vote yes if....
you think it would increase the number of skinners & skins.
the current model is not flexible and you want to put items where you decide to, not where the engine developer say you must. ie: weather, sys info, ram, etc on main screen.
you'd like to have differnet icons for each folder and any type of video, audio or any file extension or from within any folder.
you'd like to separate your games, programs, tv shows, or anything else you decide to have separate screens for... not allowing the developer to decide for you what should go together. and access any of them from any other screen directly.
you'd like to have a home button on each screen!!!
you'd like to have templates so all your script screen automatically have the same background as your skin, even when changing skins.
you'd like to be able to create a new screen, by hand, in 30 seconds because the objects a(like controls and control groups) are already defined in a definition file and all you need to do to use the same control on the screen is put in one line of code! thus, reusing objects that are only needed to be defined in 1 place, not in each xml file you want to use it in.
and a sh!t load more if the model was a true object model.
vote no if...
you do not want any of the above abilities.
you like being locked into a model designed by someone else that requires you to repeat the same basic layout/design and only change the graphics... woopie!
(affini @ jan. 22 2005,20:06 Wrote:vote yes if....
you think it would increase the number of skinners & skins.
i don't think that any of your suggestions will increase the number of skinners or skins. in fact i think it will do the exact opposite.
if the goal is to make xbmc easier to skin then you would want things to be less flexible with xbmc deciding the placement and size of everything. the skinner would only responsible for deciding what textures it uses (ala xbmp).
the inability to display hard drive temperatures on the home screen isn't stopping people from creating xbmc skins. 50+ xml files, 5 tv standards, and 200+ required textures is.
(pin87a @ jan. 22 2005,14:11 Wrote:i don't think that any of your suggestions will increase the number of skinners or skins. in fact i think it will do the exact opposite.
if the goal is to make xbmc easier to skin then you would want things to be less flexible with xbmc deciding the placement and size of everything. the skinner would only responsible for deciding what textures it uses (ala xbmp).
pin,
are you serious? that is like an auto manufacturer saying... "we'd sell more vehicles if we only gave the buyers one vehicle to buy but let them pick from any color they wanted."
omg... pin, you should really take a look at how the world runs and why people buy/want goods & services. it is choice. not limitation.
no offence but i'm not really sure if you 'earned' the right to post a poll like this as you're not a skinner nor a programmer yourself, plus it is very subjectivly written :hmm:
...even if this poll should be allowed to stay then it should only be skinners who have the right to vote as users only hear; "add new/more * or?" and say "hell yeah!"
gamester,
i understand what you are saying. i'd like to leave it open to all for simply that some that are not currently skinners for xbmc may become skinners if the object based engine is implimented.
i fall into this category. i am a skinner for other products and also design guis for web pages used as control interfaces. so i completely understand the process that goes into it.
while i do not code serious languages like c, i do understand methodologies and concepts for many languages like c and i do some basic vb, java, etc. nothing fantastic like xbmc.
i hope you understand my reasoning behind wanting this engine change.
(affini @ jan. 23 2005,15:35 Wrote: (pin87a @ jan. 22 2005,14:11 Wrote:i don't think that any of your suggestions will increase the number of skinners or skins. in fact i think it will do the exact opposite.
if the goal is to make xbmc easier to skin then you would want things to be less flexible with xbmc deciding the placement and size of everything. the skinner would only responsible for deciding what textures it uses (ala xbmp).
pin,
are you serious? that is like an auto manufacturer saying... "we'd sell more vehicles if we only gave the buyers one vehicle to buy but let them pick from any color they wanted."
omg... pin, you should really take a look at how the world runs and why people buy/want goods & services. it is choice. not limitation.
you said "vote yes if....you think it would increase the number of skinners & skins."
so i answered that question.
i don't think a more flexible skinning system will increase the number of skinners and skins.
it would just add another layer of complexity that would probably lead to less skinners and skins.
i didn't say that i wanted xbmc to become like that, i just said that it would be the best way to make skinning "easier."
as for your ideas...
you can already put a "home" button on any screen and access any screen from another.
<hyperlink>id of the screen you want to go to</hyperlink>
almost every script already uses "background.png" as the background image. if you wanted you could easily use "background.png" as a script background and for every other screen use "somethingelse.png."
you already can define most common objects in references.xml and re-use them with a few lines of xml.
the xbmc "skinning engine" is actually pretty damn flexible once you get used to working with it.
anyways...i think that any time put towards adding features/ui changes should be used for making xbmc better as a whole (for everyone and every skin) and not used to put the control of the entire xbmc interface in the hands of the skinners.
