[DiMag]

@DiMag  -  lol you just want me to build it your way hahaha   

I. I would first need a wish list; I don't have it.

I just know what does not work, either because it violates the rules of ergonomics, or because it is not code efficient (too much work for little gain, work which does not get saved in $USER_DIR, better alternative available, etc). On these grounds, I am asking what benefit is gained from a shrunk main menu producing wasted screen estate left and right of it and making the text illegible. And from a floor menu which looks beautiful but again wastes screen estate. Considering that all buttons therein contained could migrate with exactly the same coding effort to the menu blade, or with much much less coding effort to the power menu, or the customizable Commands add-on. The last option seems much preferable since it gets saved in $USER_DIR. (If skin shortcuts are used the power menu gets saved in $USER_DIR too.)

I cannot make up my mind about the desirability of a Netflix-like home screen based on widgets; I both like them and dislike them. Therefore, I am asking you what thoughts motivated you to add an additional second widget on the main screen and not go a step further to four widgets. (Four because I was thinking you need a heads-up-display of what is in progress and what is newly added, and given that films and series are separated in the library the minimum amount of widgets to achieve this is four.) And the reason I am asking is that a just-two-widgets design looks to me like the designer cannot make up his mind about the desirability of widgets. It conveys a statement "I am coding it just because I can but as it stands it is not really useful".


II. To round up this exchange on a perfect Xonfluence's wish list, let me add the following:

I have used your advise on customizing main menu items and submenu items to great effect, and like you I am not convinced that skin shortcuts offer the same degree of control over customization as the old method does.

As to addon sets, I have come to the conclusion that to be fully useful, they have to be able to open the directory listing(s) provided in the addon and browse it down to the exact subdirectory desired. They cannot. (Whether skin shortcuts make a difference here, I don't know.) So they seem to me to be only useful for addons of the Run() type. Of which of course there are quite few, most of them suited to the Settings main menu item (see last paragraph below).

Finally I have come to the conclusion that the preferable approach to customizing the video and music main menu items is to forget submenus and addon sets and do everything per library node editing. Everything doable per submenus and addon sets can be done per library node editing; here, you can also browse addon directory listings down to the desired subdirectory. And all customizations are saved in $USER_DIR.

Library node editing doesn't apply to the settings menu. Here, the best method of customization is submenus and old style addon sets. Most if not all settings related addons are of the Run() type, so the old style addon set is perfectly suited to the Settings menu. I am not saying that I am satisfied. I wish we had a true Kodi control panel, customizable to the same degree as library node are today. I think Amber or Aeon Nox Silvo or both provide something resembling a true Kodi control panel, but I am not sure.