First the good news (and no, there aren't really a million backdrops):
Say hello to the Aeon Assistant. You can summon it from any page within XBMC where it provides context-sensitive advice on various bits and bobs. This is in addition to the slides present in the standard Settings section. If the news update looks a little fuzzy, it's because it's downloaded from the Aeon server and is therefore optimised for speed. It's also the only thing in Aeon that does not now refer to strings.xml - not much I can do about that yet. Because the Assistant pops up over existing windows (though the window furniture fades out), it adopts whichever backdrop(s) are running at the time.
Some more good news:
The new schema for Aeon's xml and window structure should make modding or tweaking it a doddle. Includes are used where common sense says they should be, not to the point of needles in haystacks. Moreover, they've been organised into specific xml files according to purpose and named accordingly, so you can track them down in an instant. Comments, meanwhile, are used to explain pretty much everything that needs them
Some
more good news:
Holy shit have I got a backdrop pack for you. Not quite a million, though. Now to find a host.
Now some bad news:
A work opportunity's come up that I simply can't turn down, which means delays. We're talking weeks rather than months, but let's just say you won't be downloading on New Year's Day. Apologies.
But at least:
Most of the important stuff's done and is entirely bug free, with skin-wide localisation support and optimised animation. This is probably bad news for volunteer translators as there are a *lot* of strings involved.
