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Release Mimic 1.x for Helix
(2014-12-27, 15:40)lowfi Wrote: Is it possible to always show the widgets on the main menu?

Sorry for the bump Wink
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javiermon Wrote:Hi bryanbrazil. Thanks for this skin, now that I've upgraded to kodi it's my current skin, very nice and clean.

I've also been looking at your mod of reFocus, and I have to say that I like better the clock + weather info from that skin, i.e. without a background color bar and using a simbolic icon for the weather. Do you think that could be added to mimic?
bryanbrazil Wrote:I like the refocus clock/weather too, but don't think it will work here. The topbar is also used for infolines, paging, etc. Will likely leave as-is.

Can you at least include the icon for the weather in the topbar? I would love to see if it's ranning and cold outside Big Grin
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bryanbrazil, I very much like Your work, thank You! Mimic skin have very nice flat and clean interface and good layout and this is definitely one of the nicest Xbmc/Kodi skin! Also I like Your kind and helpful attitude Smile

Here is some thoughts and suggestions to make this skin even better and more functional:

1. In music library all pictures are with fixed aspect ratio. I think that's not very good idea, because not all pictures exactly or similar to 1:1 aspect ratio. Specially artist pictures and CD-single front covers. This causes left-right side or top-bottom side cutoff and output is not very nice. In music file mode skin shows album covers in original aspect ratio.
SUGGESTION: Please set max width an height to artist/album covers (not fixed size and aspect ratio) or add option to choose picture mode.

2. It would be very nice if there will be option to move rating stars from music library album and track list. For me this is absolutely useless option, it's only wasting space in lists and doesn't look very good (in my opinion).
SUGGESTION: If You don't want to remove rating stars from list, please add option to turn stars off.

3. In music library I like to see artist, albums and songs in list view. With slim list option enabled this is definitely best view mode for me, but this view lacks artist/album/track info. In right there is enough space for that.
SUGGESTION: Please add artist/album/song in list view to right pane, to the top or to the bottom of artist/album picture.

4. If music is playing, You can see now playing info only in main menu and in fullscreen mode. It would very nice to see it in list too, like in basic Confluence skin. Now also You can see only how many tracks in album/list, but can't see total duration of album/list.
SUGGESTION: Please add info to list screens to see now playing track info, track progress info (for example: Da Hool - Meet Her At The Love Parade 4:35 / 7:31). I think best way to do that is add bottom bar (except to main menu and settings screens). That bottom bar will show now playing info on left, total duration, items and pagination info on right. When bottom bar is added, You can keep weather/date/time info to the right of the top bar, even in list screens. Then also breadcrumb have more space, now time is in center of top bar and cutting off wider breadcrumbs.

5. Number areas not with fixed width and that causes pretty annoying surrounded area movement. Some examples: in main menu top bar, when time is changing from 18:21 to 18:22, then date and weather areas are moving, because time area width changing. Same in now playing track time info.
SUGGESTION: Please fix width of areas with changing numbers.

As You can see, all my suggestions and requests are reated with music listening, because I'm a big fan of music and most of time I use Kodi for music listening Smile

EDIT: I found one little bug too. In skin settings, in main menu setup section, select infoline window title is Imdb Top 250.
Reply
(2014-12-28, 15:02)lowfi Wrote:
(2014-12-27, 15:40)lowfi Wrote: Is it possible to always show the widgets on the main menu?

Sorry for the bump Wink

See posts #134 and #137.

