[bbqbob]

I really like this skin. There are a few minor suggestions that I had if someone if up to making a few tweaks. Here is fanart view. I suggest that the word "Plot" is removed. It doesn't add anything, and the other elements are not labeled. For example, it doesn't say, Category: Comedy / Drama, it just says Comedy / Drama. It doesn't say Title Bones, it just says Bones. Why add Plot at the top, just show the words for the plot.



Unlike this picture, my display shows SD or HD to the right of Plot. This information could be removed, or moved to the bottom to the right of year and Comedy / Drama.

A few years ago, this skin used to show the Logo under the fanart. I would like to see that again, or above the fanart. Remove the semitransparent bar over the bottom of the fanart. The run-time could be moved with the rest of the info under plot. I've never been a fan of the star ratings, so I would just drop those, but others may want to see that somewhere.

[bbqbob]

Above I wrote about how I would like to see that the widgets did not crop the side of the images and to have the progress bars vertical to match the keys used to change titles. Here is a mock-up of what it might look like



The titles would be over black (or the red texture like "New Movies") rather than on top of the image. I think the semi-transparent title over the Aquarius title makes both a bit hard to read.

I think the entire home menu could be made a bit wider to make room for the entire landscape thumb.

[zag]

Just posting in case you ever need this in the future

EDIT: removed at skin authors request.

[xhaggi]

thank you

[Piers]

Above I wrote about how I would like to see that the widgets did not crop the side of the images and to have the progress bars vertical to match the keys used to change titles. Here is a mock-up of what it might look like



The titles would be over black rather than on top of the image. I think the semi-transparent title over the Aquarius title makes both a bit hard to read.

I think the entire home menu could be made a bit wider to make room for the entire landscape thumb.

That's an interesting idea. I really don't want to make the home menu any wider. I spent quite some time calculating the widths to bring a uniform style to all sections. For example, adding extra pixels to "TV Shows" means Weather fanart would be adjusted, etc. Xperience1080 is an 'aesthetics-heavy' skin.

[xhaggi]

Above I wrote about how I would like to see that the widgets did not crop the side of the images and to have the progress bars vertical to match the keys used to change titles. Here is a mock-up of what it might look like



The titles would be over black rather than on top of the image. I think the semi-transparent title over the Aquarius title makes both a bit hard to read.

I think the entire home menu could be made a bit wider to make room for the entire landscape thumb.

The vertical scroll bars are wrong here, because the widget does not scroll from up to down, it scrolls horizontal.
We know that this could confusing the user but it's the best compromise to have the left/right tile to widget to tile navigation working.

[bbqbob]

Above I wrote about how I would like to see that the widgets did not crop the side of the images and to have the progress bars vertical to match the keys used to change titles. Here is a mock-up of what it might look like

The titles would be over black rather than on top of the image. I think the semi-transparent title over the Aquarius title makes both a bit hard to read.

I think the entire home menu could be made a bit wider to make room for the entire landscape thumb.

The vertical scroll bars are wrong here, because the widget does not scroll from up to down, it scrolls horizontal.
We know that this could confusing the user but it's the best compromise to have the left/right tile to widget to tile navigation working.

I see what you are saying about the animation between titles, but in my opinion, I would rather have the scroll bar match the keys, which are the up and down keys. But to address both, the animation could be changed so that it moves up and down as well. The pictures could slide down, or it could fall over the prior picture like a curtain coming down.

I agree that the left and right keys should move between tiles in the left and right directions. You could also have the focus from the widget move up to the menu and down to Power/Favorites if widget has a finite list and does not wrap around. For example, say the widget list of items is 5 long and the first item is shown. Pressing down each of 4 times shows the next item and then on the 5th down key, the focus moves off of the widget.

[bbqbob]

This is a great skin, and the one that I primarily use, so I am grateful to those who have contributed to it. Please don't take my suggestions as criticism. This is a fantastic skin as is, but there are a few tweaks that I think would make it slightly better.

Right now, the movie information screen has a horizontal menu with a semi-hidden screen to the left. There is an arrow that hints that you could go left, but the arrow is highlighted making you believe that you are already on this screen. A simple improvement would to not highlight the arrow on the first screen. It might be better to make the screen operate and look more like the home screen. I think that the menu at the top of the movie information screen could be improved by making it look like the menu on the top of the home screen.



Navigation works just as it does today, but it more explicitly points out that there is a screen to the left for Art (Poster) and a screen to the right showing the cast.

I also added a gear on the far left. This suggestion is independent of making "Art" more than an arrow. I have less experienced people and children use my media center, so I like to keep advanced items and maintenance items out of sight, or at least slightly so. For a normal user, they want to choose Play (Cinema experience), Trailer, and Video Extras. I would prefer that the normal user wasn't shown Choose Art and Refresh on the Plot screen. I would move these under the "gear" setup screen.

[bbqbob]

When you are on the home screen, and press the "back" key on a remote or backspace on a keyboard, a dialog appears to customize a tile. I suggest that this action upon "back" should be turned off. I and other users of my media center accidentally reach this dialog when Kodi is slow and I over aggressively press back to get from some deeply nested place to the root. Fortunately, no harm is done and press back again closes this dialog. Still I think the behavior should be changed.



Personally, I would only allow customization of the tiles and widgets from the setup menus, but I can see how others might want it in place. The more conventional way to reach such customization is through a long press of "Ok" rather than back, so that key change is my first suggestion.

Secondly, you'll notice that the screen capture here does not look like this skin. The "Close" and "Default" are on the bottom, just below the white area. I made this mock-up to show that I think these buttons should be moved to the right since as it is the right and left arrows are the keys that can be used to get from the menu list to Close. Right now, it looks like pressing down at the bottom of the list would get to Close, but that just loops back to the top of the menu.

Personally, I would skip the text of "Close" and "Defaults", but I can see how some would like text with default.

An easier alternative would be to disable the loop from the bottom of the menu to the top so that when you are on the last item, the down key moves to Close.

[bbqbob]

When using the Banner view to show episodes of a tv show, the display looks off center.



The area that I boxed in yellow is blank. This looks awkward. The list either should be centered or extend the white section with text to the right as I showed with the red arrow. Extending the white area would be my preference.

I think that this happens because the banner view is centered and aesthetically pleasing when a poster is used instead of a banner.



Here, there is blank space, but the list in centered. This is because the poster is narrower than the thumb used when showing tv episodes. Since the left side of the white part is different between the movie banner and the episode banner, there is already different code in the skin so I suggest that when episodes are shown, the white section is extended to the right.

Incidentally, the banner view doesn't ever seem to show banner.jpg. This picture came from an earlier showcase of this skin. I can't seem to make it do this in the latest skin. Have banners like this been removed?



BTW, the banner view is the only view that has rounded corners. The rest of this skin features sharp squares and rectangles. I don't mind the rounded corners, but they seem a bit out of place in the skin.

[bbqbob]

I think there is a problem with the info list when used with tv episodes. The yellow area shows a blank area that looks strange.



If you press right twice, the episode thumb is selected. When this is done, then the text appears.



I don't see why this text should not be displayed all of the time.

[bbqbob]

When the infolist view is used for episodes, it looks as above. The full episode thumb is shown without cropping. My first suggestion is that the poster is changed to show the season poster rather than the tv show poster. The nice thing for the tv episodes is that the full landscape is shown.

When the infolist view is used for movies, it looks different. The thumb is cropped significantly. For some movies this looks good, even great, but for others, it looks odd.



I would like to see the full landscape without cropping. Here is a mock-up of a infolist view.



I propose the following
1) Make the poster smaller. This leaves more room for the rest of the info and the thumb.
2) Put the run-time and category under the poster. This was done since a smaller poster is no longer the right height to match the rest.
3) Add another row to the list. The existing info list has feels like there is too much wasted blank space on the top and bottom. Resizing the other elements allows one more row.
4) Remove the star rating to make more room for the landscape/thumb.
5) Make the landscape wider (now using the space where the star rating was) and show it without cropping.
6) Put the plot under the landscape/thumb.
7) Move the scroll bar to the left of the list instead of the right. (shown in blue for illustration since it is pretty well hidden). This is done so that pressing right gets to the expanded plot/info which replaces the landscape. Right now, you have to press right twice; the first time gets to the scroll bar and then the second time gets to the plot. This makes the plot unnecessarily separated from the title on the list. Moving the scroll bar to the left of the list removes this extra step.

[xhaggi]

First of all, thanks for all your feedback. Some of them make sense but I don't have time to explain why and why not

I think there is a problem with the info list when used with tv episodes. The yellow area shows a blank area that looks strange.

Can't reproduce it, the plot is always there on my setup.

[xhaggi]

The video view "Panel" was updated.
I've dropped the cover on the left and therefor increase the size of the items. The fanart on the right isn't cut anymore.

[iceman1973]

I know I'm late in the developement but is there a way to disable the watched/unwatched icons? I really dont need to see that. I think it looks a lot cleaner without it. And if not can we have that put into the next release?

If I had to edit one of the skin files were would I do that? What needs to be edited?

Thanks in advanced.