Hi jurialmunkey,
Thank you for your long-standing efforts working on Eminence. About a year or so ago I began designing a streaming media solution for XBMC/Kodi on the Fire TV. This was to be used by me and three different family households, consisting of retired seniors, some professional adults, and a few children. This is my "userbase", and I should add that apart from myself none of them are Kodi experts or even read these forums.
After evaluating every XBMC skin I could find at the time, I chose Eminence as the only skin suitable for all my users. It was extremely well designed and thought out, showed good internal consistency, and displayed a deep focus on usability, while eschewing unnecessary "bling", novelty, and whimsical or disjointed features. It feels like a professional quality effort, and I thank you once again for all your (voluntary) work.
I was excited to see your work starting on Eminence 2, given it's history and focus on good design and usability. From what I can see, some of the core priciples you're building upon for Eminence 2 are around better page layouts (e.g. use of space for artwork) and improved navigation efficiency (e.g. pop-down menus from the home bar). I should add that this is more than enough to warrant a version Eminence 2, since much in version 1 is already working well.
Part of my reason for posting this is to share below various bugs, improvements and feedback I've compiled while evaluating Eminence 2. These are really based on my understanding of your design principles and in consideration of the diverse userbase I serve. I've tried hard to focus on the usability aspects, and avoid personal whims and preferences that don't cleanly fit in.
Which brings me to my second reason for posting. In watching the Eminence 2 development, I've become increasingly apprehensive about some of the features being implemented, in that they may be inadequately thought-through or inconsistent with the design principles I've seen in Eminence.
I would really like to encourage you to stick to your guns and reject requests (even from me!) which seem doubtful, inconsistent with your direction for Eminence, or that generally feel awkward. I also want to stress that while there are many requests on this forum, we are a vocal minority that does not represent the large, silent majority of happy Eminence users. This latter group needs to be considered.
So I've said my peace. Again, thank you, thank you, and thank you for making Eminence a stellar skin, and please look kindly on this post --- it's only goal is to help improve things and not to find fault.
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BUG Transparency Setting Not Preserved
On updating to a new version of Eminence 2, the setting Appearance.Skin.Colours will revert to "Skin Default" from a previous setting of "Transparent Home Bar".
BUG Transparency Setting Doesn't Apply to Home Widget Information
This results in an inconsistent home screen with opaque widget info but transparent home bar. Allowing the widget info to also be transparent helps reduce perceived screen clutter and contributes to a sense of width for the artwork. This seems to be a regression since recent skin versions allowed the widget info to be transparent.
BUG Video OSD Setting "Show plot when pressing info" Does Nothing
Regardless of the setting, the plot information seems always present when pressing "up" on the OSD or "i" for info during playback. I actually think this setting is unnecessary and there is little downside to having this plot information present always.
BUG Header Setting "Match header tile with highlight color" Doesn't
When set, the header tile on the home screen is not highlighted, but is highlighted on other non-home screens.
BUG Can't Choose Skin Colour for Primary/Secondary
When selecting "Choose primary/secondary highlight color", an overlay text box appears with only the entries "Pick a color...", "Color value:" and "Save" at the top. There are no "color swatches" to choose from, as seen in some forum posts. Selecting "Color value:" just brings up the virtual keyboard. I see this behaviour with freshly installed skin.eminence.2, script.skinshortcuts, and script.skin.helper.service from the 2015-09-23 git. I am seeing this on both Kodi 15.2-rc2 and SPMC 15, running on AFTV.
BUG Incorrect Home Bar On Fresh Install
On my first skin install, the home bar had "Search" and "Power" tiles, both with a "puzzle piece" icon. I fixed things manually, but noticed that doing "Reset Skin Shortcuts" set up the proper home bar, without "Search" and with the correct icon for "Power". The home bar on fresh install should matche "Reset skin shortcuts".
BUG Can't Revert Movie/TV Hub Widget to Default Spotlight
When selecting a hub widget for TV/Movies there is no option for the installation default, called "Spotlight" making it impossible to revert.
BUG Default TV Hub Widget "Spotlight" Shows Movies Not TV
BUG RSS Feed on Weather Page Doesn't Span Screen Width
It does do this on other pages, e.g TV, Movies, etc.
BUG Wrong RSS Feed Position Using Power Button Tile
On pressing the Power tile, the RSS feed box and text slide down to the screen bottom, behind the home bar. On pressing "back" and returning to the home screen, the RSS feed box slides back up but the text remains scrolling at the screen bottom.
IMPROVEMENT / BUG Problems with Extra Info On Video OSD
"Extra Info" pauses the video, while all the other OSD menus/options allow the video to continue playing. Once, after Extra Info paused my video, I naively tried to resume by pressing the "Play" on the Extra Info overlay window, only to find it restarted my video from the beginning. We should allow the video to continue playing and give the Extra Info overlay some more transparency. We should also hide any buttons like "Play" or "Youtube" that would take you away from the currently playing video.
If the video pause is kept or made an option, then pressing "back" from the Extra Info overlay should un-pause the video and not leave it paused as currently done.
In all cases, pressing "back" from the Extra Info overlay should close the overlay but leave the OSD up. Currently, pressing "back" closes both the overlay and the OSD.
Another big problem with Extra Info is that it can show incorrect information, i.e. for a completely different movie. It appears "Extra Info" just tries to match on the title, even if there is more complete information in Kodi's media DB. I see the Extra Info is trying to be like Amazon X-ray, with cast info and similar titles, etc. I thnk this would be great, but the content matching must be fixed.
Is Extra Info using the Extended Info add-on? The Extra Info overlay window looks similar to that one gets with "Movie Information" from a Movie view. But where Extra Info will show the wrong details, I've seen "Movie Information" for the same content will show the correct details..