(2014-12-28, 18:04)javiermon Wrote: Can you at least include the icon for the weather in the topbar? I would love to see if it's ranning and cold outside Big Grin

Sorry, I don't think it will fit well in the top bar.
Reply
(2014-12-28, 19:56)bryanbrazil Wrote:
(2014-12-28, 18:04)javiermon Wrote: Can you at least include the icon for the weather in the topbar? I would love to see if it's ranning and cold outside Big Grin

Sorry, I don't think it will fit well in the top bar.
Flat monochrome weather icons will be fit very well, I think Smile
Reply
(2014-12-28, 18:38)djstallion Wrote: bryanbrazil, I very much like Your work, thank You! Mimic skin have very nice flat and clean interface and good layout and this is definitely one of the nicest Xbmc/Kodi skin! Also I like Your kind and helpful attitude Smile

Here is some thoughts and suggestions to make this skin even better and more functional:

1. In music library all pictures are with fixed aspect ratio. I think that's not very good idea, because not all pictures exactly or similar to 1:1 aspect ratio. Specially artist pictures and CD-single front covers. This causes left-right side or top-bottom side cutoff and output is not very nice. In music file mode skin shows album covers in original aspect ratio.
SUGGESTION: Please set max width an height to artist/album covers (not fixed size and aspect ratio) or add option to choose picture mode.

2. It would be very nice if there will be option to move rating stars from music library album and track list. For me this is absolutely useless option, it's only wasting space in lists and doesn't look very good (in my opinion).
SUGGESTION: If You don't want to remove rating stars from list, please add option to turn stars off.

3. In music library I like to see artist, albums and songs in list view. With slim list option enabled this is definitely best view mode for me, but this view lacks artist/album/track info. In right there is enough space for that.
SUGGESTION: Please add artist/album/song in list view to right pane, to the top or to the bottom of artist/album picture.

4. If music is playing, You can see now playing info only in main menu and in fullscreen mode. It would very nice to see it in list too, like in basic Confluence skin. Now also You can see only how many tracks in album/list, but can't see total duration of album/list.
SUGGESTION: Please add info to list screens to see now playing track info, track progress info (for example: Da Hool - Meet Her At The Love Parade 4:35 / 7:31). I think best way to do that is add bottom bar (except to main menu and settings screens). That bottom bar will show now playing info on left, total duration, items and pagination info on right. When bottom bar is added, You can keep weather/date/time info to the right of the top bar, even in list screens. Then also breadcrumb have more space, now time is in center of top bar and cutting off wider breadcrumbs.

5. Number areas not with fixed width and that causes pretty annoying surrounded area movement. Some examples: in main menu top bar, when time is changing from 18:21 to 18:22, then date and weather areas are moving, because time area width changing. Same in now playing track time info.
SUGGESTION: Please fix width of areas with changing numbers.

As You can see, all my suggestions and requests are reated with music listening, because I'm a big fan of music and most of time I use Kodi for music listening Smile

EDIT: I found one little bug too. In skin settings, in main menu setup section, select infoline window title is Imdb Top 250.

Thanks for the suggestions!

1. IMO it looks better to have a uniform thumb size for music. The standard aspect ratio on fanart.tv etc is 1:1. I think users should make square thumbs rather than have the skin conform to non-standard sizes.

2. I agree that album ratings probably aren't that useful. I use song ratings quite a bit though, especially to create a favorites music playlist based on the rating. Will leave as-is for now, don't want to add another setting. You can mod this to remove the star ratings. Just open up the view xml and search for "starrating", then delete or comment out those controls.

3. Just checked slim list for music and it shows the same information as the standard list view. Tracks are listed as Track Number - Artist - Track Name. The album name is shown in the breadcrumb. Plan to leave as-is, though I will likely move the star ratings after the track name.

4. I agree that it would be nice to see now playing info in the library views. I'll take a look and see if there's a good way to add it.

5. I don't see that here. The time and date/weather labels are independent of each other. So any changes to the size of the time label should not affect the position of the date/weather label. Can you show me a screenshot?

Thanks for reporting the infoline window title bug, it is now fixed on git. Cheers!
Reply
(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 1. IMO it looks better to have a uniform thumb size for music. The standard aspect ratio on fanart.tv etc is 1:1. I think users should make square thumbs rather than have the skin conform to non-standard sizes.
I'm using local art for artists and albums. Because of original aspect ratio of CD-single cover is not possible to cut thumbs with 1:1 aspect ratio. Also many less-known artists have only one-two pictures in the internet and these are not always possible to cut 1:1 aspect ratio. I agree, It looks better if possible to use always 1:1 art, but there is not. As I said, for non-library lists now art stays in original aspect ratio and IMO that's very OK.

