[Jeroen]

Currently there's a possibility to have labels displayed that indicate which part of the library (or other parts of xbmc) is currently at by using conditions.

Like for example:

Code:

<label>$LOCALIZE[20314] - $INFO[ListItem.TVShowTitle]</label>
<visible>container.content(episodes) | container.content(seasons)</visible>

I make use of this a lot in my skin, as does PM3 and probably other skins as well.
This however is not possible in all situations. There's no conditional visibility for genres and years for example. So the only thing you could do is fall back to a label that just indicates Videos-Library, which makes it inconsistent plus you have to use a lot of conditions for this. Thanks to the PluginName infolabel this has already improved, I was wondering if the other categories could be added as well.

This would also open up new navigation possibilities by creating a "breadcrumb bar". This could be used to create the Elisa mediacenter clone which was requested here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=26806 , should someone decide to pick this up. I believe the Centerstage project uses a similar approach (although it may be that these are just indicators and not real navigation buttons. In which case, I feel they should be

Anyway, just some thoughts, I hope I've made it clear enough.

[jmarshall]

Certainly there's more content type conditions that can be added if necessary - this is reasonably easy to do. Perhaps you could give an idea of exactly which ones are needed and post a trac request for them.

As for the breadcrumb bar (one has to wonder who came up with that name) there's a couple of issues with it, namely:

1. In files view it could conceivably be very long indeed - there'd have to be some logic to shorten it by eliminating certain crumbs (or doing some sort of scrolling I guess?)

2. I prefer not to do controls that are useful for only a single thing. It seems a container control could be used for this if it's content was auto-filled in some way. XBMC would have to know about the container and add and remove items to it as applicable (i.e. it'd have to somehow monitor the "history" of the current window).

3. One presumes that you'd want some sort of animation effect as new crumbs are added + removed - this could be tricky in a generic container.

Ideas are always considered, and I'd be keen to hear from other skinners as to how this sort of thing could be achieved.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Jeroen]

Certainly there's more content type conditions that can be added if necessary - this is reasonably easy to do. Perhaps you could give an idea of exactly which ones are needed and post a trac request for them.

Done

1. In files view it could conceivably be very long indeed - there'd have to be some logic to shorten it by eliminating certain crumbs (or doing some sort of scrolling I guess?)

Yes, I think it would be necessary to limit the amount of crumbs. Especially in files view as directory names of filenames can become quite wide. Limiting it to 3 or 4 entries would be reasonable I think. Maybe in files view it would be better to limit it by width or something. Entries could also be truncated like they are currently when paths become too wide for their path label. When this limit is reached a small "up" button could appear to return to higher levels. Simple example:

3. One presumes that you'd want some sort of animation effect as new crumbs are added + removed - this could be tricky in a generic container.

Animation effect would be preferable, but the functionality would be nice to have in itself.

[jmarshall]

Sounds like we may need a dedicated control for it (which under the hood can just be a grouplist of buttons or something).

I don't think I'm going to have time to really address this over the next couple of weeks, but feel free to post what you think will be needed from a skinners perspective (i.e. what code you think you'll expect to do xml-wise)

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Jeroen]

Speaking of the xml example do you mean for the content type conditions or the crumb bar? Because while they are somewhat related I feel they are seperate requests.
My main request would be the content conditions, the crumb bar is kind of a spinoff of that. If that´s going to cause you a lot of work, maybe it´s best to hear other skinners thought about that first?
Thanks for your efforts in any case, I will write up an example of the content type conditions soon.

[jmarshall]

The conditions I understand no problem - they just need to be added to the infomanager pretty much and you can create a breadcrumb bar at least for the fixed hierachies that we have (albeit rather messily code-wise.)

What I was thinking of was this: Assuming you had a "breadcrumbs bar" control available. What would you expect the XML would look like. This gives me an idea of the sort of control over it that you'd expect to be able to have, which in turn allows me to think about how it'd be done from my side of things.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Jeroen]

Ok, that´s clear. I´ll try to make an example soon Cheers