2007-07-23, 22:39
I'm working on an alternative home screen/launcher menu. I might have to make a separate skin for it depending on how complex it gets. It probably won't be of any use for most people, so I doubt I'll make it public, but you never know 
It's still a very early work in progress, but I'm pleased with how it's going so far - WindowXML's made development so much easier, I haven't written an XBMC script for a while & the GUI situation has really improved!
I share a house with quite a few friends. We've got our combined DVD collection ripped & stored on a network server (almost 2TB of XviD-encoded movies & TV series) and a few live TV channels being streamed over the network too. Between us we've got 6 xboxes, and XBMC is the main way we watch TV. We've been using it over 3 years now & have a pretty good feel for which features we use the most - I'm aiming to make just those features quicker to access, which is why it'll probably be useless for most users.
The menu's been inspired by a few things - mostly by the simplicity of the Wii menu and the PM3 style/colour scheme. Everything's loaded from XML at runtime, so it's easy to add, remove or reorganise channels. Navigation works over a number of pages, each page displaying 12 channels at a time, which can be accessed by browsing through the menu or entering a 3-digit channel number using the Xbox remote control (with a bit of keymap.xml tweaking). Highlighting a channel changes the menu background & causes the selected channel button to cycle through a set of images (the result of my multiimage headaches!)
"Channels" can represent many different features of XBMC - a script, a direct file/stream link, access to a network share using the video/music browser, an XBMC window (e.g. weather) or an XBE file. I'm going to add buttons for Settings & the power menu to the bar at the bottom of the screen but haven't got round to it yet.
Like I said, it's not very mature yet - the UI still needs work & there's absolutely no error checking, but here's what it looks like so far:
It's still a very early work in progress, but I'm pleased with how it's going so far - WindowXML's made development so much easier, I haven't written an XBMC script for a while & the GUI situation has really improved!I share a house with quite a few friends. We've got our combined DVD collection ripped & stored on a network server (almost 2TB of XviD-encoded movies & TV series) and a few live TV channels being streamed over the network too. Between us we've got 6 xboxes, and XBMC is the main way we watch TV. We've been using it over 3 years now & have a pretty good feel for which features we use the most - I'm aiming to make just those features quicker to access, which is why it'll probably be useless for most users.
The menu's been inspired by a few things - mostly by the simplicity of the Wii menu and the PM3 style/colour scheme. Everything's loaded from XML at runtime, so it's easy to add, remove or reorganise channels. Navigation works over a number of pages, each page displaying 12 channels at a time, which can be accessed by browsing through the menu or entering a 3-digit channel number using the Xbox remote control (with a bit of keymap.xml tweaking). Highlighting a channel changes the menu background & causes the selected channel button to cycle through a set of images (the result of my multiimage headaches!)
"Channels" can represent many different features of XBMC - a script, a direct file/stream link, access to a network share using the video/music browser, an XBMC window (e.g. weather) or an XBE file. I'm going to add buttons for Settings & the power menu to the bar at the bottom of the screen but haven't got round to it yet.
Like I said, it's not very mature yet - the UI still needs work & there's absolutely no error checking, but here's what it looks like so far:
