[ferent]

@jurialmunkey

since yesterday i thought about the in my opinion not so good choosen watched flag (check mark) for movies and tv-shows. And i think the following idea is a clean and nice way to integrate watched content into your skin. I hope you agree and in some way it's technical possible.

The major colors of your skin are black, white and greyscales. So simply change the colored movie poster or the episode thumb of an watched one to greyscales and fade it a little bit out. Maybe the same way as you do it to the background fanart but a little bit darker.

It's just an idea...

Efty

I don't like the idea because I think It will be a little confused. What happen with black or white or grey posters? And what happen if I have a tv show in B&W? I like the watched flag because is very easy and fast recognize the watched movies...
Maybe the flag it's not the best integrated and we can find one more integrated in the skin (I like the white eye in this web: http://dribbble.com/shots/563816-Menu-Icons)
Of course it's my personal opinion :-)

[jurialmunkey]

What you could try is put the clips in one folder, concerts/dvd in another. Scrape the latter with ConcertDB. In case of missing entries and/or wrong info, rename filename to the title of the concert/dvd on moviedb.org. Works like a charm. ;-)

It allows to add anything (playlists, addons etc) to the main menu and even rename them from the skin settings. Which would be an awesome addition to Arctic one day.

I'll have to give that a go with music vids.

You can already pretty much already add anything to the main and sub menus. The only limitation is that the menu has to be limited to five main menu items because the menu style is static (rather than the carousel style of Aeon Nox et al.). But those five categories (movies, tvshows, music, pictures, programs) can all be customised and renamed to whatever you like.

Go to "Skin Settings > Home > Mage custom home items". If you go to the left of that dialog, the tab slides out and you can choose which category you want to customise. Then the top item is the main menu item and underneath are its 10 sub menu items. Just change the "type" to what you want it to be (e.g. video addon, video playlist, custom, favourite etc.) then click path and select the thing you want. Then you can rename it and set an icon etc. etc.

The major colors of your skin are black, white and greyscales. So simply change the colored movie poster or the episode thumb of an watched one to greyscales and fade it a little bit out. Maybe the same way as you do it to the background fanart but a little bit darker.

Not a bad idea that at all and would make this skin even more distinct from the rest .

Jurialmunkey I've just noticed a config setting to remove labels from favourites. When I do that I just have blank thumbs displayed. I may have missed it in the thread but have you enabled thumbs or artwork for favourites so you don't need labels?

Its not a bad idea, but the issue still remains regarding consistency (i.e. what do you do for all the list views). Also, it isn't technically possible anyway -- there is no way to desaturate an image with the skinning engine, they can only be colorised, dimmed or made transparent. Also, what about black and white covers or very dark covers. edit: I see ferent has beaten me to the punch.

The favourites label thing was a request from someone, I don't personally use it. xbmc only sets a thumb for a favourite if the thing that is favourited has a thumb (e.g. if you favourite a movie, the thumb will be the movie poster). I'm not sure if its possible to set manually -- never really checked because personally I much prefer having the labels on.

[Kokonutcreme]

Yeah me too just checking that I havent missed anything.

Cheers

[jurialmunkey]

Maybe the flag it's not the best integrated and we can find one more integrated in the skin (I like the white eye in this web: http://dribbble.com/shots/563816-Menu-Icons)
Of course it's my personal opinion :-)

I quite like the eye one myself.

[Ferdi-T]

What you could try is put the clips in one folder, concerts/dvd in another. Scrape the latter with ConcertDB. In case of missing entries and/or wrong info, rename filename to the title of the concert/dvd on moviedb.org. Works like a charm. ;-)

It allows to add anything (playlists, addons etc) to the main menu and even rename them from the skin settings. Which would be an awesome addition to Arctic one day.

I'll have to give that a go with music vids.

You can already pretty much already add anything to the main and sub menus. The only limitation is that the menu has to be limited to five main menu items because the menu style is static (rather than the carousel style of Aeon Nox et al.). But those five categories (movies, tvshows, music, pictures, programs) can all be customised and renamed to whatever you like.

Go to "Skin Settings > Home > Mage custom home items". If you go to the left of that dialog, the tab slides out and you can choose which category you want to customise. Then the top item is the main menu item and underneath are its 10 sub menu items. Just change the "type" to what you want it to be (e.g. video addon, video playlist, custom, favourite etc.) then click path and select the thing you want. Then you can rename it and set an icon etc. etc.

Hey, thanks. I didn't think of changing one of the main items, but I'll try that later on. They way you describe it it indeed sounds like what Confluence Mod does, only with manual edits instead of templates build in.

To which XML are these settings saved, btw? In case I'd want to mirror the settings to different machines.

[efty.edge]

Its not a bad idea, but the issue still remains regarding consistency (i.e. what do you do for all the list views). Also, it isn't technically possible anyway -- there is no way to desaturate an image with the skinning engine, they can only be colorised, dimmed or made transparent. Also, what about black and white covers or very dark covers. edit: I see ferent has beaten me to the punch.

Ok, i see! It's technical not possible and not consistence with black and white covers. But to rule the consistency it seems to be good compromise to dimm the cover. Hopefully dimm doesn't not only mean to make it darker but also lighter. The dimming affects color, greyscale or very dark covers the same way!

Maybe you can kindly create an example...

Efty

[jurialmunkey]

To which XML are these settings saved, btw? In case I'd want to mirror the settings to different machines.

