Quote:Hi everyone,

I have an announcement to make about the future of reFocus.

Let me make clear right from the start I have no intention to abandon reFocus. However, development on the skin from my end will be scaled back significantly. A stable Krypton version will be released as soon as possible. After that I will try to keep the skin compatible with future Kodi releases but no big new features will be added by me.

There are several reasons for this. The first being reFocus has actually become what I set it out to be and more and better, in my personal use I am not missing anything from it. I started work on reFocus probably about 7 or 8 years ago and I have released versions for all but one Kodi release. While the WIP skins section has people jumping on a new sweetheart skin (mock-up) every week or so, I cannot think of many skins that have been around consistently for such a long time.

Being prolific has never been a reason for me to start skinning. I simply wanted my own vision of a skin to come to life starting way back in 2005 or so when I started what was to become Focus, my first skin for XBMC on the original XBOX. After various mutations this led to reFocus. An appropriate name as the goal was to rethink everything and take what I had learned to the next level both in execution and design.

A couple of months ago though some new concepts started to emerge, and coupled with some old pre-reFocus ideas these have led to what is slowly starting to become a new skin. Finding time for skinning has been getting harder as I get older, so investing the time needed to do it in a way that lives up to my own standards for two skins is not a luxury I have.

So for the foreseeable future I will be spending the majority of my time skinning on my new skin which is to be called Grid.

As I said I do want to keep reFocus alive. So this announcement is also a call to the community. I am looking for people with skinning experience (or a true desire to learn) to contribute to it's future development. The main goal will be to keep reFocus compatible with future Kodi releases. Implementing new Kodi features into reFocus will be secondary. Design changes or implementing new skin features will depend on how I feel they fit in the skin.

People can of course release mods, but for the official version this is the only way for me to handle this as the skin has been a labour of love to me.

That said, great ideas by others have made their way into the skin more than once... And it goes without saying contributions by others will be fully credited.

Anyway, that's the status at the moment. But I am definitely not going anywhere

Cheers,

Jeroen

(2017-01-28, 21:00)Raitsa Wrote: Long live reFocus!

Seriously, very big thanks for all the work you have done to it.
Its been my fave skin since discovering it, very easy to edit and very pleasing to the eyes.

Looking very much forward to trying out Grid.

And very happy to see that you are not leaving

(2017-01-28, 21:34)saltynuttz Wrote: I love the reFocus skin and have been using it for the last 4 years! It's has only been recently that I've switched to something else with the release candidate for 17 .

I hope that Grid will be just as amazing!

[emoji1]

(2017-01-31, 10:14)nickr Wrote: @Jeroen, firstly thanks for your contributions, over a long time. Independent skinners are a huge part of what makes kodi what it is today.

Now your post made me want to try refocus. On my Krypton test machine (a linux laptop) I installed your repo and tried to install refocus. I get an error that the dependency on xbmc.gui 5.3.0 couldn't be satisfied.

What am I doing wrong? (1st thing is probably posting in the wrong thread, direct me elsewhere by all means).

(2017-02-01, 23:03)Slurrrp Wrote: You really scared me there buddy..

Also from me a lot of gratitude for all the work you've done! (Re)focus has been my skin for years and years. And it's still such a joy to use on a daily basis. That's pretty unique, same as i believe you are as a person [FLUSHED FACE]

Don't waste your time investigating stuff i mention if you don't experience it and nobody else reports it, please.

I'm too very curious about your new project: Grid!

Much love!!

(2017-02-05, 03:18)ZwartePiet Wrote: Thanks for your work, Jeroen. XBMC and ReFocus have been synonymous to me over the last few years. It's something I use and appreciate everyday.

(2017-02-05, 07:17)juus Wrote: Great work on the ONLY skin I use!!!
Would follow Grid, if reFocus is anything o go by then it should be as good if not better.