(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 2. I agree that album ratings probably aren't that useful. I use song ratings quite a bit though, especially to create a favorites music playlist based on the rating. Will leave as-is for now, don't want to add another setting. You can mod this to remove the star ratings. Just open up the view xml and search for "starrating", then delete or comment out those controls.
I can do that, but after the next skin update my changes are gone. Commenting out or deleting "starrating" removes stars, but leaves empty space before album/song name.

(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 3. Just checked slim list for music and it shows the same information as the standard list view. Tracks are listed as Track Number - Artist - Track Name. The album name is shown in the breadcrumb. Plan to leave as-is, though I will likely move the star ratings after the track name.
You misunderstood my point. In library with list view (either standard or slim) won't show artist/album/track extra information, like example InfoWall wiew does (and SongList view for tracks) below the artist/album art.

(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 4. I agree that it would be nice to see now playing info in the library views. I'll take a look and see if there's a good way to add it.
Thank You, I will wait and hope the best Smile

(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 5. I don't see that here. The time and date/weather labels are independent of each other. So any changes to the size of the time label should not affect the position of the date/weather label. Can you show me a screenshot?
Please watch these two screenshots I made from main menu now playing info, then You will understand my point. 00:11 and 00:12 have different width and songs total time below that moving because of that. Same issue with time in top bar.

Image
Image
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(2014-12-28, 21:28)djstallion Wrote:
(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 1. IMO it looks better to have a uniform thumb size for music. The standard aspect ratio on fanart.tv etc is 1:1. I think users should make square thumbs rather than have the skin conform to non-standard sizes.
I'm using local art for artists and albums. Because of original aspect ratio of CD-single cover is not possible to cut thumbs with 1:1 aspect ratio. Also many less-known artists have only one-two pictures in the internet and these are not always possible to cut 1:1 aspect ratio. I agree, It looks better if possible to use always 1:1 art, but there is not. As I said, for non-library lists now art stays in original aspect ratio and IMO that's very OK.

For the artists that don't have artwork on fanart.tv or theaudiodb.com, you can support the community by creating and uploading thumbnails. That's the best way IMO.

(2014-12-28, 21:28)djstallion Wrote:
(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 2. I agree that album ratings probably aren't that useful. I use song ratings quite a bit though, especially to create a favorites music playlist based on the rating. Will leave as-is for now, don't want to add another setting. You can mod this to remove the star ratings. Just open up the view xml and search for "starrating", then delete or comment out those controls.
I can do that, but after the next skin update my changes are gone. Commenting out or deleting "starrating" removes stars, but leaves empty space before album/song name.

Yeah, you would have to move some of the other controls and redo the changes after a skin update. You can backup your modified xml to reapply after skin updates.

(2014-12-28, 21:28)djstallion Wrote:
(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 3. Just checked slim list for music and it shows the same information as the standard list view. Tracks are listed as Track Number - Artist - Track Name. The album name is shown in the breadcrumb. Plan to leave as-is, though I will likely move the star ratings after the track name.
You misunderstood my point. In library with list view (either standard or slim) won't show artist/album/track extra information, like example InfoWall wiew does (and SongList view for tracks) below the artist/album art.

Are we talking about song views here? Because InfoWall isn't available for songs. The only extra info that SongList has is the album year. Although I guess the album name in the topbar isn't available when viewing a playlist vs. viewing the album from the library.

(2014-12-28, 21:28)djstallion Wrote:
(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 4. I agree that it would be nice to see now playing info in the library views. I'll take a look and see if there's a good way to add it.
Thank You, I will wait and hope the best Smile

(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: 5. I don't see that here. The time and date/weather labels are independent of each other. So any changes to the size of the time label should not affect the position of the date/weather label. Can you show me a screenshot?
Please watch these two screenshots I made from main menu now playing info, then You will understand my point. 00:11 and 00:12 have different width and songs total time below that moving because of that. Same issue with time in top bar.

