[mikeSiLVO]

I just noticed today that this was out of the graveyard, and gotta say thanks for the awesome work mikeSilvo! I had a couple question/suggestions after reading through the thread:

1. I was going to ask how to re-enable recently added for movies/TV/etc. but figured it out while writing this. Should that be set back to be enabled by default?
2. In previous Transparency I had season fanart.jpg in my "Season XX" folders which would override the shows primary background. Is there anyway to get this to work again? Seems it was disabled when my previous T! auto updated to 13.0.0.
3. I tried out the font change branch and for some reason Noto Sans just looks wrong to me in this interface. Texts in lists (like of movies in the fanart view) seems thinner than it used to. It's entirely possible that it's just that it looks different to the font I've been looking at for the past 8+ years, which is why I don't like it. I do wonder if Roboto at 400 or 500 might be better than Noto. As an android user that feels like a more "neutral" sans to me.
4. I think the giant "RECENTLY ADDED MOVIES" is a bit much as it dwarfs the movies/shows listed below. I kinda liked the "NEW" that was there before.

1. I can start adding default widgets but what widgets on which menu items would require additional feedback.

2. Use Kodi naming convention for artwork then refresh the item.
TV-Show_artwork (wiki)
Artwork/Season (wiki)

3. The link I posted in the thread has an older thinner font but the one currently in the font_change branch is thicker and I think it looks better than the original font but still somewhat similar...

OLD FONT


NEW FONT


I can also increase sizes if they are too small.

NEW FONT w/SIZE INCREASE


4. It is actually the same exact size as the NEW: used to be. The original layout only allowed enough space for a few letters. New in French is Nouveau or something like that. It wouldn't fit and showing what the actual widget contains allows more of them to be provided. It would be almost impossible to come up with 3-5 letters for every future widget. The old recommended widgets used the word TIP and while that's a clever word based on the constraints it doesn't quite work as a widget description IMHO.

[mikeSiLVO]

Any chance you would consider building in support for the GUI in 21:9 aspect ratio (Cinemascope)? 2.40, 2.37, 2.35, 1.78.

The OSMC default skin has a "Cinemascope" version that handles it really well, but the overall look and feel doesn't compare in my opinion.

This would probably take a bit of time cause if I were to add this I would start it on my other skin and then move on to this one.

[Mordred]

2. Use Kodi naming convention for artwork then refresh the item.
TV-Show_artwork (wiki)
Artwork/Season (wiki)

This doesn't seem to work. I have tried both fanart.jpg in the season folder (worked automatically pre new version), season01-fanart.jpg in the top level show folder, and season01-fanart.jpg in the individual season folders (also toggling extra fanart both on and off just in case) and none of them show up automatically after doing a refresh. I can manually go into each season, select choose artwork, browse to item folder, and then select the artwork I want and it sticks for just that season, but that's a huge pain to have to do everytime.

3. The link I posted in the thread has an older thinner font but the one currently in the font_change branch is thicker and I think it looks better than the original font but still somewhat similar...

4. It is actually the same exact size as the NEW: used to be. The original layout only allowed enough space for a few letters. New in French is Nouveau or something like that. It wouldn't fit and showing what the actual widget contains allows more of them to be provided. It would be almost impossible to come up with 3-5 letters for every future widget. The old recommended widgets used the word TIP and while that's a clever word based on the constraints it doesn't quite work as a widget description IMHO.

I might be the only one, but I really prefer the larger font in that last pic. Has more of the fell of the old skin with a more modern font. I also really liked Roni's original font choice too though.

As for RECENTLY ADDED MOVIES vs NEW, I forgot about localization My problem with it at current is that it just dwarfs everything below as the font is at least 25% bigger and in all caps. I think it's perfectly fine to keep it all caps but the font size should be a lot smaller if it's going to take up that much real estate. I'd probably put it at the same size as the MOVIES/UNWATCHED count labels below, or if needs to be a little bigger, the size of the Year for Movies or episode title for recently added episodes.

[mikeSiLVO]

This doesn't seem to work. I have tried both fanart.jpg in the season folder (worked automatically pre new version), season01-fanart.jpg in the top level show folder, and season01-fanart.jpg in the individual season folders (also toggling extra fanart both on and off just in case) and none of them show up automatically after doing a refresh. I can manually go into each season, select choose artwork, browse to item folder, and then select the artwork I want and it sticks for just that season, but that's a huge pain to have to do everytime.

