[fredphoesh]

Hello there,

First off, I keep coming back to Transparency because it is definitely THE most powerful skin I have used on xbmc... so thanks very much for that.

The problem is, it is, IMO really ugly... way too many bright colours and chunky Windows 3.1 style buttons in the settings etc...

Ive replaced the home screen backgrounds with a mid-dark grey, so it is much more appealing, but unfortunately the fan art feature is causing problems for me:

I LOVE having fan art while playing music.
I LOVE being able to read album reviews, occasionally lyrics etc while reading

Transparency makes this easier than other skins, so well done on that!

But if there is no fan art, please give the options to

1/ have a user-definable background instead of the psychedelic polarized images
2/ scrape google images to get images. Most fan art comes up with the psychedelic background with my collection.

Also, it would be GREAT to be able to change the colour/feel of the buttons in the settings. they make me shudder every time I see them

Thanks again for an excellently functional skin!!!!

Mark.

[ppic]

1/ you just have to put the image you want in your album folder
2/ that's beyond what skin can do .

[ronie]

The problem is, it is, IMO really ugly... way too many bright colours and chunky Windows 3.1 style buttons in the settings etc...

yeah...i'm much more of a coder than a graphic design artist.
i always hope someone will step up and provide better graphics.

But if there is no fan art, please give the options to

1/ have a user-definable background instead of the psychedelic polarized images

when there's no fanart, it'll fall back to the default background image.
and those default background images are user-configurable:
Skin Settings > Backgrounds

so...i guess i don't get our problem ?

2/ scrape google images to get images. Most fan art comes up with the psychedelic background with my collection.

what ppic said ^^

[fredphoesh]

yeah...i'm much more of a coder than a graphic design artist.
i always hope someone will step up and provide better graphics.

when there's no fanart, it'll fall back to the default background image.
and those default background images are user-configurable:
Skin Settings > Backgrounds

Hi Ronie,

Thanks and DUH! I had set all the backgrounds, but had not scrolled down to see there were a whole bunch more... so I am setting those now.

WRT the interface design, I'm a video producer, so occasionally do SOME photoshop... but are each of these buttons etc available separately to remake? I couldnt find that. I will read the other replies here and respond to those.

Cheers
Mark.

[fredphoesh]

1/ you just have to put the image you want in your album folder
2/ that's beyond what skin can do .

Thanks PPIC,

Ive replaced all the default ones to a dark mid grey... now to find how to change the settings buttons...

I will suggest the google images scraping on the main xbmc forum - have you seen JRiver MC's implementation of this?

cheers,
Mark

[fredphoesh]

Ronie, what is that "lyrics screen" called, the one that one can only seem to get to by pressing M then clicking on the rectangular icon which takes you to to this "lyrics screen" where you can then press M again and then press = to get lyrics.

What is this screen called in XBMC developer speak? It is sometimes almost impossible to get to, for example in the Shade skin.

Tx
Mark.

[fredphoesh]

yeah...i'm much more of a coder than a graphic design artist.
i always hope someone will step up and provide better graphics.

Ronie,

Most of the interface is actually very good, the animated bars in the home screen for example, are really attractive... so I would leave those alone... at the moment, now I have greyed out the gaudy backgrounds, its the Settings menu I would change... and what I would suggest is to use colour as a highlight. If everything is highlighted, it looks like a Tokyo street! If you have mostly a very subtle interface but punctuate that with bright colour, the colour really pops and it starts to look "sexy". With design, less is often more... (not that I am a great designer, but do know good design when I see it

What I'd suggest for the home screen is to have very muted tones, but the highlighted button gets the neon glow outline you already have, and the button could still zoom up like it does but fades to colour instead of remaining monotone. I would also remove the blue bar, it looks clunky, but find some other way to have the text show up against the button when it goes from grey to coloured.

Ive done a very quick and dirty mock-up to give an idea, though I did not remove the blue bars, too difficult to replace with meaningful background. But see how the selected button now really makes colour attractive rather than a mish mash of everything at once...



Something like that would be nice!

Mark.

[ronie]

are each of these buttons etc available separately to remake?

check out the svn version of T!
all images used in the skin are in the media folder.
most (of not all) button images will start with 'Button*) or at lease have 'button' in their filenames.

Ronie, what is that "lyrics screen" called, the one that one can only seem to get to by pressing M then clicking on the rectangular icon which takes you to to this "lyrics screen" where you can then press M again and then press = to get lyrics.

What is this screen called in XBMC developer speak? It is sometimes almost impossible to get to, for example in the Shade skin.

script-XBMC_Lyrics-main.xml

this file can either be distributed with the skin, so you can match the look and feel to the skin (as in T!'s case), or be provided by the script itself.

[jpf55]

Something like that would be nice!

Mark.

Check how I handled the Settings screen in the ColorTheme sticky and download the greyTheme

JP