[Jeroen]

reFocus 1.4.0 preview release

A preview release of reFocus 1.4.0 is now available through the repository add-on.

Based on reported issues one or more release candidates will be released after this, after that a final stable version will be submitted to the official XBMC repository.

Dependencies. Important, read this first!
This version of reFocus relies on newer versions of the Skin Shortcuts add-on and the Library Data Provider add-on. These versions are not available on the XBMC repository yet. You will have to install these manually first. If you don't, you will get a "dependencies not met" error and you will not be able to install this version of reFocus.

Contrary to what I said a while ago, I will not be distributing non-final releases of these add-ons through the repo.


A recap on the most important changes

The biggest change in this release is be the revamped widget system. A lot of other changes, including this horizontal menu that I finished weeks ago, were dependant on finalizing this new widgets system. I wanted absolute feature parity between the horizontal menu and the vertical menu, and that was quite a challenge because of skinning engine limitations and usability issues. At the end of the day though, I'm quite pleased

Passive widgets
This is the new horizontal home menu, with what I refer to as "passive widgets" enabled. That means widgets are enabled and configured, but they aren't visible until you call them by pressing up from the main menu (or press right when you use the vertical home menu)



When you do, it will fade and slide the widget into view from the top (or right when you use the vertical menu), and the main menu will hide. This, of course, can't be demonstrated properly with static images.



Pressing down (or back) will slide and fade the widget out of view again.

Notice the indicator in the top left. When the widget is hidden it will show you the widget that is configured for the main menu item you are currently on. It will also show you the first item in that widget and use an icon to indicate which button to press to get to the widget. When the widget is visible and active, it will show you the item count and the icon will indicate the scroll direction.

This all of course adapts to either the horizontal or vertical home menu.

Active widgets
A different widget mode is activated by enabling the "always show widgets" skin setting. Any configured widgets will then always display when focused on the main menu item that widget is tied to:



Like with the passive widgets pressing up or right will take you into the widget here as well. In this case though, the widget is already visible of course and the home menu will slide down the bottom of the screen. Pressing down (or back) will return the home menu back into view.

When you're focused on a main menu item with no widget configured, you will see whatever background image you have set in the skin settings. So, enabling widgets will no longer disable the background image options, and you will be able to enjoy both.

Supported widgets
The skin currently provides these widgets:

• Episodes watchlist (the first unwatched episode of all shows you're watching)
  
• Movies watchlist (all movies you started watching)
  
• Recently added videos (a list of the most recently added movies and episodes, all in one list)
  
• Recently added movies
  
• Recently added episodes
  
• Recently added albums
  
• Recommended albums
  
• Now Playing music
  
• Weather (using weather fanart)
  
• Playlist (turn one of the included, or your own smart playists into a widget)
  

I plan to add more widgets later, like a PVR widget showing you information like scheduled recordings for example.

A screenshot of the now playing widget:



Configuring the widgets
This can be done in the home customization window you're probably familiar with already:



Finally
Needless to say it is possible to disable (or just not configure any) widgets if you have no need for them. Also, the vertical menu is not being replaced. It is, and will always be, the default. It will be styled slightly different to look consistent with the horizontal menu.

The horizontal menu I posted about some time ago is gone and not coming back. Please don't ask about / for it.

[Mister B]

Sweet!
Just fired up 1.4.0-pr, which seemed to install successfully.

Love the horizontal menu! Love the new widgets! Woohoo!

Quick observation though based on about 30 seconds of use:

It looks like the new home screen menu uses a different typeface than everywhere else? Maybe I'm used to seeing the 1.3 home screen, or maybe it's just the fact that the new home screen menu items are all upper-case. It seems a bit of a stylistic inconsistency, since titles at the top of movies/tv/music views etc. are in all lower-case and not-condensed, which makes the new home screen almost feel like another theme entirely.. meh, maybe it will grow on me, I feel like the all-uppercase-menu/all-lowercase-page-titles discrepancy just really jumps out at me now..

But! ... otherwise I'm really digging it.

Cheers!

[removed151214]

Quick observations from about 30 minutes of usage

The horizontal menu looks as striking in person as it did in the screenshots - love it. One issue - When there's more than 5 submenu items, the last one can be focused, but the menu doesn't scroll for it to actually appear on screen. Slight sizing issue? (iirc, XBMC won't scroll the menu if even one pixel is actually visible - so if the width of the entire menu was, for example, 501 and each menu item was 100.)

Have to agree with Mister B on the fonts. Actually, the uppercase fits nicely on the horizontal menu, but didn't feel quite right when I first saw it on the vertical menu. I've no doubt it'll grow on me though!

One suggestion - how about an indicator that there are more items in the main and submenus on the horizontal layout. Something minimal and unobtrusive, like a small dot at either end if you can scroll further that way?

I've been looking forward to this after your teases and it's not disappointed. As always, your attention to detail shines through. Fantastic work!

[carmenm]

Just tested 1.4.0, LOVING IT.
The horizontal layout is great, will try it out for sometime. But i might come back to the vertical one as it is too amazing!

Thanks

[Mister B]

Well, that's didn't take long. Somehow the home screen menu in 1.4.0 got borked for me... the only thing visible is my global fanart image. No menu or widgets... and no obvious way to restore the menu, not sure what happened. Ah the joys of beta testing

But I don't see a way to revert back to 1.3.3...

