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Because another "stable" release of XBMC came out, I started making the rounds and updating things. I thought I'd check out how Aeon is doing. Its pretty awesome. However, I notice the skin still doesn't support the wide banner style icons. In reading up on it, I saw that basically the Aeon developer is like "I'm not supporting those," and most of the Aeon fanboys are like "They're not supported and they suck and are stupid, STFU!"
But, I also know that Aeon spawned a whole little subculture of dudes making mods of it. Surely, I thought, there's got to be a mod out there to add wide icon support.

So far I can't freaking find one. Am I just not looking hard enough?

And do not waste your time posting "you should just use poster icons" or related comments, as I have a several reasons why that isn't a good idea.

Nope, none that I have seen. Can you draw some quick mockups of how you think wide banner icons could be integrated nicely with the rest of the interface?

I saw one mockup that used them in list view -- it looked like it could maybe be decent if it was smoothed over better, but I don't think anything came of it.

I started mucking around in the XML, but its very tight and undocumented code. Kudoz to the developer Duncan (I think thats his name), I haven't looked at the XBMC skin engine in like 2 years so it'll take some time to get back up to speed. Things like the rounded corners and the 3D animation system are new to me.

The other problem is, how to make this view mode accessible without really messing up the rest of the skin. I haven't looked at the code, but I believe he's using onFocus events to select which of the four view modes to go to. This makes it really annoying from a modding point of view because you can't simply insert any arbitrary number of extra views.

I'll need to set up a better space to do dev work if I'm gonna get into this.
The views I'm thinking of are really not too special, basically like the current wall view but with 2 by 3 or 2 by 4 grid of wide icons. I need to install Photoshop again so I can fiddle with the layouts a bit.

And here I was thinking this would be easy...

you should just use poster icons ^_^

Quote:you should just use poster icons ^_^

I Agree

If you don't have anything useful to contribute then do not post....

SleepyP Wrote:And do not waste your time posting "you should just use poster icons" or related comments, as I have a several reasons why that isn't a good idea.

Sorry you set yourself up for that perhaps if you post in a more constructive manner and not rip on the "aeon fanbois".
People might actually give a toss about what you're trying to do and offer some help.

Like they say, you catch more flies with honey coated grenades than vinegar.

p.s. I replied simply because you demanded that I shouldn't.

hikaricore Wrote:yYou can find them bitching in random threads around here.

That would be me.

I understand that some people prefer the wide banners but I can't really imagine how you would incorporate them into aeon as is it relies on "big" images to make it look as good as it does.

If you were a bit more polite and suggest how it might be done then maybe one of the "aeon fanboys" might have a go at it.

Of course you could always just try to mod it yourself if it bothers you that much.

SleepyP Wrote:If you don't have anything useful to contribute then do not post....

Well said mate theres far too much hostilty towards this thread and people who ask for wide banner support. I don't mind either way but i think you should have the choice. and no doubt
someone if not you will make it happen if only to piss off the anti wide banner brigade.

Its hard to convey tone very well with text, but I wasn't trying to be Mr Seriouspants in my initial post, which is why I jokingly said "They're not supported and they're stupid, STFU!" I pretty much figured I was gonna have to make a mod myself, just didn't really want to deal with it.

I'll see if I can get the site-wide totals from Scott, the dude who runs TheTVDB.com. Just from the "recommended" shows on the front page:
Chuck: 13 banners, 8 posters
Dead Like Me: 6 banners, 2 posters
Deadliest Catch: 7 banners, 2 posters
Dexter: 14 banners, 12 posters
House: 23 banners, 10 posters
Stargate Atlantis: 21 banners, 4 posters

Seems like the fundamental fact is there are a lot more banner graphics on the site than there are poster graphics. Since TheTVDB.com is the default scraper for XBMC and the banner graphics are more numerous, its not like I'm some crackhead for wanting them to work with this skin. In fact I would make the argument that its entirely reasonable to want to do things this way, since this appears to be what lots and lots of people are using for their TV show icons.

Like I posted earlier, I have to take the time to set up my dev environment and then I'll try and put something together myself. I am mostly chilling out today and watching some TV (in XBMC of course ) but I did determine what I earlier suspected: the list item borders are done via alpha channel transparencies in PNGs that get overlayed on the icons. This means a new "wide" set of overlay graphics will need to be made from the original DVD ones. With the new resizing tools in Photoshop it should be easy.

So Sho, since you are interested in this, do you have any ideas for how the wide icons can be laid out on the screen and not look retarded?

I would love to see a mockup of how it would look if you want to make a go at it.

SleepyP Wrote:Seems like the fundamental fact is there are a lot more banner graphics on the site than there are poster graphics. Since TheTVDB.com is the default scraper for XBMC and the banner graphics are more numerous, its not like I'm some crackhead for wanting them to work with this skin. In fact I would make the argument that its entirely reasonable to want to do things this way, since this appears to be what lots and lots of people are using for their TV show icons.

That may be the case today and it is certainly subject to change over time. Just take a look a this thread and the number of images that have been created and uploaded to thetbdb.com specifically for this skin.

Also note that thetvdb is making changes to their site and api in order to accomodate proper scraping of the 16x9 format just for Aeon and any future skins that want to support them. (see here). Several people have summed it up before, just because it was always done one way doesn't mean it has to continue that way. djh_ decided to break the trend and try something new and quite a few people seem to enjoy the new look.

All the power to you in trying to create a mod for the banners - I hacked around in the Viewtype_Multiplex.xml for a few hours and it really just doesn't work well there - too much is linked between Series and Episode views. At leat for my piss poor skinning skills.

Just my 2 cents...

-stoli-

The only practical way to incorporate them that was discussed was to use the List view's Full mode.