2012-05-03, 11:52
I've been thinking about this some more and although I might be digging my own hole considering skin re-coding that would need to take place, I wonder what do you think about taking this step further. Considering this major update to XBMC organization and work involved both in XBMC and skin code maybe we should make it more agnostic and get advanced users more involved in altering XBMC look and feel. I propose:
1) Index.xml (/userdata/database/index.xml) containing list of links for home page main navigation. This would be user customizable set of links for home page. Each item in this list would need to have an ID. Basically, it is what we have now - we have only moved <content>...</content> of main navigation list to index.xml
2) Instead of {video} and {video_flat} we place folders named after IDs from index.xml containing filters for that item. Given that "Movies" in index.xml have ID="1", our folder should be named "1". We put our filters there if we want them or just don't make folder "1" if we want to go directly to "Movies".
Ad 1: we reserve ID=9000 for main navigation on home page so that list of user created links in index.xml can be passed to it
Ad 2: we reserve ID=9001-9050 for main navigation sublist (filters) so we can pass defined filters (9001 sublist = filters item id=1 in container 9000)
This way maybe we don't need flatten/unflatten, we can use it for music and other XBMC sections as well as for videos and we can have customizable home screen as well.
Just as an example, I prefer grouping all my add ons under "Addons" menu and I have "home" menu on home screen, containing pictures and home videos.
For organizing links and filters, we could have a new screen similar to file browser. Not sure about drag and drop, as I really think mouse does not be log to XBMC, but we can have "move up" and "move down" as in favorites. BTW, people are already using favorites to assign custom links on home page, both main and filters so what I'm proposing above is not really new thing rather suggestion for doing it in official and more user friendly manner. Only thing you can not do through favorites ATM is assigning thumbs and fanart to your preferred links.
1) Index.xml (/userdata/database/index.xml) containing list of links for home page main navigation. This would be user customizable set of links for home page. Each item in this list would need to have an ID. Basically, it is what we have now - we have only moved <content>...</content> of main navigation list to index.xml
2) Instead of {video} and {video_flat} we place folders named after IDs from index.xml containing filters for that item. Given that "Movies" in index.xml have ID="1", our folder should be named "1". We put our filters there if we want them or just don't make folder "1" if we want to go directly to "Movies".
Ad 1: we reserve ID=9000 for main navigation on home page so that list of user created links in index.xml can be passed to it
Ad 2: we reserve ID=9001-9050 for main navigation sublist (filters) so we can pass defined filters (9001 sublist = filters item id=1 in container 9000)
This way maybe we don't need flatten/unflatten, we can use it for music and other XBMC sections as well as for videos and we can have customizable home screen as well.
Just as an example, I prefer grouping all my add ons under "Addons" menu and I have "home" menu on home screen, containing pictures and home videos.
For organizing links and filters, we could have a new screen similar to file browser. Not sure about drag and drop, as I really think mouse does not be log to XBMC, but we can have "move up" and "move down" as in favorites. BTW, people are already using favorites to assign custom links on home page, both main and filters so what I'm proposing above is not really new thing rather suggestion for doing it in official and more user friendly manner. Only thing you can not do through favorites ATM is assigning thumbs and fanart to your preferred links.