(affini @ jan. 23 2005,15:35 Wrote: (pin87a @ jan. 22 2005,14:11 Wrote:i don't think that any of your suggestions will increase the number of skinners or skins. in fact i think it will do the exact opposite.
if the goal is to make xbmc easier to skin then you would want things to be less flexible with xbmc deciding the placement and size of everything. the skinner would only responsible for deciding what textures it uses (ala xbmp).
pin, are you serious? that is like an auto manufacturer saying... "we'd sell more vehicles if we only gave the buyers one vehicle to buy but let them pick from any color they wanted."
omg... pin, you should really take a look at how the world runs and why people buy/want goods & services. it is choice. not limitation.
@affini, by your argument the evox/evolutionx dashboard should be the least popular xbox app to skin, but 'oddly' it's the other way around. evox/evolutionx has 10's of thousands of skins available because it's so easy to skin, just two background pictures, (now you can't get much more inflexible than that). to compare on pc you have winamp which is also skinnable and very popular to skin just because it's so easy, and it's only easy because you can't change anything, all you can do is add your texture. my point being that you can't all the choices available in real-life commercial production with the available alternatives to skin a homebrew software application like xbmc.
ps! again about the subjectivity of this poll and how you format the options, what would do you think would be the outcome if i created a poll that said;
do you want xbmc-devs to spend time on "1. adding new features/functions" or "2. extend the skin-engine that's already not being used to its full potential"
i think the only way to attract more skinners is to make a skinning-program for windows. in my opinion the skinning-engine is flexible enough - but there is of course some room for improvements (show harddisk-free-space in the filemanager, xmv-video-support in the gui...)
i totally agree with pin87...
changing topic from "who want a easier & more flexible skinning engine?" to "who want a more flexible skinning engine?" since in this case they contredict each other
ok ok ok - look guys: can you think of any skinning engine that offers as much as the current xbmc engine??
i think no other application on the globe gives you that much freedom... and i also think, too much freedom in the ui is just confusing the user - i have never heard of an app, wehere you have to ask "what skin are you using?" when youre trying to help out on another guys problem - i mean its skins whats the point of building a completely different structure? having one, good structure is no bad thing at all...
besides:
Quote:the current model is not flexible and you want to put items where you decide to, not where the engine developer say you must. ie: weather, sys info, ram, etc on main screen.
i have never seen the point in having any of these in the home screen (keeping in mind that theres not much room anyways and you can reach evrything within xbmc with between 1 and max 4 buttonclicks if you just understand how to set it up)
Quote:you'd like to have differnet icons for each folder and any type of video, audio or any file extension or from within any folder.
already possible... have fun creating icons for all the supported filetypes how many are there? 60?
Quote:you'd like to separate your games, programs, tv shows, or anything else you decide to have separate screens for... not allowing the developer to decide for you what should go together. and access any of them from any other screen directly.
sounds like one hellova mess.... plus you can seperate things allready - again learn how to set things up
Quote:you'd like to have a home button on each screen!!!
you already have that - the back button on the controller and the menu button on the remote goes directly to the home screen in almost any situation
Quote:you'd like to have templates so all your script screen automatically have the same background as your skin, even when changing skins.
possible without any problem if the script author know his shyt
Quote:you'd like to be able to create a new screen, by hand, in 30 seconds because the objects a(like controls and control groups) are already defined in a definition file and all you need to do to use the same control on the screen is put in one line of code! thus, reusing objects that are only needed to be defined in 1 place, not in each xml file you want to use it in.
pfff
Quote:you like being locked into a model designed by someone else that requires you to repeat the same basic layout/design and only change the graphics... woopie!
big: pffff simply not true
voted no
you come up with your own finished skin b4 complaining like this
personally i would like to see myvideos/mymusic/mypictures/myprograms go the way of settings.
here is how it could work.
<global></global> - everything within these tags applies to every screen.
then outside the global (or in a seperate xml file, it dosn't matter) the elements that are different would be in the window>/<id> tags and inside those would be the screen specific settings.
finally the buttons that are usually on the left (switch view/imdb/etc) become something similar to the button scroller in home.xml. this eliminates the need for myvideostitle.xml myvideo.xml myvideoplaylist.xml etc.
yea that would be an advantage - we already thought about making only one xml for music and one for vids - based on the settings idea
i think that they could put 80% of whats in the xboxmediacenter.xml into the setting in the gui. instead of makeing more xml to complicate things. i also see the amount of different xml files for skinning as a problem. i believe one or two large xmls would make it less complex to skin and the devolpment of a pc app to format and edit the xml in a controllered way so that less human typing errors can happen making the xmls. plus the addition of an app to let you preview the images as they overlay and are ajusted by the xml. i would love to start making skins for xbmc but i give up soon after seeing the amount of seperate files i need to make just in the configuration department then the huge amount of images aswell. the images are a given but all the little intricet xmls if too much one or two large ione would lessen the load.