[jmarshall]

hi all,

hopefully sometime soon we're gonna be looking to make a new point release, so i'm going to bump the skin version up at the same time.

it's been quite sometime since the last skin bump, and heaps of stuff has been added, so that many 1.3 skins don't function 100% anymore.

i've started adding support for the new system, and have added backwards compatibility support to v1.3 skins as well.

proposed changes to 2.0 currently are as follows:

1. some control ids are changing. this is to make the main media windows more consistent with the id's that need to be there. the changes are:

a) my pictures and my scripts - id of list and thumb controls change from 10,11 to 50,51.
b) my music - id of switch view select button changes from 6 to 5.
c) my programs - id of list and thumb goes from 7,8 to 50,51. id of files label goes from 9 to 12. id of scan button goes from 3 to 6, and the id of the sortby and sortasc buttons goes from 4,5 to 3,4.

in the end, the id's for all the main media windows are:
viewas: 2
sortby: 3
sortasc: 4
switchview: 5
list: 50
thumb: 51
biglist: 52
fileslabel: 12

2. the conditionalbutton control will be removed. this only effects the kai button on home (id 99) which can now be displayed using the conditional visibility system.kaiconnected.

3. the buttonscroller button definition has moved to the skin. see here for more info

4. the new filebrowser dialog (id 126) is now standard, and will be used more and more throughout xbmc.

testing your skin for compatibility beforehand

the nice thing is, you can test for the above now. simply set your skin version to be 1.8 instead of 1.3, and xbmc will use all the new routines rather than the old ones. pm3 you'll notice is now 1.8 compatible (ie all the above is done).

there is more coming - this is not a complete list (in fact, we're only just getting started).

5. homepage image fading will be removed from the code. this can be handled just as well using the visibility effects code, so the custom code for doing the fading at the moment will be removed as soon as pm3 is updated to allow this to happen.

other stuff that i'm thinking about:

6. redefine references.xml so that it is a storage for not just the default controls (one of each) but can store more than one default for each control (eg 2 thumbpanels, or 2 buttons). this is because i'd like to split the thumbpanel control up into 2 separate ones - one for large thumbs and one for small thumbs.

7. the themes stuff needs to be firmed up, as does the skin settings.

that's all for now - this will be updated when i remember all the other stuff that is needed!

comments/criticisms are most welcome.

cheers,
jonathan

[Livin]

jm,
you are doign a great job incorporating user suggestions... i thank you!

[BritneysPAIRS]

my god the new slide feature is so cool......only problem now is i have to tear the skin apart more and separate all the parts so i can move them all indervidualy, this will require alot of work to get it right i can see but well worth it.

one thing it really needs now is something for when you go to any window, for it to hold the previous image in background if selected so i can just slide stuff in over the top. eg press on music and a panel and buttons slide onto the screen over the home page and for there to be some way i can have a default button delay (eg i want to scroll in thumbpanel this takes 300millisecs) id love to be able to delay the button by 320millisecs so it is on it otherwise i have to press a key before it jumps back to it (if its default). but i have to say this is impressive and its fast it will scroll full screen parts with lots of other parts very quickly.

cheers jmarshal

[kraqh3d]

what would be really really cool, is if the button panel on the left could "slide" offscreen when focusing the thumb panel so it can occupy the entire horizontal screen real estate.

[Kobazz]

slide effect wow, great work. does this mean the video osd  could slide up in screen like the old xbmp had? how bout adding some other standard movements i.e. zoom-in/-out, rotate. the x video menu osd in pmiii could zoom-in when called up and zoom-out when exited. thumbs could enlarge when selected etc.. the possibilities are countless. still props to the slide effect.

[Livin]

jm,
with the slide effect can you add start / stop coordinates and also make them conditional depending on the current focus?

two thoughts on this...

1) it would be cool to move objects to different locations on the screen depending on the current focus. ie move from left upper corner, to bottom right corner, etc.

