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New releases are now online
(for all Kodi generations)

Testing feedback in general or regarding any possible issues would be very welcome.

I did not notice any issues during the ongoing extensive testing on all generations, but feedback is valuable nonetheless.
Thanks.


Code:
5.6.11 (2023-09-23)

- Reworked Video Info Dialog [DialogVideoInfo] [DialogPVRInfo] [Includes] [_includes] [_variables]

Further improved dialog visuals including improved spacing between elements and button focus animation refinements.
When focused, the Play-button now features a "progress bar" indicator to prepare you in an intuitive way for a potentially upcoming "play or resume?"-dialog after clicking said button.
Removed rating votes for movies and changed label variable to always show the highest rating available. (According to the existing functionality which already did this for the rating stars texture *****)

Improved visuals for "Actors" and a smoother switch between "Plot" and "Cast" by adding a transition animation with custom timings.
Updated actor panel with changed image dimensions+spacing and changed font style (regular to light). Fixed barely visual black ghosting at corner of actor focus border.

The new code still relies on the "Plot/Cast" button with id "5" which is deprecated according to the Kodi wiki because handling it otherwise causes bugs in the Kodi core.
Internal remark: Button id "5" is also still needed in [DialogPVRInfo] for "switch to channel" functionality. So not so much deprecated at all it seems. (Not documented in Kodi wiki)


! Reworked and expanded rating scores support

Visual rating score indicators now support local ratings from your Kodi database.

At the time of writing, the following most common property names will be supported (higher listed names of the same rating will take priority):

# rotten romatoes
ListItem.Rating(tomatometerallcritics)
ListItem.Rating(rottentomatoes)

# rotten tomatoes audience rating
ListItem.Rating(tomatometerallaudience)

# metacritic
ListItem.Rating(metacritic)
ListItem.Rating(metascore)

# imdb
ListItem.Rating(imdb)

Support for live rating scores via ListItem Helper using your API keys remains intact and is still most recommended. Live rating scores will always take priority over an existing local ListItem.Rating(xxx) property.


Also updated DialogPVRInfo to match DialogVideoInfo more closely. (Affects PVR+PVR recordings)


- Added focus animations on multiple home screen elements (sub menus, widgets, addon shortcuts) for a better feel while navigating without compromising on short animation speeds (which are always important for 24p framerate switch situations)

- Slightly expanded height for Favorites Dialog panel (removes unnecessary few-px border at bottom) [DialogFavourites] and additionally for Kodi 20+ only: [MyFavourites]

- Added support for 8K video resolution indicator overlay on posters (Wall View and Home Screen Widget)

- Adapted improved button focus animations from Video Info Dialog to power dialog (ShutDownButtonsFocusStyle) [Includes] [DialogButtonMenu]

- Further optimized all diffuse mask textures (removed alpha 1% black for all. Also fixed almost invisible ghosting for UHD indicator textures on posters by changing radius from 7 to 6)

- File manager: Added rounded corners for file preview squares. Changed item count font style from regular to light

- Reworked Overlay 4K, 8K, HFR (Now: plain background)
- Reworked Wall View addon flag icons "info" and "warning" for deprecated and orphaned addons (Further simplified. Visuals are now in line with DefaultIconInfo and DefaultIconError)

- Label improvements for buffering line within [DialogPlayerProcessInfo] (If buffer/cache property is empty, the label now shows "0%" instead of "%")

- Corrected a diffuse mask height-value for OverlayUHD icon from 12px to 13px (Single change. Correction almost invisible.) [_ViewsFileMode_walls]

- Reworked multiple games section related icons/textures with slightly sharper and better rendering

- Episodes View: Removed the circular "resumable"-indicator on the right for more simplicity and redundancy reasons. If an episode is resumable, indication by the large progress bar on the left is perfectly sufficient.

- Fixed very rare issue when Video Info Dialog is opened via Video OSD Info button and switching the displayed movie within this dialog afterwards (via actor panel search for example):
Now the correct artwork will be displayed for the described situation. Also, the play button remains hidden and the close button will remain intact.