Tried reinstalling the skin through the xbmc repo but that's showing 1.4.0-pr1 ??

I guess that means it's time for bed.

[removed151214]

Try deleting script-skinshortcuts-includes.xml in the skin.refocus/720p folder - that will cause the menu to be rebuilt.

[Slurrrp]

Wow.. just wow.. very cool jeroen also really loving it, well done sir!


Things i noticed in the short time of using it, apart from the 5 submenu items unfledged already mentioned, when listening to music the background on the home menu stays black and the now playing widget doesnt work correctly for me (music and video).

[BigDaddyRal]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

For years I have loved this skin for it's clean, sharp, beautiful, professional look but I have never liked the home menu (I'm not a vertical fan). As a result I would bounce around to different skins but always come back to this because I loved all the rest of the interface. However now, with this gorgeous horizontal menu, this is the absolute perfect skin!

You, sir, have built my perfect dream skin!

Now the only time I will switch to another skin is to quickly check my library totals.

Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

[Galefury]

After changing submenus, the widgets reset (to none). I use passive widgets.

[braz]

Noticed that when playing music the Artist Slideshow doesn't fill the screen, the fanart is positioned 200px from the top. Changed the multiimage top from 200 to 0 in MusicVisualization.xml and all is good again.

Great update, starting to use widgets now. Agree with the others that the uppercase menu font looks strange at first, but will probably grow on me too. I like that the submenu font is slightly smaller, makes them stand apart a little more now.

Thanks!

[removed151214]

After changing submenus, the widgets reset (to none). I use passive widgets.

Had you made a change to the main menu? (Either previously, or at the same time as editing the submenu.) If not, this is a known bug with the skin shortcuts script which will be fixed in due course. If you had, then its a new bug which I'll look at after my holiday

Edit: the other thing worth checking - if you happen to come back and read this - is that you're on the latest git version of skin shortcuts. There was a version on Jeroens repo for a few days which had a couple of bugs saving additional properties (like widgets). I believe the version on Jeroens repo had a higher version number than the git version (0.3.5pr as opposed to 0.3.5), so XBMC may not update it 100% cleanly. But, as I say, I look into it properly next weekend.

[Galefury]

Yes, I made changes before.

[Mister B]

Try deleting script-skinshortcuts-includes.xml in the skin.refocus/720p folder - that will cause the menu to be rebuilt.

Yes indeed, that got my menu back. Thanks for the help!

-B

[Mister B]

Ok, slightly longer post now that I've had a chance to play with 1.4.0 some more.

This is just a catalog of visual niggles which are not really bugs per se (and not necessarily specific to 1.4.0) and are probably personal preference more than anything, but here goes...

• I like the widget indicators, but they're a different size and alignment than the toast notifications:



...which is not a big deal since the notifications are only there for a second, but still, it feels like these 2 things ought to use the same style, the only difference being the left vs. right alignment.


• I know mouse control is not officially supported, but it more-or-less works in places and there is a Pointer.png provided.
But Pointer.xml defines it as 32px x 32px, whereas Pointer.png is 22px x 21px, so the stretch makes it pretty blurry. I made a 32px x 32px replacement to drop into my copy:




• The line representing genre in the video info dialog has a different height than everything else in the list, which I've highlighted here:



Poking around in DialogVideoInfo.xml, I see that the height of that element is set to 24:

Code:

                <!--info container-->
                <control type="grouplist" id="1000">
                    <orientation>vertical</orientation>
                    <height>320</height>
                    <itemgap>0</itemgap>
                    <control type="group">
                        <width>720</width>
                        <height>24</height>
                        <visible>!IsEmpty(ListItem.Genre)</visible>
                        <control type="label">
                            <width>720</width>
                            <label>$LOCALIZE[515] [COLOR=Color1]$INFO[ListItem.Genre][/COLOR]</label>
                            <include>detail_Sub</include>
                            <include>autoscroll_Line</include>
                        </control>
                    </control>

...whereas the height of everything else in that grouplist is 22. Not sure if that was intentional, but figured I'd point it out in case not, because I'm OCD that way.


• As for the new upper-case and condensed styling, I tried a little experiment, reverting the Condensed uppercase and Black uppercase styles back to Regular and SemiBold uppercase, respectively:



...which I feel really unifies the widget layout with everything else. Again, I realize this is going to be a personal preference and that some people will like the new condensed uppercase styling. I'm just a stickler for consistency, and so I'll probably reduce the set of typefaces for my local copy of the skin to just Light, Regular and SemiBold, used the same way throughout. It just feels more solid to have a consistent set of typeface styles. Especially in the above example, the descriptions of the Macross episode in the widget, and the description of the Macross Tv series in the video info dialog. It just feels right to have those be the same style...

Anyhow! That's just my designer OCD getting in everyone's way. Hope I'm not stepping on your toes, Jeroen.
I just wanted to offer some constructive feedback from one designer to another, since I really do think yours is the best xbmc skin out there!

Cheers!

-B

[fabiomello]

installed 1.4.0 here and played around with it for a bit, and although it seems to have some nice changes, but some things doesn't feel quite right.


1. The new font (all capitalized) works well on the vertical layout, but it doesn't look as good as the previous one on the Horizontal one. (some items that used to fit, don't fit anymore)
2. one thing that it really liked about refocus was the global widget. (the way that the widget is the same no matter the menu item you are in) could you add an option to have them back?
3. the submenu won't slide after the 5th item, the cursor disappears.