2) actually replacing (or integrating sliding into) the current buttonscroller for more flexibility.

create a selectable set of image buttons where each button is assigned a different image (and can have text overlayed or offset.

i'd replace the pm3 static button image and buttonscroller so i could use specific images for each choice. this would make a "flowing" button menu with different images to fit the length of each text label.

quick stolen examples:

[Loto_Bak]

already done kraq
ill link ya when i clean it up a bit

bpairs
ive already broken the backgrounds up. see my edit if you want the images

[BritneysPAIRS]

yip ive done some impressive stuff with this especially no the setting screen .

i have one issue for jmarshall. if you start something as not visbile and to slide in to screen at 600msecs. it works perfect but if you have 50 movies in the drive by the time its opened its on screen. i beleieve it has done the transistion as the time is counted from the button press not the first image render. it just that ive got it looking cool with no movies onscreen but the more i add the less the effect on windwo entry. apart from that minor problem the actual way it works is great.
cheers for pics loto but i actually need to rerender everything to do what ive got planned will take a bit of time but should be worth it quick mockup i did looked alot better than i thought it would.

cheers

[KoTiX]

i'm having some problems with button scroller:

1. it's not backward compatible and i had to add buttons in the home.xml
2. pressing white button on pad to show context menu to move buttons or edit label doesn't work anymore
3. images 102,103 etc. associated to scroller buttons doesn't show up anymore

tnx jmarsh

[jmarshall]

kotix:

1. yeah, i know - i missed a bit of code. hopefully it'll be fixed in a couple of hours for 1.3 compatibility.

2. and yeah, i've removed all context menu support as it was too hard to maintain once the content moves to the skin (as the skin may be on a non-writeable partition etc. etc.)

3. that will be fixed when 1 is fixed - sorry about that!

britneyspairs:

the time is counted from when the window is initiated. this is so that we get the control focus correct on window start, but i may be able to get around this as i have added a new thing at loto_bak's request that can possibly take care of it - will look into it tonight. a the very least, i should hopefully be able to take care of timing from first render.

affini:

currently it's restricted to making this visible or invisible. i'm not really sure of the usage of other stuff yet. you can do some hacks to do what you want with multiple controls though i think (eg 1 control to do the movement when a change of focus occurs, another control that comes on in the new location once the movement is complete etc. etc.)

kobazz: yep, no problems with sliding in the videoosd. zoom in/out is probably be doable - unsure how easy rotate is though (we currently only position and scale stuff - there is no facility for altering via a rotation). i don't see the effectiveness of some of that though to be honest (other than just pure wizzbang looks, which get kinda tiresome after a while)

as always, i'm open to suggestions

cheers,
jonathan

[jmarshall]

another thing i'm going to do before 2.0 to make the skin system make more sense:

the list, thumb, text controls have their spin control coordinates offset from the window position, not the control position, which is a pain when you are trying to skin it manually. i'm going to change them all to be offset from the control position, which seeing as you know the width + height should make things much easier to position. will pop this change in (fully backward compatible to 1.3) to skin version 1.81 when i get the chance.

[Livin]

there are a ton of cool things you can do if you allow coordinates for the slide.

one example:

if you have an object (like the album info and thumb) in the lower right corner but then the user triggers the osd... then the album info and thumb could slide right until it hits the center of the screen, then back again when the osd is turned off.

there are many more things that would just be sweet for the slide feature.

i'd still like to see the buttonscroller enhanced so that we can set specific images on specific buttons... having only one button image now is very limiting. i'm not even sure if a hack using conditional images would work due to the order images are rendered.

[Loto_Bak]

one button image? why not assign your image as the focus and nofocus texture? each button can have their own. fyi they dont slide like the text labels though.
if you want them to slide use buttonscroller.hasfocus(id) and have them slide/fade in and out.

new feature request for 2.0 jm

something like
<control>
<type>image</type>
<texture>listcontrol.thumbnail.focused</texture>
etc

this would display the currently focused listcontrol item's thumbnail. if implimented some sort of visibility condition listcontrol.thumbnail.default which would return true if the item has no thumbnail (and will use default) would be very useful

also
<alpha> tag for controls which would set a predetermined amount of alpha (in %?)
the ability to specify if it reaches the % when fully visible for fully faded is key.
something like
<alpha mode="high/low">.5</alpha>

where when 'high' the control is invisible when not visible and .5 alpha when visible
when 'low' the control iss .5 visible when hidden and 1 when visible

edit perhaps this is better implimented in the <visible> tag? only benifit to its own tag would be fadeing and slide combinations become possible but that could cause issues in code

[jimk72]

looks like i may have to set up some sort of xml to control my editor so new items can be added using xml. hmmm..

this would also help for when i don't have time to work on it someone can update the xml file to make it compatible.

it would be limited but would be alot better than no support at all.

[Livin]

one button image? why not assign your image as the focus and nofocus texture? each button can have their own. fyi they dont slide like the text labels though.
if you want them to slide use buttonscroller.hasfocus(id) and have them slide/fade in and out.

this is my point... there is no way to have a set of images act like the buttonscroller, including text, does today but have separate images for each button.

i gave an example in a previous post.