[tomer953]

Ive just added "live preview" of Home screen in my skin settings section,
I took me a while to "paint" all the home screen and modify all the options to make the things look real...

two pictures to demonstrate:
http://i.imgur.com/5TFShsr.png
http://i.imgur.com/1OW4jOx.png

I tought It would easier if we had new control of "preview" (like "videowindow" but of windows)
I can think about a lot of cool stuf we can create with it.... and saves a lot of code.

[Jayz2K]

Ive just added "live preview" of Home screen in my skin settings section,
I took me a while to "paint" all the home screen and modify all the options to make the things look real...

two pictures to demonstrate:
http://i.imgur.com/5TFShsr.png
http://i.imgur.com/1OW4jOx.png

I tought It would easier if we had new control of "preview" (like "videowindow" but of windows)
I can think about a lot of cool stuf we can create with it.... and saves a lot of code.

Sounds good. I'm also using something similar.
However, to embed a window in another could be power hungry.
I thought about duplicating the needed windows as a cutom dialog but it needs to keep the focus on the previous one ...
However it's a great idea.

[BobCratchett]

Interesting idea. One relatively easy possibility (I achieved this in a matter of minutes), though I don't know how practical it would be, is to move all the home.xml controls into an include. Then, in skinsettings.xml, include them with animations ala

Code:

<control type="group">
    <animation effect="slide" end="20,450" time="0" condition="True">Conditional</animation>
    <animation effect="zoom" end="30" time="0" condition="True">Conditional</animation>
    <include>home</include>
</control>

It's not an entirely functional preview (the widgets don't seem to display, for example, possibly due to IDs that are now being shared), and controls that would normally be offscreen are now visible, but it might give those more skilled than I an idea to play with.

[tomer953]

I also used the zoom function.. but still, needed some modifications to make it work.

[BobCratchett]

The difference being, from what I understand of the method you describe in the OP, there's no need to "paint" your preview of the home screen to make it look real - by moving the home screen controls into an include (and using that include in both home.xml and skinsettings.xml) it is real. It still needs some modifications (like ensuring no IDs are shared between the home include and skinsettings, probably something like putting it behind an image with an image mask so offscreen controls aren't visible, possibly putting a button with noop on top of it so it can't actually be used as it's fully functional, and probably fixing whatever issue makes it difficult to work with that I haven't thought of) to make it work in context, though

[tomer953]

Thanks, Your solution is great.
I Tried It, and fixed the duplicate ID and some other things...

Last thing is to disable the offscreen controls, didn't understood your solution about the image mask, can you explain better? see image please: http://i.imgur.com/Ppr1ttE.png

Edit:
I Think I made it, made 1920*1080 white background, and deleted from it the preview location, the put in over the preview, and both of them below anything else in the skinsettings, so now offset control are hidden.

[BobCratchett]

In Kodi I believe it's done with via a "diffuse" element in the Texture Attributes (wiki) - it can be used to specify which parts of an image should be visible/transparent. So in your skin you could possibly place the <include /> below the grey texture, then have the diffuse image for the gray texture be a white image the same size as the actual, with a transparent box where the <include /> should show through.

Edit: Or what you did whilst I was typing that

[tomer953]

Thanks.
I can think of many cool options using this trick... maybe create a "preview" of couple of windows (home\movies\tvshows...) and put in a custom window, and then show it home, or anywhere else.
something like Microsoft did in Windows 10: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/up...lt-tab.jpg