Image
Image

In your original post you mentioned topbar and date/weather, so that's what I thought you were talking about. For the now playing info, it's normal that the elapsed time will push the track length when its width changes. I don't plan to change that behavior.
Reply
(2014-12-28, 21:55)bryanbrazil Wrote: For the artists that don't have artwork on fanart.tv or theaudiodb.com, you can support the community by creating and uploading thumbnails. That's the best way IMO.
I agree, but that was not my point. In many cases I can't create CD-single artwork with 1:1 aspect ratio without partially cutting off artist or single name. With uploading it somewhere or without it.

(2014-12-28, 20:25)bryanbrazil Wrote: Yeah, you would have to move some of the other controls and redo the changes after a skin update. You can backup your modified xml to reapply after skin updates.
That's the dirty way, but I like do to things in clean way. Furthermore I'm not skilled skinner. I was hoping for Your help but I will understand, if You don't want to help.

(2014-12-28, 21:28)djstallion Wrote: Are we talking about song views here? Because InfoWall isn't available for songs. The only extra info that SongList has is the album year. Although I guess the album name in the topbar isn't available when viewing a playlist vs. viewing the album from the library.
I'm talking about this:

Artists list with InfoWall view
Image

I made quick example, how artists list with list view would may look
Image

Tracklist in SongList view
Image

I made quick example, how tracklist with list view would may look
Image

Did You got my point now? I asked to add this extra information to list view. Now list view doesn't show any extra information (artist plot, genres, file type flag etc.).


(2014-12-28, 21:28)djstallion Wrote: In your original post you mentioned topbar and date/weather, so that's what I thought you were talking about. For the now playing info, it's normal that the elapsed time will push the track length when its width changes. I don't plan to change that behavior.
I mentioned clock in topbar AND playing info in main menu. In top bar time pushes date and weather info, when time numbers width change. I can understand, if You not interested changing that.
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Ah, I'll add genre and descriptions to the artist/album lists. Likely won't do the same for song lists though, since that just duplicates the info already displayed in the list. Might add codec if it looks good.
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(2014-12-28, 23:55)bryanbrazil Wrote: Ah, I'll add genre and descriptions to the artist/album lists. Likely won't do the same for song lists though, since that just duplicates the info already displayed in the list. Might add codec if it looks good.
You can add album and song rating stars to the right side too, then lists look will be more cleaner.
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Hi,

Thanks Bryan for this awesome skin.

Can add the time and the end time in DialogSeekBar ?

Perhaps the first one before 'Paused' and the second one after Smile

Thank you
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Hello, I have a problem. I have Kodi Final Version on Windows but Mimic skin is not listed :-(

FIXED.-
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just downloaded and installed it on my amazon fire stick, so far so good, but thing bothering me is the font, anyway to use arial? most of my music/movie/shows are in korean..>.< ty in advance!
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(2014-12-29, 00:57)desperado77 Wrote: Hi,

Thanks Bryan for this awesome skin.

Can add the time and the end time in DialogSeekBar ?

Perhaps the first one before 'Paused' and the second one after Smile

Thank you

I just redid some of the progress bar stuff, but don't see a good place to put it. Will take another look.

(2014-12-29, 02:41)CaBrA Wrote: Hello, I have a problem. I have Kodi Final Version on Windows but Mimic skin is not listed :-(

Try to force refresh the Kodi repository. It should then show up.

(2014-12-29, 02:59)jayshekki Wrote: just downloaded and installed it on my amazon fire stick, so far so good, but thing bothering me is the font, anyway to use arial? most of my music/movie/shows are in korean..>.< ty in advance!

Just added Arial support to git, let me know how it works.
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Mimic 1.x for Helix9