[trogggy]

I'm clarifying

Float like a butterfly, clarify like a bee.

[PatK]

Clear to me, that's why Transparency! is my go to skin. Thanks Ronie.

[sktn77a]

Appears to be change for change's sake. Maybe YOU like it but many (most?) of your users don't. How about leaving the confluence skin as a second authorized/default skin for those of us struggling with new skins every couple of years?

[Gracus]

Appears to be change for change's sake. Maybe YOU like it but many (most?) of your users don't. How about leaving the confluence skin as a second authorized/default skin for those of us struggling with new skins every couple of years?

If you had read the thread instead of just the title, you would know that you can install confluence on kodi 17...

[Martijn]

Appears to be change for change's sake. Maybe YOU like it but many (most?) of your users don't. How about leaving the confluence skin as a second authorized/default skin for those of us struggling with new skins every couple of years?

You have absolute ZERO proof of any of your claims.

[natethomas]

Appears to be change for change's sake. Maybe YOU like it but many (most?) of your users don't. How about leaving the confluence skin as a second authorized/default skin for those of us struggling with new skins every couple of years?

It's disappointing when you spend a lot of time writing about the history of a major design change and somebody boils it down into a bs slogan that's absurdly wrong.

[Gobberwart]

Personally, I like the new skin. My wife hates it though, so confluence it is. Happy wife happy life.

An issue that I feel could be addressed could be better grouping of addon-related tasks. In order to install anything not provided by the official Kodi repo currently requires visiting multiple locations within kodi, eg settings (to enable unknown sources), file manager (to add a new source) and addons itself to actually install. I feel like this could be handled better. Perhaps just by adding two shortcuts to the addons menu... Settings and sources. Simples.

Not really complaining, just using my two cents for a usability improvement to the gui.

Edit: I realise settings is available from the sidebar if you know what the symbols mean, but that's not particularly user friendly IMHO

[natethomas]

An issue that I feel could be addressed could be better grouping of addon-related tasks. In order to install anything not provided by the official Kodi repo currently requires visiting multiple locations within kodi, eg settings (to enable unknown sources), file manager (to add a new source) and addons itself to actually install.

You aren't going to find a lot of sympathy for making it easier to install 3rd party addons. In the general view of the team, if the add-on is good enough to install, it should be in the official repo. And if it's not in the official repo, it's probably either piracy or a GPL violation, and either way, that's not something we want to make easier to support. The only time making 3rd party addons easier is for testing of not yet released addons, and people doing that kind of testing have very little problem installing 3rd party addons as is.

[skybird1980]

i really don't like the bad mouse behaviour of estuary.
moving in file lists is horrible to not possible.

@addons:
nate, not all addons repositorys are bad. there are even a lot of repositorys for testing reasons before the adddons go to the main repo.
or look at the kodinerds.net repository. main german and useful.

[natethomas]

I addressed the testing thing in my post. And we'd really rather the majority of the kodinerds addons were in the official repo.

[Gobberwart]

You aren't going to find a lot of sympathy for making it easier to install 3rd party addons. In the general view of the team, if the add-on is good enough to install, it should be in the official repo. And if it's not in the official repo, it's probably either piracy or a GPL violation, and either way, that's not something we want to make easier to support. The only time making 3rd party addons easier is for testing of not yet released addons, and people doing that kind of testing have very little problem installing 3rd party addons as is.

I figured that would be the reasoning behind the (apparent) poor design. Fair enough I guess, although I think it's short sighted.

There are many legit reasons people may want to install addons not found in the kodi repo, and the difficulty of install reflects poorly on kodi from a new user perspective.

I'm used to it now and don't much care, but I recall using it for the first time and being frustrated at the multiple difficult-to-locate screens needed.

[natethomas]

Think of it like this, Gobberwart, does Android regularly get negatively reviewed for making it difficult to side load apps? Or Amazon? Or even Apple? They provide the exact same type of ecosystem and the reasons to side load on those platforms are exactly the same reason to side load on Kodi.

[natethomas]

Or let me put it another way. Side loading is an unpleasant and not user friendly activity by definition. It should not be needed. Making it easier doesn't solve the underlying issue that it isn't user friendly in the first place. The better solution is for the addon to be in the official repo. If it isn't, and there's no obvious reason for it not to be, then you would be better served asking the addon author to submit it, rather than asking us to make an unpleasant experience less unpleasant.

[trogggy]

Think of it like this, Gobberwart, does Android regularly get negatively reviewed for making it difficult to side load apps? Or Amazon? Or even Apple? They provide the exact same type of ecosystem and the reasons to side load on those platforms are exactly the same reason to side load on Kodi.

I'm loath to buy anything android unless it can be rooted.
The only amazon device I own is running cyanogenmod.
The only apple in my house outside of a fruitbowl is the old iphone my s-in-law gave my son.

I don't have an issue with companies wanting to control every inch of their ecosystem - ultimately they're governed by profit-motive - but I do choose to avoid them when I can. I surely can't be the only one here to feel like that.
I'm surprised by the 'We're making it hard on purpose' line - but tbh (not using Estuary) I hadn't noticed much of a difference.

[natethomas]

Rooting and running cyanogenmod doesn't in any way change how difficult it is to sideload on those platforms.