I might be the only one, but I really prefer the larger font in that last pic. Has more of the fell of the old skin with a more modern font. I also really liked Roni's original font choice too though.

As for RECENTLY ADDED MOVIES vs NEW, I forgot about localization My problem with it at current is that it just dwarfs everything below as the font is at least 25% bigger and in all caps. I think it's perfectly fine to keep it all caps but the font size should be a lot smaller if it's going to take up that much real estate. I'd probably put it at the same size as the MOVIES/UNWATCHED count labels below, or if needs to be a little bigger, the size of the Year for Movies or episode title for recently added episodes.

I have never looked into season art, since I don't use it, so I don't know how to add the season fanart for the season folder.

---

The font changes are now in the skin_shortcuts branch and I deleted the font_change one.

Started some code cleanup when I noticed the plot in video info was sometimes empty cause there were two textbox controls with id="4" so hopefully I didn't break anything in the process.

Transparency! (Skin Shortcuts Edition) + Font Change v0.0.3

[kurai]

@mikeSiLVO Hrmmm.  One of @Mordred 's suggestions solved an issue I as about to report with the Noto Sans Display change.
The Noto font seems to have trouble with quite a few of the glyphs that get used a lot in things like Youtube or Twitch video titles/descriptions.
(Although, to be fair, this was a weakness with Teen as well, but Kodi defaulted to a blank space character for unknown glyphs, whereas with Noto Kodi uses a box character, which is more jarring).

I tried Roboto and it seems a lot more complete.  The 500 weight `Medium` looks pretty good to me.

[mikeSiLVO]

@mikeSiLVO Hrmmm.  One of @Mordred 's suggestions solved an issue I as about to report with the Noto Sans Display change.
The Noto font seems to have trouble with quite a few of the glyphs that get used a lot in things like Youtube or Twitch video titles/descriptions.
(Although, to be fair, this was a weakness with Teen as well, but Kodi defaulted to a blank space character for unknown glyphs, whereas with Noto Kodi uses a box character, which is more jarring).

I tried Roboto and it seems a lot more complete.  The 500 weight `Medium` looks pretty good to me.

Spent way too much time going down the rabbit hole of fonts...

Noto Sans is more complete than Roboto and I can remove the box for any font so it has a blank space for an undefined character. I have modified 2 fonts like that, but I think having a blank space is a tad silly. All the fonts I've tested display some type of character to inform there is something that is supposed to be there. Most likely a language not supported by the font. For the Twitch app I see unknown characters even when using Arial which appears to be the most complete single font file I can find.

Personally, I am leaning toward Noto Sans Condensed-Medium but here are the two font files with a blank space for unknown characters...

NotoSansCondensed-Medium

NotoSans-Medium

Is there no interest in me updating this skin? I would've thought there would be more people testing these changes...

[kurai]

@mikeSiLVO Fair comment about displaying *something* rather than blank, for undefined chars - down to personal preference, I guess.  If it means having to manually edit the fonts and them end up as `non-standard` compared to the original distribution (not to mention taking up your valuable time for a corner case I suspect 90% of people will never notice/care about) , then I'd rather live with the incorrect glyph.

Of the two you are leaning towards - I like NotoSans-Medium over the Condensed version.

However - of all the variants mentioned so far in the thread I think I still prefer Roboto-Medium.

I've gotten accustomed to the change from Teen-normal surprisingly quickly, considering how long I've been using Transparency.  I'm now discovering that my main decision point is legibility at 10 feet for my old eyes, rather than fine aesthetic details, and pretty much all the options are an improvement :/

[Massimo1971]

Any chance you would consider building in support for the GUI in 21:9 aspect ratio (Cinemascope)? 2.40, 2.37, 2.35, 1.78.

The OSMC default skin has a "Cinemascope" version that handles it really well, but the overall look and feel doesn't compare in my opinion.

This would probably take a bit of time cause if I were to add this I would start it on my other skin and then move on to this one.

i would be great if you can uograde this skin for cinescope

[mikeSiLVO]

@mikeSiLVO Fair comment about displaying *something* rather than blank, for undefined chars - down to personal preference, I guess.  If it means having to manually edit the fonts and them end up as `non-standard` compared to the original distribution (not to mention taking up your valuable time for a corner case I suspect 90% of people will never notice/care about) , then I'd rather live with the incorrect glyph.

Of the two you are leaning towards - I like NotoSans-Medium over the Condensed version.

However - of all the variants mentioned so far in the thread I think I still prefer Roboto-Medium.

