will be interested to see how it works
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#34
Oops sorry then ^^ just so excited!
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#35
(2015-12-09, 05:26)springroll Wrote:
(2015-12-08, 19:04)digitalhigh Wrote:
(2015-12-08, 18:21)springroll Wrote: Looking forward to it!
Possible to make a request on support for Arial (as the Kodi built-in Arial font supports unicode language characters such as Chinese and Japanese) or have the font you are including in the skin to support unicode language characters?

From what I understand, the Roboto font family (what I'm using here) supports Unicode:

https://www.google.com/design/spec/style...y-typeface

I just tried to verify this by switching to Roboto in Hitcher's FTV skin. Unfortunately, it doesn't display the unicode characters in Chinese/Japanese/etc. If the skin itself has its own Roboto font, perhaps it'd support Unicode?


check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roboto

note: "Roboto supports Latin, Greek (partial) and Cyrillic scripts. On Android, the Noto font is used for languages not covered by Roboto, including Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Korean, Thai and Hindi."

for noto info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noto_fonts

if you already have all the roboto fonts you want/need and just need noto go here:
http://www.google.com/get/noto/

the whole repo full of google fonts: https://github.com/google/fonts/

look under /apache for the roboto and noto font families

hope this helps

mario
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#36
Thought I would add this here for design references. New visual updates in Google App 2.0 for the Android TV. From Android Police!

watch gallery
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#37
(2015-12-17, 19:13)drmcatchr Wrote: Thought I would add this here for design references. New visual updates in Google App 2.0 for the Android TV. From Android Police!

watch gallery

Noooooooooooooooooooooo!

Not the cartoon colors there too! Tongue


I've already pulled the APK from APKMirror - I'll decompile and update my resources. Thanks for the heads up. Wink
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#38


So, a little update on the progress I'm making with the Skin.

A lot of the work is just fleshing out the mechanics of everything, making sure the menus are consistent everywhere, making sure animations make sense and look right, and a lot of fun tricks to make it do what I want.

You can see in the video library how I intend on having things flow between sections, and how the popup info window works.

The search has google play music addon integrated, youtube results, and I hope to get Plexbmc results in there as well. Also, search suggestions appear (needs to be prettified yet).

I've added the search button in other views as well, need to work out the variable for coloring it yet and all that good stuff. I don't have it installed here, but there are icons possible for the sections as in the twitch screenshot.


Settings subsections are somewhat finished, but still need the nice little icon on the left. Also, had to have two columns bc of how Kodi works, but I figure it's not a huge deal.

Still have a ton of custom images to make - I've got caps of the genre icons from plex app, tiles for the rest of the kodi sections, masks for some of the views yet.

Still have to make music "album" views, and work up screens to display seasons for TV and music for albums. I've got shots of how it's implemented in leanback, it's just taking the time to do it.

But, progress. Lots of progress in small areas - and as you can see - lots of little things still to clean up. Tongue
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#39
Looks very promising. Since Android-TV could become a major platform for Kodi (with NVidia ShieldTV now as prominent front runner and so many other boxes already available, offering 4k/60, gaming and apps for small money) having a skin that integrates seamlessly and makes Kodi look like a substential part of the system would be very nice.

Are you planning on implementing movie and artist logos (e.g. movie info screen, music info screen) and cleararts (e.g. on video screen pause/info)?

Keep up the good work!
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#40
Quick question. Can we disable some of the things that will show in a search?
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#41
Love it, this is what i always wanted in a skin, Android TV look + PleXBMC functionality, GPlay Music integration Smile. Wanna make my old HTPC look like a SHIELD, interface wise anyway. If you need any early beta testing hit me a Private Message , i`ll galdy help, even live on stuff like Skype. Keep up the good work, subscribed to this thread
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#42
(2015-12-22, 08:38)fantasticn Wrote: Looks very promising. Since Android-TV could become a major platform for Kodi (with NVidia ShieldTV now as prominent front runner and so many other boxes already available, offering 4k/60, gaming and apps for small money) having a skin that integrates seamlessly and makes Kodi look like a substential part of the system would be very nice.

Are you planning on implementing movie and artist logos (e.g. movie info screen, music info screen) and cleararts (e.g. on video screen pause/info)?

Keep up the good work!

As of now, no. I had briefly toyed with the idea of using studio/etc logos, but the more I look at and work with the real Leanback UI, the more I feel this goes against the design aesthetic Google is going for. See below for a bit of rambling on the topic.

(2015-12-22, 12:07)iAMl3dgend Wrote: Quick question. Can we disable some of the things that will show in a search?

I hadn't intended on doing this? Right now, the "google music" stuff is always showing up just because I have it installed and configured. The idea is that the search is smart - it knows what addons you have and tries to search them all. If no results are found or the addon is not there, then that results section just won't show up.

(2015-12-22, 16:03)Soulbind Wrote: Love it, this is what i always wanted in a skin, Android TV look + PleXBMC functionality, GPlay Music integration Smile. Wanna make my old HTPC look like a SHIELD, interface wise anyway. If you need any early beta testing hit me a Private Message , i`ll galdy help, even live on stuff like Skype. Keep up the good work, subscribed to this thread

Well - it's convenient then that I'm friends with one of the developers of the Shield UI. I have been picking his brain in regards to some of the things they're doing on Shield that may not be as prevalent in regular ATV. Wink



In terms of some of the things found in most other skins - CD Art, clearart, studio logos, the general "excess" of stuff that can be had with media items - I am *not* going to be utilizing a lot of these things.

