[Guardian Hope]

Appreciate your help with this. I did finally get the theme installed on a new PC Stick. Absolutely a fantastic skin. Thanks for all your hard work on this. Since I have your attention, I'd like to ask a few questions. The previous version of AZ I was able to add, for example... "Recently Added Movies" widget to the main menu selection for "Movies". So when Movies option was high lighted, it would display movies that I just added to my library and the fan art would display. I can't figure out how to do that with this latest version. I'm confused how how to add a widget for menu items.

I'd also like to remove some media flags and change some of the icons. Could you point me to the correct xml file. I have my view set to Big Icons if that makes a difference . I'd also like to edit the movie info screen, just not sure which xml file to edit.

And ... I would like to change the font size of the main menu text when it's high lighted.

I know it's a lot to ask, and I do apologize for hamming you with all these questions.


Any help would be great!

Thanks again ....

Happy to hear you have it installed and I am glad you like it! To answer your questions: widgets will be [mostly] working with 3.2.10 which is the release after the one that I will post tonight. The reason that a lot of the functionality runs into trouble is that the skin was built using a specialized version of the Skin Helper Service and 3.2.10 will transition everything to the normal Skin Helper Service and remove most of the legacy code and pretty much fix everything up. Naturally, two rules still apply: if it couldn't be done in AZ or AZ:E it still won't be doable in AZ:FA at that release.

Now, the functionality you are talking about is there and already working for users of Emby Server. On a pure Kodi install it is a bit of a hit or miss on whether the widget will display the right information or go through all recently added (that may also be true for Emby too).

The Media Flags (which are going to be changed) are actually compressed into /media/Textures.xbt (to cut down the file size from 212MB to 120MB). Those icons have been annoying me too. It's why 3.0.05 is not out yet as I intend to change it before releasing it. However, if you want to change it, you'll either need to decompress Textures.xbt or pull it from GitHub. AZ:FA doesn't care whether it's actually compressed or not, it will run either way.

For views, you can find them in /16x9/View_*.xml (* is a wildcard) with the specific view you are looking for. As for text on the main menu, that would be Home.xml and the fonts should be in /fonts. However, adjusting that isn't easy and you will likely break alignment and a few other things in doing so; while I encourage you to make it it to your liking I do want to warn you of the ramifications of messing with the Home screen.

Finally, if you make changes and you would like them included, I am very open to always including community contributions (that don't break the Kodi rules; there was one request for a support for an addon that breaks Kodi rules).

After the release of 3.2.05 (Jarvis) / 3.9.00 (Krypton - Highly Experimental), I will be taking a short break but will be watching this thread (about 12+ days) as there is concern that my left ear may have been victim to "Sudden Hearing Loss Syndrome" so medical comes first. However, that is also why I am encouraging others to contribute fixes or tweaks too; it takes a couple of minutes to test, zip, and deploy but it can take hours to make code changes and during this time I won't have hours.

[jdig4240]

Wow, is this skin really over 200MB? Thats bigger than my entire build?

[minus0]

@Guardian Hope

Hope everything comes out fine for you on your medical problem. Wish you the best.

[Guardian Hope]

Wow, is this skin really over 200MB? Thats bigger than my entire build?

@jdig4240: They are "Mods" first of all but yes: uncompressed, AZ:FA is approximately 212MB. Thanks to the Kodi Texture tool, the "shipping version" of the skin is about ~120MB give or take a few megabytes. However, the full source code on GitHub is 212MB and will be getting slightly larger while significant modifications are being done to the skin.

@Guardian Hope

Hope everything comes out fine for you on your medical problem. Wish you the best.

Thanks @minus0! And I do appreciate how much you have [and continue] to contribute. Speaking of which, this is a good transition into talking about 3.2.05/3.9.00.

This is the finalized changelog of 3.2.05 "Dormer" (Bluestone 1) and 3.9.00 "Danvers" (Bluestone 2) as will be released:

Code:

3.2.05 (3.2.05_bsrelease01) - "From Ashes early-April 2016 Update"
Experimental Krypton Support ("Danvers" Build Line - Bluestone 2 - 3.9.00)
Minor Improvements to the Skin's Code for Jarvis Support ("Dormer" Build Line - Bluestone 1 / "Danvers" Build Line - Bluestone 2")
Autocompletion Keyboard Support Added
Removes Legacy Code "Script.Duration" References Completely
GUI Change: English Language Now Defaults to American Flag
GUI Change: Video Information Indicators Changed
Info Banner ("Plot Overlay") Partially Implemented (Feature Currently Not Functional)
NOTICE: Due to GUI Changes, Skin Required Space May Temporarily Increase
NOTICE: Due to Legacy Code Removal, Certain Functions May Not Operate Correctly

If anyone comes up with a hotfix for the Info Banner (8 Second Display Time at playback start) while I am off doing medical things feel free to post it. It is the only other thing that was supposed to be included with 3.2.05 but I have ran out of time and should be making the final repository pushes and finalizing everything for release tomorrow.

I must highly stress that even though there is a version for Krypton, it is extremely highly experimental. I got it running but it might take hoops if certain addons aren't available for Krypton yet.

[jdig4240]

[quote='jdig4240' pid='2299812' dateline='1459610672']
Wow, is this skin really over 200MB? Thats bigger than my entire build?

@jdig4240: They are "Mods" first of all but yes: uncompressed, AZ:FA is approximately 212MB. Thanks to the Kodi Texture tool, the "shipping version" of the skin is about ~120MB give or take a few megabytes. However, the full source code on GitHub is 212MB and will be getting slightly larger while significant modifications are being done to the skin.

@Guardian Hope



Hope everything comes out fine for you on your medical problem. Wish you the best.

Thats gigantic compared to the 5MB size of the original Arcticzephyr skin. Is there a way to cut some fat?

[minus0]

@Guardian Hope

Attaching files for "Info Banner". Added a radio button in Skin Settings under the Furniture section. Once activated Info Banner will be displayed after 8 seconds, when you hoover over a selection in Movies, TvShows, Songs, etc.. Will display when opening those selections, also.

Let me know if I am going in the right direction for what you wanted? Also changed the highlight of the main title selected in Info Banner detail.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5KfGJ-...cslist_api

[Guardian Hope]

Thats gigantic compared to the 5MB size of the original Arcticzephyr skin. Is there a way to cut some fat?

I don't think the base Arctic Zephyr is just 5MB although I haven't used it. I have it installed though. Right now AZ:FA's space is mostly centered around its textures. It will get slightly larger than smaller as unused textures are removed and old textures replaced by new ones. I'm aiming to get it down to about 100MB in size when compressed.

@Guardian Hope

Attaching files for "Info Banner". Added a radio button in Skin Settings under the Furniture section. Once activated Info Banner will be displayed after 8 seconds, when you hoover over a selection in Movies, TvShows, Songs, etc.. Will display when opening those selections, also.

Let me know if I am going in the right direction for what you wanted? Also changed the highlight of the main title selected in Info Banner detail.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5KfGJ-...cslist_api

I took a look (and tested) and it seems you ran into the same problem I did. The "Info Banner" prevents playback and when you click "Play" it just waits 8 seconds and displays the information (with no playback) and what I have spent many hours trying to resolve. I have found the best approach is to try and use the "script.skin.helper.service" which has a function to call the overlay. It only is supposed to need to be defined once (on a page like "Home.xml" if you don't want to give a user a choice) but AZ:FA wouldn't take that - displaying the banner black for a second before disappearing

You also went in a little different direction (but on the right track). The idea is for the "Info Banner" to display at playback start for 8 seconds; not wait for 8 seconds and then display. If you look here: https://github.com/NortheBridge/skin.arc...9/Home.xml you'll find the code:

Code:

    <!-- Info Banner -->
    <onload condition="!Skin.HasSetting(startup.init)">Skin.SetString(SkinHelper.ShowInfoAtPlaybackStart, 8)</onload>
    <!-- Info Banner -->

Unfortunately that's not working. Obviously, it can also be defined as a toggle which I played around with but couldn't get to work either yet. It's like it's very close but I am completely missing something.

[minus0]

@Guardian Hope

Will not be able to work on the Info Banner issue for a few days. Have to take care of a personal issue. I saw you comments on SkinHelperScript. Will check it out.

[fryster]

Loving the mod of this skin! Is there any plan to add support for animated posters? Would love to see this !

[Guardian Hope]

@Guardian Hope

Will not be able to work on the Info Banner issue for a few days. Have to take care of a personal issue. I saw you comments on SkinHelperScript. Will check it out.

Personal issues always come first . Be safe and I hope you get them resolved.

Loving the mod of this skin! Is there any plan to add support for animated posters? Would love to see this !

I have in passing thought about adding it but I am not sure of "when" it will be added. Right now the workflow is a bit: Add New Features -> Remove Legacy Code -> Release -> Repeat. After this immediate next update will be a huge change to a lot of the coding which means there are bound to be a number of bugs that may crop up as what will basically be happening is "refurbishing and old building to new again."

What's most prominently seen here is trying to get "Plot Overlay" working. I am going to reexamine what @minus0 did which is mostly based off of what Jurialmonkey did and see if I can further fine-tune the approach to just use the Skin Helper Service's call for the "Plot Overlay." It's been a rather highly requested feature so I'd like to get it in there for the next release.

[merickk]

I'm using this skin on my pc and really like it, but would like to put in on my firestick also but can figure out how to load it. is there a repository for it up?

[nicki365]

Is there a way to change the watched indicator? I looked through the files to modify it but cant seem to locate it. I prefer the original check mark to the eye crossed out.

[Guardian Hope]

I'm using this skin on my pc and really like it, but would like to put in on my firestick also but can figure out how to load it. is there a repository for it up?

If I am not mistaken, you can just simply grab the zips from the first post for the prerequisites and then install the skin. Arctic Zephyr: From Ashes is contained in the Emby Beta repository which is also linked to in the first post. You will need both access to Kodi Jarvis' repository and the Emby Beta Repository to install the skin.

Is there a way to change the watched indicator? I looked through the files to modify it but cant seem to locate it. I prefer the original check mark to the eye crossed out.

All textures used in From Ashes are compressed into /media/Textures.xbt and /media/Squares.xbt to reduce the file size from 212MB to just about 120MB. The original indicators will however be making a return with 3.2.05 anyways as I dislike the current watch indicators as well.

[Talguy]

@Guardian Hope, are you going to rebase From the Ashes off of the latest version of Artic Zephyr mainline and then working in your changes. Or is AZ:FA been so modified that it really isn't worth the effort?

[Guardian Hope]

@Guardian Hope, are you going to rebase From the Ashes off of the latest version of Artic Zephyr mainline and then working in your changes. Or is AZ:FA been so modified that it really isn't worth the effort?

@Talguy, AZ:FA has been so far modified from the base Arctic Zephyr skin that rebasing it with Jurialmonkey's would be like having to rewrite the skin. However, the same process I applied to bring in the updates from AZ:E's newer versions which didn't run well on Jarvis until they were brought into From Ashes by themselves slowly is how I intend to update some of the code: slipstream them in via smaller releases.

There's enough of a difference in AZ:FA and base AZ that you can't unfortunately just rebase it anymore. It's why AZ:FA lies on a "non-forked" line while there is also a copy of the originally forked AZ:E 2.0.12 on my own GitHub when I took the reigns from im85288 and badaas so they could go develop Eunique. That was actually when I was told how much AZ:E diverged and AZ:FA only furthered that divergence.

What will happen is that things which are still pure base AZ will get the quick slipstream treatment while others which are hybrids will be slowly added with changes taken into account for the divergences and anything that has diverged completely will obviously be maintained separately.

3.2.05 has references to "Emby View" in its code because it slipstreamed updates from 2.0.12 that I didn't include last time around the block (the current version is based on 2.0.8) but I have disabled Emby View at the request of Eunique's authors as Eunique was designed for Emby View (we agreed to this back in 2015).