I've gotten accustomed to the change from Teen-normal surprisingly quickly, considering how long I've been using Transparency.  I'm now discovering that my main decision point is legibility at 10 feet for my old eyes, rather than fine aesthetic details, and pretty much all the options are an improvement :/

Switched to Roboto and started a code refactor.

Transparency! (Skin Shortcuts Edition) v0.0.4

[kurai]

@mikeSiLVO Wow - that's a big-ass diff. Nice one 

I've grabbed 0.0.4 + the newer commits and I'll play around with it today.

[kurai]

@mikeSiLVO I'm going through and re-creating my old Transparency setup with the Skin Shortcuts system - much better than the old duct-taped on Custom Favourites method. 

I've run into one (possibly) missing feature - in a prior post I mentioned Home Screen multi-art displays - I didn't explain well what I was missing.
One feature @ronie had was for TV Shows/Movies/Music to have a main overlay image "frame" with a "window" that displayed a multi-image set inside. (See screenshot at end)
The `frame` backgrounds were ./backgrounds/tvshows.png|movies.png|music.png 

I can't see a way to re-create that with current Skin Settings or Skin Shortcuts.
Please let me know if the option already exists somewhere and I'm just being dim - if not can I request that it's re-added ?

The TV surround is the static ./backgrounds/tvshows.png foreground image with a transparent region for the `screen` with a changing multi-image background set behind.
Referenced in the original Includes_Home.xml & Skin_Settings.xml etc.  Some of the code below:-

Includes_Home.xml ~Line:122:
<include name="Home_TVShows_Fanart">

    <control type="multiimage">

        <left>330</left>

        <top>120</top>

        <width>1350</width>

        <height>802</height>

    <imagepath background="true">$INFO[Skin.String(Custom_Home_TVShows_Fanart_Background_Path)]</imagepath>

    <aspectratio aligny="top">scale</aspectratio>

    <timeperimage>8000</timeperimage>

Skin_Setings.xml ~Line:634:
<visible>!Skin.HasSetting(Home_TVShows_Fanart_Background)</visible>

                            </item>

                            <item id="3">

                                <label>$LOCALIZE[10000] - $LOCALIZE[20343]</label>

                                <onclick>noop</onclick>

                                <icon>special://skin/backgrounds/tvshows.png</icon>

                                <thumb>special://skin/backgrounds/tvshows.png</thumb>

                                <visible>Skin.HasSetting(Home_TVShows_Fanart_Background)</visible>

The original functionality went away with commit Add Skin Shortcuts support: 6cf5f14


(Ignore the red edits - they were just demonstrating the altered image placement and dimensions of the transparent area)

[kurai]

@mikeSiLVO Hi again 

On a similar note - the use of the resource.images.weatherfanart.prairie plugin for conditional background on Home screen Weather (as seen below), and the plugin resource.images.weatherfanart.multi for conditional multi-image backgrounds for the Weather window.
I can see where the original method was commented out in ./1080p/Includes_Variables.xml  etc. in commit [Widgets] Slight rework + Add to menu customizer + Add some new options 0d8795d but can't find if it was moved elsewhere or re-added in a later commit.

If it's really not there can I add a further request to have it back, please ?

[mikeSiLVO]

I was planning on adding back the conditional weather fanart but I forgot…

As for the other option, I completely missed its existence.

Will re-add both when I get a chance.

[mikeSiLVO]

Conditional weather and the "frames" for backgrounds have been added to the menu customizer.

[kurai]

Conditional weather and the "frames" for backgrounds have been added to the menu customizer.

Excellent - thank you. 

I've got the TV/Music/Movies frames set up and working nicely.

Having a problem configuring the weather backgrounds though.
For the weather window I can select a conditional multi-set from SkinSettings->Backgrounds->Default->resource.images.weatherfanart.prairie
Works great.

I'm having trouble finding how to use a conditional multi-set for the Home/Weather top-level menu however. (I'd like to use the resource.images.weatherfanart.multi pack)
I presumed this would be in Customize Main Menu->Weather->Select Background, but can't see how to make it work.
Am I missing something ?  Where/how should I be looking to configure this ?


(I also found a very minor layout/spacing issue in one of the selector dialogues, but I can see you are still in the middle of cleanup & tweaking.  Shall I wait until you do a point-release and report it, if still there ?)
EDIT:
Never mind - I think you got the spacing thing in commit cba57e7   That, or I forgot exactly how/where I found it - I'll try and recreate the issue again  )