- New settings icon (home screen and settings section header)

- Slightly decreased size of videos and tv shows header icons


Textures maintenance

- Restructered and renamed some textures and folders
- Removed unused textures
- Removal of invisible rendering workaround background (black @ 1% alpha) from many textures (ongoing WIP)

Kodi 18+ only
- Improved Games support within CommonNowPlaying and IncludesBackgroundBuilding
Also, when playing a game in the background, a neutral games section wallpaper is now displayed to indicate that a game is playing/loaded in the background (Player.HasGame)
New version out now:
(All Kodi generations)

Code:

5.6.13 (2023-09-28)

- Skin Settings: Small text change to one help label

Wall Views
- Include different "preloaditems" counts to mitigate effects of too aggressive and functionally limited texture unload-handling of regular Kodi versions

5.6.12 (2023-09-28)

- Settings dialog: Moved Kodi logo a bit to the right
- Settings - Profiles: Reworked dialog visuals
- Further refined new "power" icon from previous release (Now: thinner lines)
- Updated some default button text color values [Defaults]
- Custom Search Dialog: Improved focus animations
- Refined focus animation "EpisodesViewFocusAnimation" which is used for Episodes View, Songs View, Weather, Events and a few more occasions (zoom effect now a bit more noticeable and slightly slower)
- Modern View, Episodes View, Songs View: Improved focus transitions for text elements. Now text color is transitioned smoothly between grey and white instead of just hard-changing the color
- Skin Settings: Changed label for "Hide Video Ratings" to "Show video ratings" and moved element to another section
- Video SideBar: Removed section header "Actions" for simplicity and to create some more vertical space
- Removed header icon "icon_events.png" for System sub section "Events" (Now this section is using the already existing "System" icon which is also used for similar sub sections)

Login Screen
- Reworked visuals
- Refined focus and power button animations
- Udpated DefaultUser.png background color to grey

Wall Views
- Reworked WallView 4X to match the exact same aspect ratio as 2X and 3X
- Multiple smaller refinements to all Wall Views

Video Info Dialog
- Set preloaditems to max for actors panel to mitigate effects of too aggressive texture unload-handling of regular Kodi versions
- Reduced left dialog half width to fit 2 by 3 poster aspect ratio
- Adapted changes to [DialogPVRInfo]
Quote:! Reworked and expanded rating scores support

Visual rating score indicators now support local ratings from your Kodi database.

At the time of writing, the following most common property names will be supported (higher listed names of the same rating will take priority):

# rotten romatoes
ListItem.Rating(tomatometerallcritics)
ListItem.Rating(rottentomatoes)

# rotten tomatoes audience rating
ListItem.Rating(tomatometerallaudience)

# metacritic
ListItem.Rating(metacritic)
ListItem.Rating(metascore)

# imdb
ListItem.Rating(imdb)

Support for live rating scores via ListItem Helper using your API keys remains intact and is still most recommended. Live rating scores will always take priority over an existing local ListItem.Rating(xxx) property.

@axbmcuser聽

not precisely sure what all that means, but i've been wanting to learn how to get the ratings from all the review sites on the video info page (as seen in one of ur earlier screenshots). hope this next update feature has something to do with that. Smile

thanks for the constant improvements ure making to the skin! will test out all the new changes soon 馃憤
Some further refinements of the video info dialog incoming.
(including expanded support for more local+online rating scores. new: letterboxd+trakt) Smile


Image

Image
New releases now online (all Kodi generations)聽 Music

Code:
5.7.0 (2023-10-22)

Remarks:
- This release now includes support for additional trakt and letterboxd rating scores (Both local+online variants) (See "ListItem Helper" add-on for more details)
- Please take notice of the flagging-overlays (4K/8K, HFR, Movie set, 3D, disc) default config changes for "Wall" views below


Reworked "Wall" views

- Improved visuals including new flagging/overlay indicators (Including: Movie set, 3D, (disc))
- Overlays "4K/8K/HFR" have slightly rounded edges now (1px) which looks more fitting to overall visuals (Barely noticeable)
- Overlays on posters are by default now only shown when the item is focused. This behaviour can be changed separately for overlays and the watched checkmark:
Added two items to skin settings accordingly:
"Show Wall Views overlays 4K/HFR/3D/Set/Disc" and "Show Wall Views watched checkmarks"
with the following selectable options: "(Default) Only on focus", "Always" and "Never"
- This improvement also affects home screen widgets for recently added movies/episodes
- Optimized code to avoid redundancy and improve maintainability (itemlayouts/focuedlayouts)

