2015-01-01, 02:55
This is an exceptionally sexy looking skin. I love the modern flat look you have used. You've found a really great balance between Aeon Nox and reFocus, and exceeded both of them I think. Great job! I intend to use this as my primary skin for the foreseeable future.
The biggest fault (in my eyes) is the seekbar, which I found to be far too large. It works great as the full screen "info" dialog, but my problem is that the same dialog is also used when I fast forward, rewind, or seek to a new position in the timeline. For these frequent and short operations, I very much dislike having my view of the video obstructed, so a huge animated dialog that takes up the entire bottom third of the screen with a bunch of useless information (like plot summary and movie/episode rating) every time I do this is a major nuisance to me. It bothered me so much, that I actually made my own copy of DialogSeekBar.xml that cuts out all the unwanted labels, leaving a significantly slimmer version that is much more in line with the one from Aeon Nox. The only remaining problem for me is that the "slimmed" down dialog is still used when I hit the "info" button, so when I actually do want to see more info, it's not shown here anymore. I've found this behavior exists in Aeon Nox as well, and I'm guessing was carried over from there. If you take a look at Confluence though, you'll find that it uses separate dialogs for the full screen "info" display (VideoFullScreen.xml), and a much smaller one for fast forward, rewind, and seek operations (DialogSeekBar.xml). I hope one day I'll find the time to fully understand how all this fits together and come up with my own copy of VideoFullScreen.xml too so I get the best of both worlds, but for now I'm content having my "slim" seekbar appear in both places. In case you or anyone else is interested, this is what it looks like...
...and this is my DialogSeekBar.xml.
By the way, I noticed one of your screenshots shows a "Wall" view, but I could not find this in my installation. Only an "InfoWall" view, which was similar but not quite the same. Was this view removed from the skin, or do I need to install something else to add this view as an option?
Thanks for the wonderful skin! It really looks great.
The biggest fault (in my eyes) is the seekbar, which I found to be far too large. It works great as the full screen "info" dialog, but my problem is that the same dialog is also used when I fast forward, rewind, or seek to a new position in the timeline. For these frequent and short operations, I very much dislike having my view of the video obstructed, so a huge animated dialog that takes up the entire bottom third of the screen with a bunch of useless information (like plot summary and movie/episode rating) every time I do this is a major nuisance to me. It bothered me so much, that I actually made my own copy of DialogSeekBar.xml that cuts out all the unwanted labels, leaving a significantly slimmer version that is much more in line with the one from Aeon Nox. The only remaining problem for me is that the "slimmed" down dialog is still used when I hit the "info" button, so when I actually do want to see more info, it's not shown here anymore. I've found this behavior exists in Aeon Nox as well, and I'm guessing was carried over from there. If you take a look at Confluence though, you'll find that it uses separate dialogs for the full screen "info" display (VideoFullScreen.xml), and a much smaller one for fast forward, rewind, and seek operations (DialogSeekBar.xml). I hope one day I'll find the time to fully understand how all this fits together and come up with my own copy of VideoFullScreen.xml too so I get the best of both worlds, but for now I'm content having my "slim" seekbar appear in both places. In case you or anyone else is interested, this is what it looks like...
...and this is my DialogSeekBar.xml.
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<window>
<defaultcontrol>1</defaultcontrol>
<visible>[Window.IsActive(videoosd) | Window.IsActive(fullscreeninfo) | Player.Seeking | Player.DisplayAfterSeek | Player.Paused | Player.Forwarding | Player.Rewinding] + !Window.IsVisible(MusicOSD) + VideoPlayer.IsFullscreen</visible>
<controls>
<control type="group">
<top>916</top>
<visible>Player.Forwarding | Player.Rewinding | [Player.Paused + !Window.IsActive(subtitlesearch)]</visible>
<control type="image">
<top>0</top>
<left>1596</left>
<width>300</width>
<height>70</height>
<texture>background.png</texture>
<colordiffuse>background</colordiffuse>
</control>
<control type="label">
<visible>Player.Paused + !Window.IsActive(subtitlesearch)</visible>
<top>0</top>
<left>1596</left>
<width>300</width>
<height>70</height>
<font>font13_title</font>
<textcolor>grey</textcolor>
<align>center</align>
<aligny>center</aligny>
<label>[B]Pause[/B]</label>
</control>
<control type="label">
<visible>Player.Rewinding</visible>
<top>0</top>
<left>1596</left>
<width>300</width>
<height>70</height>
<font>font13_title</font>
<textcolor>grey</textcolor>
<align>center</align>
<aligny>center</aligny>
<label>[B]Rewind: $VAR[VideoPlayerForwardRewindVar][/B]</label>
</control>
<control type="label">
<visible>Player.Forwarding</visible>
<top>0</top>
<left>1596</left>
<width>300</width>
<height>70</height>
<font>font13_title</font>
<textcolor>grey</textcolor>
<align>center</align>
<aligny>center</aligny>
<label>[B]Speed: $VAR[VideoPlayerForwardRewindVar][/B]</label>
</control>
</control>
<control type="group">
<!-- <animation effect="slide" start="0,70" end="0,0" time="200">WindowOpen</animation> -->
<!-- <animation effect="slide" start="0,70" end="0,0" time="200">VisibleChange</animation> -->
<top>1010</top>
<visible>true</visible>
<control type="image">
<top>0</top>
<left>0</left>
<width>1920</width>
<height>105</height>
<texture>background.png</texture>
<colordiffuse>background</colordiffuse>
</control>
<control type="progress">
<top>0</top>
<left>0</left>
<width>1920</width>
<height>70</height>
<info>Player.ProgressCache</info>
</control>
<control type="progress">
<top>0</top>
<left>0</left>
<width>1920</width>
<height>70</height>
<info>Player.Progress</info>
<colordiffuse>background</colordiffuse>
</control>
<control type="label">
<visible>![VideoPlayer.Content(episodes)]</visible>
<top>0</top>
<left>24</left>
<width>1566</width>
<height>70</height>
<font>font13</font>
<textcolor>grey</textcolor>
<align>left</align>
<aligny>center</aligny>
<label>[B]$VAR[PlayerTitleLabelVar][/B]</label>
</control>
<control type="label">
<visible>[VideoPlayer.Content(episodes)]</visible>
<top>0</top>
<left>24</left>
<width>1566</width>
<height>70</height>
<font>font13</font>
<textcolor>grey</textcolor>
<align>left</align>
<aligny>center</aligny>
<label>[B]$INFO[VideoPlayer.TVShowTitle,, • ]$INFO[VideoPlayer.Season,,x]$INFO[VideoPlayer.Episode,,. ]$VAR[PlayerTitleLabelVar][/B]</label>
</control>
<control type="label">
<top>0</top>
<left>1596</left>
<width>300</width>
<height>70</height>
<font>font13</font>
<textcolor>grey</textcolor>
<align>right</align>
<aligny>center</aligny>
<label>[B]$INFO[Player.Time]$INFO[Player.Duration, / ][/B]</label>
</control>
</control>
</controls>
</window>By the way, I noticed one of your screenshots shows a "Wall" view, but I could not find this in my installation. Only an "InfoWall" view, which was similar but not quite the same. Was this view removed from the skin, or do I need to install something else to add this view as an option?
Thanks for the wonderful skin! It really looks great.