One of the biggest concepts behind the leanback UI is to *not* overwhelm the users with a massive amount of choices. In the 10+ years I've been a XBMC/Kodi/HTPC user, I can honestly say I've NEVER had someone scroll through my video/TV library and comment on how amazing the clearart or studio logos are. Nobody's ever cared that there was an icon indicating it's in 5.1 surround or the container is DIVX or MKV. Nobody's ever been floored that the UX has sortable views. Never had someone browse by genre, never had someone browse by year...etc. I point them at the list of titles, and they go.

So, while I fully understand and appreciate the power and amount of info other skins provide - this is not going to be that skin. I think goal #1 is to help people *not* have to go into the library sections - and if they do - only because they have a specific title in mind - and this should be handled by search.

No, this UX/UI is aimed at the "babysitting grandmothers and wives" crowd. You should be able to plunk anybody down in front of this skin (after it's configured), give them a remote, and have them just understand how to get a movie playing. I know kodi is a lot of power users and customized collections - but I want it to be approachable first, and "vast" second.

Hopefully that clears some things up...
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#43
(2015-12-22, 18:48)digitalhigh Wrote:
(2015-12-22, 16:03)Soulbind Wrote: Love it, this is what i always wanted in a skin, Android TV look + PleXBMC functionality, GPlay Music integration Smile. Wanna make my old HTPC look like a SHIELD, interface wise anyway. If you need any early beta testing hit me a Private Message , i`ll galdy help, even live on stuff like Skype. Keep up the good work, subscribed to this thread

Well - it's convenient then that I'm friends with one of the developers of the Shield UI. I have been picking his brain in regards to some of the things they're doing on Shield that may not be as prevalent in regular ATV. Wink



In terms of some of the things found in most other skins - CD Art, clearart, studio logos, the general "excess" of stuff that can be had with media items - I am *not* going to be utilizing a lot of these things.

One of the biggest concepts behind the leanback UI is to *not* overwhelm the users with a massive amount of choices. In the 10+ years I've been a XBMC/Kodi/HTPC user, I can honestly say I've NEVER had someone scroll through my video/TV library and comment on how amazing the clearart or studio logos are. Nobody's ever cared that there was an icon indicating it's in 5.1 surround or the container is DIVX or MKV. Nobody's ever been floored that the UX has sortable views. Never had someone browse by genre, never had someone browse by year...etc. I point them at the list of titles, and they go.

So, while I fully understand and appreciate the power and amount of info other skins provide - this is not going to be that skin. I think goal #1 is to help people *not* have to go into the library sections - and if they do - only because they have a specific title in mind - and this should be handled by search.

No, this UX/UI is aimed at the "babysitting grandmothers and wives" crowd. You should be able to plunk anybody down in front of this skin (after it's configured), give them a remote, and have them just understand how to get a movie playing. I know kodi is a lot of power users and customized collections - but I want it to be approachable first, and "vast" second.

Hopefully that clears some things up...

One of your friends is a Nvidia developer working on the SHIELD Android TV UI ? Nice, that re-assures me even more that this is going to turn out as a fantastic skin Smile

I agree on the ClearArt / Extra Fanart stuff, i used to use a 3rd party media manager (Media Elch) some time ago, to get that stuff, but i just found that i takes too much of my precious time to get it for little benefit, so i ditched the ideea. Now, if KODI scrappers would natively get that (same goes for PleXBMC), maybe i`d be interested in using them, but as it stands, i have no interest in going back to 3rd party media managers or addons for those types of fanart.

Regarding media info like 5.1 surround sound or 7.1 , codecs, resolution, well that helps when you`re managing the library, to see if you need to re-buy a movie on Blu Ray or iTunes instead of that old DVD rip you have on the server etc. , but yeah, 95% of the time it`s useless. And if integration with PleXBMC is on the roadmap, i`ll just manage my media from the Plex Server interface and not need them.

One thing that i would like in terms of UX/UI would be a button for Update Library in the "Information" section of a movie (pressing 'i' on the keyboard/remote), or even on the main list of movies (even better). Makes it easier for my non-tehnical girlfriend to update the library when i add a new movie, instead of digging around in side menus for the button like on other skins. fTV by Hitcher has this button, but i`m not a fan of the Amazon UI (Material Design or bust, i`m a part time Android dev so MD is important to me, second best would be the LG Web OS TV interface) . Though if i`ll move to PleXBMC for integration with my Plex Server i might not need it , since the Plex Server can be set to automatically update on changes to the Movies / TV Shows folder (and that`s the main thing i like about it).
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#44
(2015-12-22, 19:13)Soulbind Wrote: One thing that i would like in terms of UX/UI would be a button for Update Library in the "Information" section of a movie (pressing 'i' on the keyboard/remote), or even on the main list of movies (even better). Makes it easier for my non-tehnical girlfriend to update the library when i add a new movie, instead of digging around in side menus for the button like on other skins. fTV by Hitcher has this button, but i`m not a fan of the Amazon UI (Material Design or bust, i`m a part time Android dev so MD is important to me, second best would be the LG Web OS TV interface) . Though if i`ll move to PleXBMC for integration with my Plex Server i might not need it , since the Plex Server can be set to automatically update on changes to the Movies / TV Shows folder (and that`s the main thing i like about it).

That is definitely doable. While I personally use PleXBMC + kodi almost specifically because I prefer how Plex manages my library, I am 100% in favor of providing this button. Hell, I'm at a loss for what to put in the "bottom" row on the home screen - I think this is a great spot for it, as I'd like to have a few other things down there, but didn't really feel that networking settings are necessary in Kodi. So, yes...it will be added. Wink
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#45
Just want to say that this is just beautiful. And your ideas around usability first is spot on, just what a skin needs, enough of that "eyecandy"... Been using Eminence for a long time now but I this will blend beautifully on my Shield TV..! Btw, are you planning on PVR support?
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[WIP] DroidTV - Inspired by Android TV and Leanback Launcher4