Reworked "Fanart" view

- Movies variant: Improved and optimized view visuals and animations. Fixed wrong poster aspect ratio on focus. Also, movie posters don't overlap anywhere anymore.
- Albums variant: Improved and optimized view visuals and animations. Changed album art aspect ratio to full 1:1. Also added missing "* All albums" covers and fixed display of "* All albums" fanart.
- Changed semi-transparent scrollbar style to be more visible than before but still not visually instrusive
- Changed navigation target for sidebar (before: down now: up. Feels more intutitive to have navgating away from the bottom scrollbar.)
- Added support for showing MusicVideos with this view (album art 1:1 aspect ratio identical to albums)

Reworked Video Info Dialog

- Improved visuals including element dimensions, spacing between elements, font types, colors and text label changes (Sub-header, revenue)
- Added support for two new rating types: letterboxd and trakt (See "ListItem Helper" add-on depdendency for more details)
- Stars rating won't be shown anymore if the dialog is displaying an episode of a tv show
- Minor code improvement for actors panel in Video Info Dialog [DialogVideoInfo]
- Added plot/text transition animation when text viewer button is (non-)focused [DialogVideoInfo] Also adapted changes to [DialogPVRInfo]
- Removed forced uppercase font style for ListItem.Country


- Improved and expanded flagging indicators (Including: Movie set, 3D, disc, HFR). Affects multiple views and dialog: "Wall" views, Video Info dialog, "Fanart" view [IncludesCodecFlagging]
Added new flagging textures accordingly and changed some existing one like "movie set"

- Weather: Improved entry page of weather section (more simplified, thinner font styles, better positioning of presented available data)
- If main menu item "Weather" is disabled but there is an active weather provider configured, you can now still open the weather section through a sub menu link under the main menu item "Favorites"
(This gives you the possibility to use the weather section without the need to clutter your main menu with a dedicated menu item for it)

- Settings: Minor improvements to visuals
- MyPVRChannels: Slightly corrected width of right progress bar to be visually aligned with text labels with no overlap (This has been a final leftover of the progress bar rework)
- Skin Settings: Minor improvements to visuals/text labels and improved navigation usability
- Improved "preloaditems" include-conditions to also look for BetterGUI builds of Kodi (which already contain improvements regarding "preloaditems" and therefore don't need any (only partially-working) workarounds) [_ViewsFileMode_walls] [DialogVideoInfo]
- Default focus improvements for Text Viewer dialogs [Custom_1102_TextViewer] [Custom_1103_TextViewerFS]


- Improved some textures positions of multiple views (+- 1px most of the time)
- Improved navigation usability of multiple views
- Home screen top right area:
Reduced font size of clock/time, improved label alignments of optional date and weather icon+text

- Improved home screen main menu focus and inactive-focus visuals
- Simplified some textures which included the typical accent color and changed them to full white+colordiffuse, improved file size (8bit png). Affects poster_borderXXX, settings_category_activeXXX, Also added variable for typical grey inactive colordiffuse

- Corrected barely(!) different accent color "0078c3" to "0079c3" (Remaining textures will also follow this change accordingly in a future update)
Further code improvements in this context to improve code maintainability

- Slightly corrected auto-completion result labels position (+1px y-pos)
- Removed non existant "selectbutton" control from [Defaults] (deprecated since Kodi 17)
- Removed scroll-left-focus.png and scroll-up-focus.png, also changed scroll-left.png scroll-up.png to full white+colordiffuse for transparency

Skin settings:
- Restructured Experimental/developer options and added a switch to optionally show/enable them.
The extra options are now hidden for regular users for more simplicity and fewer items within "Advanced Settings".
(Also added red radiobutton-focus-warn.png texture for this)
- Improved and/or shortened many text labels/headers
- Added new skin setting option: "Enable AutoCompletion (Default: On)"
(You can now disable AutoCompletion suggestions even when the add-on "AutoCompletion for virtual keyboard" is installed and enabled)
- (Kodi 19+ only) Auto-Enable "AutoCompletion for virtual keyboard" when trying to open settings dialog via shortcut (Only if add-on is installed, but disabled)
- Improved usability for "main menu" and "power options" tabs
(Switched from regular radiobuttons to a new radiobuttons variant with common select dialog style and new eye-texture ("selected" font color))


- Updated Kodi version detection to also look for Kodi 22.x (future)
- Busy dialog: Improved logo position being off center (barely visible, 1px). Also updated texture buffer-bg to be pixel perfect and added 4K variant
- (Kodi 21+ only) If Kodi 21+ is detected, the main menu item "favorites" automatically opens the new "FavouritesBrowser" dialog instead of "Favourites" since the latter has been removed from Kodi 21+.
Unfortunately "FavouritesBrowser" still seems to be feature incomplete:
"favourites://" does not inherit the sorting preferences from the new dialog and therefore causes usability inconsistencies when displaying "favourites://" on home screen and switching to the new dialog afterwards. Hopefully this will be fixed before release of Kodi 21.
- Improved main menu text labels (no more uppercase)
Adapted changes to Skin settings labels accordingly (no more uppercase in similar situations, too)
- (Kodi 20+ only) Minor improvements to ColorPicker dialog
- Changed [MyPVRChannels] [DialogPVRChannelsOSD] start/end time font style from Bold to Regular
- Updated GoFullscreen icon


Default controls visuals:
- Dim radiobutton-OFF controls when not focused (same like radiobutton-ON now)
- (Kodi 21+ only) Implemented new slider/sliderex disabled state visuals (texturesliderbardisabled/textureslidernibdisabled)
- Optimized disabled text colors


Keyboard and numeric keyboard dialogs:
- Improved visuals and usability of keyboard and numeric keyboard dialog
- (Kodi 20+ only) Added password show/hide button. This button replaces the IP address button (but only when displaying a password input dialog). Also created and added two password-hide/show icons
- Improved navigation targets of numeric keyboard dialog


Clean-up and other improvements:

- Major reduce in add-on install file size
- Updated Roboto fonts to latest version (might be virtually identical even if file size seems to differ slightly)
- Updated add-on icon/logo

[Textures]
- Restructured/moved some textures to different subfolders
- Reduced hexagons base overlays in size (2k-variant are now transparent 8bit pngs without visible quality loss). 4K variants are still 24bit to avoid quality loss. Also reworked "bg_colorful_static.png" with better quality, corrected dimensions and smaller file size
- Created new and more fitting icon for "add source" (DefaultAddSource.png)
- Added "inverted" variant for resolution flags
- Added a missing dedicated fallback texture for VideoResolution with correct dimensions
- Removed old "list" variant of resolution textures (These variant is now using the new inverted type which is universally used in multiple situations/dialogs)
- Minor update to OverlayLocked.png
Beginning with the next version, support for alternative ui accent color themes will be implented, beginning with an optional "Perfect Pink" theme :-D


Image
...if that's a bit too pink, another one is "Electric Violet":

Image
UI accent color themes (fully optional) are now available in the latest update along other improvements and fixes.

Hint:
If you want to use the new UI accent color themes but find the default backgrounds a bit too pink/violet/colorful - just try combining them with the new background "Frosted Glass 路 Graydient" or "Frosted Glass 路 Light Colors".


Now online for all Kodi generations:

Code:
5.7.1 (2023-11-06)

Added support for UI accent color schemes

- Default color scheme: "Kodi Blue" (which is what you have been using all along)
- New alternative UI accent color schemes: "Perfect Pink" and "Electric Violet"
- New "UI accent color scheme" option can be found in the "General" tab of Skin settings

Improved Login Screen

- Simplified and improved visuals
- User icons are now display in a circle (adapted this change to System Profiles also)

Reworked First Run Dialog [Custom_SideMenuHelp]

- Also improved left arrow texture with new 4k variant which also affects home screen and subtitle download dialog
- Created new hint-overlay texture (old one was too blurry)

Video Info Dialog

- Changed +/- icon focus color to white (green/red before)
- Fixed Video Info Dialog poster and season poster variables code (Minor regression from a previous change regarding OSDinfodialogButtonActive==True2X)

Skin settings

- Added two more "darken background" options "very low" and "low"
- Added new background options "Frosted Glass 路 Perfect Pink", "Frosted Glass 路 Electric Violet", "Frosted Glass 路 Graydient"
- Moved and renamed "[Episodes]聽 Enable Episode Thumbnail Spoiler Protection"