IMPROVEMENT Weather Page Icons Consistent with Skin
The only icons available on the weather page are "photo realistic" ones similar to Confluence, which don't match the style of Eminence or even the existing weather icons in the header. Eminence 1 for example had some nice, line-arty, high-contrast weather page icons. Please consider using those in place of the current ones as default.
IMPROVEMENT Make "Transparent Home" Setting the Skin Default
I found exposing more of the artwork this way helps reduce clutter and better promotes a sense of width for the graphics/artwork, in line with other changes you made on TV/Movie views.
IMPROVEMENT Ability to Customize Home Header Text
Being able to edit the header text on the home page would be a clean, simple way to customize the skin to a particular profile or installation (Kodi vs. SPMC), and far cleaner than altering the header tile.
IMPROVEMENT Choose Behaviour for Home Widget Information
Should allow setting the behaviour similar to posters, i.e. Never/Always/On Up. The current behaviour is equivalent to Always/On Up. This change would allow setting up a nice wide view of the home widget.
IMPROVEMENT Expand RSS Feed On Home Widget Full Screen
I can understand the rationale for the narrow RSS feed area above the home bar. It overloads the notification area without obscuring too much background art, although that's mitigated somewhat when using a transparent home. However, when pressing up and going to a full-screen home widget, it would make sense for the RSS feed area to span the screen width, given it's not very tall and obscures little at the bottom of the screen.
IMPROVEMENT Update Home Widget to "Spotlight/In-Progress"
The current Spotlight widget only shows movies. It would be helpful to reproduce the behaviour in Eminence 1, where the "Spotlight/In-Progress" widget also showed recently aired TV episodes added to your library for example.
IMPROVEMENT Better Library View "Media Info 3"
The individual elements of ths view are great, but their layout has issues. There is a large poster on the left, large fan art on the right, and scrolling text in the middle. When scrolling to a new entry, it is awkward and hard on the eyes since there are graphics changes on oppsite screen sides. This is exacerbated since the poster and fan art change at slightly different times. A better layout, from left to right, would be scrolling text, then poster, then fan art. This new layout also matches "Media Info 2" and provides a better transition when switching from that view.
IMPROVEMENT Better Library View "Big Wide"
The 90-degree rotated text makes for a jarring view that disorients while scrolling horizontally, presenting usability problems. While I can read sideways or upside-down, my userbase would have problems. I really like the large-format artwork, and want to keep it since this is the only view that has it. But I suggest moving artwork to the screen right side, and having normal 0-degree text scrolling vertically on the left side.
IMPROVEMENT Flesh Out Navigation Keys for Video/Music OSD
Efficient OSD navigation using directional keys has been an Eminence staple and should continue if possible. It would be useful to implement the follwing:
o pressing "down" closes an open video or music OSD.
o pressing "up" opens or toggles closed the basic info text block from a video or music OSD.
IMPROVEMENT Show Kodi Build Information In System Info
This is very useful for tracking and troubleshooting, and was available in Eminence 1.0 and Confluence.
IMPROVEMENT Vertically Stack CPU and RAM Usage In System Info
Stacking them and aligning the 0% and 100% normalizes both displays, simplifying the "how much?" question at a glance, unlike the current side-by-side layout.
IMPROVEMENT Progress Bar Should Not Float Above OSD
Pressing "up" on the video OSD will open the info/plot text box, but also "float up" the progress bar.
The progress bar and OSD player controls are functionally tied together and should be that way visually. Also, Eminence has a historic style of stacking or abutting elements, but the currently behaviour is like "inflating" the space between the OSD and progress bar to write info inside. Please leave the progress bar where it is and open the info *above* it if possible.
IMPROVEMENT Allow Larger Display of CD Cover In Music Views
One of the Eminence 2 goals seems to be making better use of space, especially for graphics. The Music library views use a "poster" aspect ratio to display "square" aspect CD artwork. There should be enough room to increase the width of the "Artwork" box, making it square and accommodating larger album artwork.
FEEDBACK Remove Video Library Delayed Plot Overlay
I find this overlay hurts usability more than anything else. The information is easily available on any "Info" view style in the library. Most of the time the overlay just obscures things one is trying to read. And the full-screen text block is very inconsistent with anything else in Eminence. I've tried but can't justify even having this as an option with the long-term maintenance that entails.
FEEDBACK Remove/Change Scrolling Posters for Home Widget Info
I have to agree with others who commented that the widget posters obscure too much of the background and make the interface look cluttered. Pressing "up" for the full-screen widget is just as bad, since the objective of "full-screen" is defeated by having widget posters equivalent to the home bar in size.
The functionality being added to the home screen is one of browsing posters and fan art, which is better located in the Movie/TV views. Also, those Movie/TV views allow fine-tuned selection of the content being scrolled, and are not widget defined and limited.
Perhaps we could have "full-screen" views within the Movie/TV sections that allow scrolling through foreground posters and displaying background fan art? That might reduce the pressure to do this on the home screen.
As I thought about widget posters more, there was one legitimate case I could think of: a single mini-poster for the currently displayed fan art. I would support an option to place a mini-poster next to the widget info angled text block.
FEEDBACK Preserving Header Tile
I know there has been a request to repurpose or customize the home screen header tile, but I'd like to suggest instead of that we allow the home header text to be customized as Eminence 1 allowed. The header tile is actually pretty important. It serves as an anchor for the interface, providing navigational queues and status updates. For some users I see, even Eminence has a lot going on the screen, and after pressing a button they can be lost wondering what's happening. Knowing to check the header tile and see "Busy" is a little help, for example. As it is for spot ckecking where they are while in some deep menu.
also the error that from the first edit is fixed now
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