All the settings for all skins are saved in the guisettings.xml in xbmc's userdata folder. If you are going to copy it to another machine make sure you quit xbmc first because otherwise xbmc tries to overwrite any changes you make to it.

[cruse]

[...] one of the basic thematic elements of the skin is softly rounded, consistently sized rectangles with a soft shadow behind [...]

You could use this for the watched/unwatched indicators as well. Right now it's a triangle in the upper left corner. What about using the "outer" rounded corner with a new internal corner, creating a new rectangle within the original one. This could either be a square for icons or a rectangle for text.

Since those indicators seem to be the most aggravating topic for XP1080 based skins - although your's is getting more unique (and superb :) on a daily basis - maybe move em to the lower right corner. Upper corners are a prominent position for something that is more confusing/distracting than helpful for a lot of people imho.

Thanks for all your work and communication.

[PatrickBateman]

Maybe the flag it's not the best integrated and we can find one more integrated in the skin (I like the white eye in this web: http://dribbble.com/shots/563816-Menu-Icons)
Of course it's my personal opinion :-)

I quite like the eye one myself.

The eye is not bad, it's used in the xboxone skin a few threads below.
Call me crazy, but currently, the green tick indicating something is watched and displaying nothing for un-watched is absolutely perfect IMO!

I think the current implamntation it's the best, most obvious, simplistic, fuss free, user friendly option around.

Unwatched = unmarked
Watched = marked/ticked

It's really nice as is IMO.

[jurialmunkey]

.... Right now it's a triangle in the upper left corner. What about using the "outer" rounded corner with a new internal corner, creating a new rectangle within the original one. This could either be a square for icons or a rectangle for text.

... move em to the lower right corner. Upper corners are a prominent position for something that is more confusing/distracting than helpful for a lot of people imho ...

Originally I was going to make it a rounded rectangle: the thing is that it takes up 2x the space of the triangle with no real change to the watched indicator icon. I use the rounded rectangle for unwatched tvshow counts in the "reel" view, but I find it takes up too much space even there, so I'm thinking about removing it and figuring out a better way to show the count.

I also actually much prefer the lower right corner for indicators. Its not this way only for a technical issue: the reflections -- because the reflections start already partially transparent, then the watched indicator reflection also has to be transparent -- but then you see part of the reflected poster artwork underneath and so the reflection doesn't look right. There is a way to do it, but it is a lot more complex.

Call me crazy, but currently, the green tick indicating something is watched and displaying nothing for un-watched is absolutely perfect IMO!
I think the current implamntation it's the best, most obvious, simplistic, fuss free, user friendly option around.

Well that's my opinion also, but it seems to be the hot topic at the moment so I'm always willing to entertain suggestions. So far, however, I haven't heard any that meet all my criteria: (1) simple; (2) easy to understand without explanation; (3) unobtrusive; and (4) able to be applied to all available viewtypes.

Text banners fail 1 and 4.
Dimming posters fails 3 and 4
Eye icon is beaten by the checkmark in terms of 2

[furii]

Call me crazy, but currently, the green tick indicating something is watched and displaying nothing for un-watched is absolutely perfect IMO!
I think the current implamntation it's the best, most obvious, simplistic, fuss free, user friendly option around.

Well that's my opinion also

mine as well.

[xecutionx]

Any chance of including a PseudoTV skin based of your LiveTV guide? That would be amazing.

[deletedpenguin]

Any chance of including a PseudoTV skin based of your LiveTV guide? That would be amazing.

+1

[st graveyard]

.... Right now it's a triangle in the upper left corner. What about using the "outer" rounded corner with a new internal corner, creating a new rectangle within the original one. This could either be a square for icons or a rectangle for text.

... move em to the lower right corner. Upper corners are a prominent position for something that is more confusing/distracting than helpful for a lot of people imho ...

Originally I was going to make it a rounded rectangle: the thing is that it takes up 2x the space of the triangle with no real change to the watched indicator icon. I use the rounded rectangle for unwatched tvshow counts in the "reel" view, but I find it takes up too much space even there, so I'm thinking about removing it and figuring out a better way to show the count.

I also actually much prefer the lower right corner for indicators. Its not this way only for a technical issue: the reflections -- because the reflections start already partially transparent, then the watched indicator reflection also has to be transparent -- but then you see part of the reflected poster artwork underneath and so the reflection doesn't look right. There is a way to do it, but it is a lot more complex.

Call me crazy, but currently, the green tick indicating something is watched and displaying nothing for un-watched is absolutely perfect IMO!
I think the current implamntation it's the best, most obvious, simplistic, fuss free, user friendly option around.

Well that's my opinion also, but it seems to be the hot topic at the moment so I'm always willing to entertain suggestions. So far, however, I haven't heard any that meet all my criteria: (1) simple; (2) easy to understand without explanation; (3) unobtrusive; and (4) able to be applied to all available viewtypes.

Text banners fail 1 and 4.
Dimming posters fails 3 and 4
Eye icon is beaten by the checkmark in terms of 2

If it ain't broke, don't fix it ... In other words, I like the current solution ...

[jurialmunkey]

Any chance of including a PseudoTV skin based of your LiveTV guide? That would be amazing.

+1

I was actually planning to hopefully get started on it this weekend

Does anyone know whether a skin made for PseudoTV-Live will also work for the normal version of PseudoTV (or vice versa)?