Shutdown menu

- Corrected master mode button from togglebutton to button with label variable (togglebutton was unnecessary and caused the focus animation to fail)

Wall Views and Fanart View

- Non-focused elements are not darkened anymore for Wall Views
- Non-focused elements are barely darkened anymore for Fanart View (Before: Much stronger darkening)

Other improvements and visual changes:

- Changed global progress bar colors to white (blueish color before for some situations)
- Changed dialogheader label colors from "selected" to "white" (all dialogs) (Bookmarks dialog "now playing X/X" chapter header remains "selected" color, if visible)
- VideoFullScreen/MusicVisualisation: Changed playing title color from "selected" to "white" and changed some mini menu togglebuttons to buttons (togglebuttons were unnecessary)
- VideoFullScreen: Corrected buffer bg size to be pixel perfect and centered (Adapted follow-up to recent change to busy dialog), externalized sub label to "VideoFullScreenSubLabel" variable
- Skin settings, _variables, _includes: Improved label names of background names and similar labels
- Addon Browser sidebar: Changed "last updated" label to light font (regular before) and the above label color to grey instead of white
- DialogKeyboard/Numeric: Changed/improved label colors
- Picture info dialog: header text now light font and white colored (Regular24 "selected" before)
- Deprecated/hide some more old views by default (can still be used when using the already known "old views" skin setting)
- System Settings entry page: Don't dim Kodi logo as much as before
- DialogSlider: Changed label color from accent color ("blue") to white
- Changed red dot color in OSDRecordOnFOXXX textures to white (non ideal color combination before)
- Reworked all textures which contain the "default folder" icon to a newly created vectorized texture (visually very similar but sharper and cleaner)
(Affects: DefaultFolderXXX DefaultSuperFolderVideosXXX DefaultHardDisk DefaultNetwork DefaultRemovableDisk DefaultSuperFolderVideosXXX)
- Added a 4K variant for arrow-white-left
- Changed barely used "DefaultIconInfoDRC" background color to grey for consistency ("blue" before)
- Changed all Kodi logo textures to plain white to be used with the new UI color schemes code
So, just to be clear, this skin does not have any customization options correct? Theres no option to set menus, submenus, or widgets? Is this just for Kodi library I assume? Or did I miss something?
@jdig4240
You can find everything that is available in Skin settings, which is quite a bit more than Original Confluence.
That being said: Custom sub menus are not supported - correct.
(Made some tests regarding sub menus some time ago and didn't like the results. I may have another look in the future.)

Question:

For what exactly do you use Kodi if not with the Kodi library?
Can you name exact and detailed common use cases which i may could have a look at to investigate potential possibilities?
Trying to install in Fire Cube with and getting an error message todo with Service.Listitem v1 coukd not be met.
How can I get past this please?
@roysmith

Please post details on the exact Kodi version, device model and a debug log. Thanks!
I am sorry,I know nothing about event logs but i am using Fire 聽Cube v2 and Kodi 20.2
@roysmith
Not sure if i can help without detailed logging data. I just installed the skin on a clean 20.2 test system via the repo file without any issues.

Could be anything. Maybe there is an issue with your install and/or Kodi install routine has an issue of any sort or with anything. (It sometimes struggles - which is outside my influence)

- Did you install the repo according to the steps from the first post? If not, please do so.

- You could first try to install 聽 "ListItem Helper (Kodi 19+20)"聽聽 manually via:
Settings聽 >聽 Add-ons聽 >聽 Install from repository聽 >聽 axbmcuser REPO聽 >聽 Services聽 >聽 ListItem Helper (Kodi 19+20)聽 >聽 Install

and after that try again to install the skin via:
Settings聽 >聽 Add-ons聽 >聽 Install from repository聽 >聽 axbmcuser REPO聽 >聽 Look and feel聽 >聽 Skin聽 >聽 A Confluence ZEITGEIST聽 >聽 Install

Also, in general (Maybe unrelated):
Always wait long enough while Kodi is trying to install on a low power device like a FireTV. Sometimes Kodi stays on 0% for minutes before finishing.
(Another user had this issue where he thought the install was stuck when in fact it just took time)

Good luck!
Thanks for your help.
I was at for fault fir trying to install skin rather than repo.
Once I realised it worked great.