2011-11-18, 18:48
I want to start by saying I'm new to XBMC skinning and at this point I would consider myself more of hack and slasher rather than a master skin hacker. I have learned quite a bit referencing the Skinning Manual and searching these forums, but I'm to a point where I'm stuck on a few things. I have mainly been adding and subtracting things from Confluence to get what I want.
First my project:
Back in September when this was posted on Hack A Day I was inspired to build one of these for myself. But personally I'm not fond of iTunes at all and the thought of a mouse and keyboard in today's "touchscreen" world seems a little out of date. I am a huge fan of Boxee and started having thoughts about putting that on a machine with a touch screen monitor. My thoughts quickly turned to XBMC as it is the root of Boxee and I didn't have any need for the features Boxee adds for this project.
I've hard coded my home page to be a spring board into albums, artists, songs and genre. Other than search, these were the only points of access I wanted to give to the user.
I had to add up and down buttons to the scroll bar to make it a little more touch screen friendly.
The button I am currently calling "Exit Menu" goes to the visualization along with telling the user the upcoming song.
Now for my questions:
1. Is there a way to tie into the timer for lack of activity that the screensaver would use or set the screensaver to go to a specific window id? I tried the animation for setting focus delayed a certain time (as mentioned in a post), but couldn't get that to function.
2. With the way I have set up my home screen to filter out the options I don't want to show by going straight to the MusicLibrary, I am having problems with navigation. If my user clicks on Artists, then the Album they want and decide after looking at the tracks that isn't the album they wanted, If I use a PreviousMenu button it goes all the way back home, if I use a ParentDir button, it works but will send the user back out to the MusicLibrary list once they reach the top instead of my home screen. Is there any way around this. I tried setting up 2 buttons basing there visibility on Window.next but I couldn't find enough documentation on how to properly implement that.
3. Is there a way to make certain lists read only and not automatically play when selected? For example on the now playing list, I want users to be able click on selections to see the album cover for track in the list and any other details about the song I want to provide, but I don't want them to be able to advance the player to other songs in the list. Likewise where listing the tracks that are on albums when searching, etc.
4. Is there anyway to have visibility based on if the track is already queued in the now playing list? To go with number 3, I plan on having to add a button to the list of tracks to queue it to the player, However if the item is already queued to be played, I don't want the user to be able to add it again.
5. Specifically to do with #4 is there a setting to remove an item from the now playing list after it has been played?
6. Are there any tricks to add a clear button to DialogKeyboard that clears out everything that has been typed in so far instead of hitting the backspace multiple times.
Sorry for the length of the post, and am truly sorry if the answer for my questions is out there somewhere and I missed it in my searches. Thanks for the help, and the awesome platform.
First my project:
Back in September when this was posted on Hack A Day I was inspired to build one of these for myself. But personally I'm not fond of iTunes at all and the thought of a mouse and keyboard in today's "touchscreen" world seems a little out of date. I am a huge fan of Boxee and started having thoughts about putting that on a machine with a touch screen monitor. My thoughts quickly turned to XBMC as it is the root of Boxee and I didn't have any need for the features Boxee adds for this project.
I've hard coded my home page to be a spring board into albums, artists, songs and genre. Other than search, these were the only points of access I wanted to give to the user.
I had to add up and down buttons to the scroll bar to make it a little more touch screen friendly.
The button I am currently calling "Exit Menu" goes to the visualization along with telling the user the upcoming song.
Now for my questions:
1. Is there a way to tie into the timer for lack of activity that the screensaver would use or set the screensaver to go to a specific window id? I tried the animation for setting focus delayed a certain time (as mentioned in a post), but couldn't get that to function.
2. With the way I have set up my home screen to filter out the options I don't want to show by going straight to the MusicLibrary, I am having problems with navigation. If my user clicks on Artists, then the Album they want and decide after looking at the tracks that isn't the album they wanted, If I use a PreviousMenu button it goes all the way back home, if I use a ParentDir button, it works but will send the user back out to the MusicLibrary list once they reach the top instead of my home screen. Is there any way around this. I tried setting up 2 buttons basing there visibility on Window.next but I couldn't find enough documentation on how to properly implement that.
3. Is there a way to make certain lists read only and not automatically play when selected? For example on the now playing list, I want users to be able click on selections to see the album cover for track in the list and any other details about the song I want to provide, but I don't want them to be able to advance the player to other songs in the list. Likewise where listing the tracks that are on albums when searching, etc.
4. Is there anyway to have visibility based on if the track is already queued in the now playing list? To go with number 3, I plan on having to add a button to the list of tracks to queue it to the player, However if the item is already queued to be played, I don't want the user to be able to add it again.
5. Specifically to do with #4 is there a setting to remove an item from the now playing list after it has been played?
6. Are there any tricks to add a clear button to DialogKeyboard that clears out everything that has been typed in so far instead of hitting the backspace multiple times.
Sorry for the length of the post, and am truly sorry if the answer for my questions is out there somewhere and I missed it in my searches. Thanks for the help, and the awesome platform.