(2014-09-10, 19:06)Outlaw Mantis Wrote: [ -> ]Word up! Just bought one of your last hoodies.
Haha, the t-shirt campaign keeps restarting. We didn't even know that was a feature of Teespring, or how to turn it off :D
If anyone missed out on buying a shirt, I guess you still have time:
http://teespring.com/lastxbmcshirt1
I got mine from the first round, and I got a hoodie from the previous design. I like them a lot.
Got mine today, delivered to my office door, in Portugal! Beautiful black shirt!!
Biggest problem now: to wear or not to wear... being the last one and all... Arghhh! Should have bought a couple more!
Anyways, back on-topic. I'm all for a complete revamp of Kodi's look. Preferably a more modern approach, i.e., no gradients and shadows (some discrete use is OK), new less "heavy" fonts, etc. Something that reflects today's interweb design.
(2014-09-10, 22:37)h.udo Wrote: [ -> ]Anyways, back on-topic. I'm all for a complete revamp of Kodi's look. Preferably a more modern approach, i.e., no gradients and shadows (some discrete use is OK), new less "heavy" fonts, etc. Something that reflects today's interweb design.
One of the things I really like about that Unity work is that it basically keeps a lot of the look Confluence, but kind of blends it into the new flatter design that people are all getting so ridiculous about. See for example:
(2014-09-10, 22:37)h.udo Wrote: [ -> ]Got mine today, delivered to my office door, in Portugal! Beautiful black shirt!!
Biggest problem now: to wear or not to wear... being the last one and all... Arghhh! Should have bought a couple more!
Anyways, back on-topic. I'm all for a complete revamp of Kodi's look. Preferably a more modern approach, i.e., no gradients and shadows (some discrete use is OK), new less "heavy" fonts, etc. Something that reflects today's interweb design.
And I got mine today, delivered to my PO Box in New Zealand!
Sorry but I really don't the current fashion for flat ui's, personally I'm hoping it's a fad that won't last for long.
The extreme use of bevel and gradients was a fashion. Of the 90s. Simplicity is timeless, it doesn't have to 'flat'. The "microsoft flat" kind of flat is already dead and more and more people are adding depth to their "flat" design.
Given how Aeon and Transparency are the most downloaded skins I guess most people don't care at all how it looks though..
(2014-09-11, 00:58)jjd-uk Wrote: [ -> ]Sorry but I really don't the current fashion for flat ui's, personally I'm hoping it's a fad that won't last for long.
It's not a fashion. It's a statement as in "More is less. Less is more.", a timeless design/marketing/communication rule.
That does not mean you can't use all resources at your disposal. Quite the opposite. An excellent simple/flat/minimalist design only
feels that way. In fact, aiming for an excellent simple design involves a lot more work and elements than it might look at first glance.
The best example I can remember is our eyes. Our eyes see everything in front of us, within reason, but our brain's inability to process such huge quantities of information gave us the ability to - unconsciously - select the most important part and choose to only see and remember a tiny bit of what's around us. Still, we don't miss those forgotten bits. They are there, not consciously but they are there.
Great designs take advantage of that. We see it all. Processing such amounts of information? Not so much...
Simple design helps us get more brain power to process what's really important, i.e., the message.
That said, gradients aren't sooooo 90's. Gradients are useful. All design techniques are useful.
Well I've not seen a single modern/flat UI that looks good to my eyes yet.
the confluence question:
trying to please everyone is a losing battle.
for a new user learning what you like and do not, confluence is a good foundation to start from.
a few additional features such as menu customizing would be a definite plus and will extend it's usefulness.
current fashions come and go and supporters of the current flavor justify their flavor as best by justifying their's is best. i like what i like and enjoy seeing what others like as well.
i suggest leaving confluence design alone and add a few more basic features.
then the fun of exploring other skins can begin while using confluence as your baseline.
i use three skins now and switch from time to time confluence bing one of them.
i am always looking at the wip skins.
and now i am starting to learn skinning.
confluence works and the fun is in finding what works better for Me not someone else.
this is one of kodi's strengths.
thanks
I look at alternatives like to ship other themes by default, or a way to dowload such themes that can change how some things look without changing the skin xmls code and therefore stability.
Something you can find @
https://github.com/uNiversaI/revamped.themes as previously mentioned.
However
it quickly becomes apparent, some
addon to download such themes/extras would be required to make things simpler for users as opposed to make it manual for e,g
https://github.com/uNiversaI/confluence....downloader
The problem here is obvious.
skin.confluence by default lives in
system path and is a
special addon. what this means for any possible extras downloader cannot extract the zips to
speciall://skin path (which I presume is the correct system path), while it would work in
special://home/addons path or as you guys know as
userdata (wiki) and then you only need to have the confluence.extras.downloader work.
So here you go,
either ship themes by default or
allow themes to be downloaded and used, it would
also be possible if themes could be loaded from
userdata (wiki) while skin the default would still live in system paths.
A great benefit of using skin themes is that has graphic editing/creating experience could create themes without ever touching any xmls.
There are literally hundreds of mb/s of exiting extras that default skin confluence doesn't use (and greatly extends the appeal) like conditional weather fanart all strictly for manual downloading and extracting, which is not novice user friendly.
How to achieve any of the above requires cooperation from other skilled persons, if I could do it, it would be done already. half the work is done, so someone(s) need to go the other 50%
If you want to change confluence you are better to first copy it to your addons directory.
Not the point,
For me personally I can do all of the above without help, but making it available to wide community by default or via addon is the main goal + main interest + on these subject. So this brings me back to viable alternatives that are widely available are also user friendly and do not break the skin at all. Which themes do not, afaik and no matter what skin version is in use.
The good news is that I heard (maybe wrongly) someone is already working on extending the default skin to allow these things, how,when that is going to work or how much it will allow or how, idk yet. Go Ronie!!
But if you want to save changes to it, you can do so once it is in the addons directory!
Yes, but no, the
userdata (wiki) copy takes precedence over default, but I dont think it gets updated automatically when kodi updates, so its not viable to wide user consumption and workaround.
Skinning engine and vfs need to improve to point where themes and other extras can be loaded from any directory and changed at default skin level leaving the default skin untouched.
Want wide community support with minimum fuss for maximum gain as easily as possible and extra low maintenance work.
I agree Confluence just feels ugly, clunky and old. IMO it doesn't represent the sleek state of the art media center it should do.
I have tried a lot of skins and imo Amber so far is the best. Its as quick (though feels quicker because its smoother) as Confluence, easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye.