[aeon]

Hi all - I have a basic plugin that plays videos from social sources (not published yet), but feel that the plugin UI is too limited. I want to provide more functionality than the “file / folder” structure that comes with the plug in. The easy video playback is handy, but I want to build more options for browsing, playback controls, etc. My questions:

- Is building a script, and UI from scratch not advised? Would something like PyXBMCt be a recommended way?

- Are there good examples of scripts that have done a great job with UI?

- How do custom UIs deal with users’ skinning preferences?

Thanks all for this awesome community!

[Roman_V_M]

1. It's completely up to you. There are two ways of creating custom UIs for addons: Python-based Windows and Controls and XML-based skinned UIs. Python-based UIs are suitable for some basic scenarios like login windows, custom settings panels, etc. XML-based UIs are much better for complex UI designs. PyXBMCt is just a convenience wrapper around Python-based Windows and Controls so it has the same limitations.
2. I'm not very familiar with XML-based UIs, but you can look at Plex addon for Kodi as a good example of a complex addon UI. It does a really great job of re-creating user experience of Plex apps for other platforms.
3. It's completely up to you how you design your addon UI. You can create several designs based on popular Kodi skins.

[aeon]

Thanks so much - super helpful. I’ll restate my second question: is there a good example of a python-based GUI, maybe using PyXBMCt?

1. It's completely up to you. There are two ways of creating custom UIs for addons: Python-based Windows and Controls and XML-based skinned UIs. Python-based UIs are suitable for some basic scenarios like login windows, custom settings panels, etc. XML-based UIs are much better for complex UI designs. PyXBMCt is just a convenience wrapper around Python-based Windows and Controls so it has the same limitations.
2. I'm not very familiar with XML-based UIs, but you can look at Plex addon for Kodi as a good example of a complex addon UI. It does a really great job of re-creating user experience of Plex apps for other platforms.
3. It's completely up to you how you design your addon UI. You can create several designs based on popular Kodi skins.

[aeon]

Thanks so much - super helpful. I’ll restate my second question: is there a good example of a python-based GUI, maybe using PyXBMCt?

1. It's completely up to you. There are two ways of creating custom UIs for addons: Python-based Windows and Controls and XML-based skinned UIs. Python-based UIs are suitable for some basic scenarios like login windows, custom settings panels, etc. XML-based UIs are much better for complex UI designs. PyXBMCt is just a convenience wrapper around Python-based Windows and Controls so it has the same limitations.
2. I'm not very familiar with XML-based UIs, but you can look at Plex addon for Kodi as a good example of a complex addon UI. It does a really great job of re-creating user experience of Plex apps for other platforms.
3. It's completely up to you how you design your addon UI. You can create several designs based on popular Kodi skins.

Hey Roman, just wanted to follow up again on this — looking for some design inspiration/ guidelines to build out mockups!

[Roman_V_M]

Hey Roman, just wanted to follow up again on this — looking for some design inspiration/ guidelines to build out mockups!

This is not a chat or a support hotline. Users post here if and when they have time and desire to do so.

As for your question, I don't really track PyXBMCt usage and currently don't use it myself for various reasons. There is a demo addon https://github.com/romanvm/pyxbmct.demo that shows different UI controls and their usage. Basically, this is as much as you can do with Python-based UI layout.

[aeon]

Hey Roman, just wanted to follow up again on this — looking for some design inspiration/ guidelines to build out mockups!

This is not a chat or a support hotline. Users post here if and when they have time and desire to do so.

As for your question, I don't really track PyXBMCt usage and currently don't use it myself for various reasons. There is a demo addon https://github.com/romanvm/pyxbmct.demo that shows different UI controls and their usage. Basically, this is as much as you can do with Python-based UI layout.

Got it, I appreciate all the help, thanks!