[fbacher]

I have spent a fair amount of time trying to customize Transparency for my "cognitively challenged" brother can use it. I'm a software engineer of ~25 years and I expect it will still take me a month or more to do this on my own, so now I'm willing to donate $200 to XBMC, or to whatever you like for a few customizations to dumb-down Transparency.

The goal:
I only want my brother to play movies or TV shows.
I want to use Library mode, mostly for the TV episodes.
He only needs to select Movies by Genre.
He only needs to select TV shows by Title
I don't want him to get lost in play lists.
I would prefer that he not see stuff he doesn't need.

What I have done:
I have already set up a remote so that I can do all the navigation I want with up-down right-left, OK and back. The startup screen is Video library. I have set "I hate transparency to 100%" I have also modified things so that you can't navigate to or make visible the left-most dialog (View, Sort by, Library Mode, Hide watched, Search, etc.) via the remote.

What I want:
The single most important thing is to remove Playlists from the XBMC-Videos-Library window.
The next priority is to remove every choice but "Genres" from the Movies window. Of equal priority is to remove every choice but "Title" from the TV window.
Lowest priority is to eliminate sub-windows with only one choice. Selecting "Movies" would take you straight to the genres list without you having to select it.

I am willing to do this myself, but I would need some good hints. Another goal of mine is to hope that these capabilities get integrated into the main product and selectable through skins. I think there are a lot of children, elderly and otherwise non-technical people who could benefit from this.

Thanx

[ppic]

for entering tvshow and movies, you have the ability to choose the default folder, so it you make genre folder by default for tvshow, you'll have tvshow genre showing when entering tv show.

for home menu that you want to be limited, just edit the home.xml to remove parts that you dont want.

and don't forget to activate kiosk mode if possible (limit access to option in most views)

[ronie]

first, let me start by saying i'm skinning in my spare time, purely for fun.
i consider myself lucky to have a full time job and i'm not interested in any extra money.
over the past year i've had several people offer me money for skinning jobs and just like this one, i've declined them all.

in case you ever want to donate some money, please donate to xbmc.


right, so some tips on what you're trying to accomplish:

What I want:
The single most important thing is to remove Playlists from the XBMC-Videos-Library window.
The next priority is to remove every choice but "Genres" from the Movies window. Of equal priority is to remove every choice but "Title" from the TV window.

these things can't be done through the skin. you'd have to modify the xbmc source code to get it like that.

Lowest priority is to eliminate sub-windows with only one choice. Selecting "Movies" would take you straight to the genres list without you having to select it.

this can be easily done by modifying the 'activatewindow' command for the 'Movies' button in Home.xml.
check this list for possible commands:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Opening_Windows_and_Dialogs

[blittan]

or use profiles, then you can lock stuff and have separate databases etc.

[UnisonRuss]

I tell what, for a guy that just does this for fun, you have done one hell of a job! I love it

[fbacher]

for entering tvshow and movies, you have the ability to choose the default folder, so it you make genre folder by default for tvshow, you'll have tvshow genre showing when entering tv show.

I'm not sure what you mean by "default folder" I see where if I am in the window listing my genre choices and I ActivateWindow(Home) and then renter the MyVideos that I will return back to the list of genre choices. Is this what you mean? This might work. I currently have the "back" remote button map to ParentDir, Stop. Mapping this way let the back button both exit from a playing movie and return to the previous window.

If I understand "default folder" correctly then I need to switch to use key events. I now have "back" button generating a "key-up" and an xbmc-ParentDir event. It appears to work... but this voodoo worries me. I wish I had a bit more control on how events/keys were interpreted based on what window/sub-window that you are in. But that is another discussion. I'll press on and see how this works out.

[fbacher]

in case you ever want to donate some money, please donate to xbmc.

I will. I was intending to do this once I had something I could use.

this can be easily done by modifying the 'activatewindow' command for the 'Movies' button in Home.xml.

Great idea. Only problem now is that I can still use the back button (which I mapped to ParentDir function) to navigate from genres list to the normal parent of this window (the list: Genres, Titles, etc.) and then it's parent. I tentatively have worked around this by modifying my keyMap and EventGhost mappings of the back key, as described in my reply to another post. I'll test this some more.

The suggestions are very helpful. My experience (I assume most) is that when you first start reading skin and source code that you are very disoriented and it takes a while before you can trust that you are interpreting things correctly. The use of hard coded numbers for message ids and window ids makes it a bit tougher. I'm sure these are used for a good reason, but it does confuse things a bit.

[jmarshall]

Add the return attribute to the activatewindow call. Back will then go back.

[ronie]

Great idea. Only problem now is that I can still use the back button (which I mapped to ParentDir function) to navigate from genres list to the normal parent of this window (the list: Genres, Titles, etc.) and then it's parent. I tentatively have worked around this by modifying my keyMap and EventGhost mappings of the back key, as described in my reply to another post. I'll test this some more.

as jm suggested, use something like:

Code:

XBMC.ActivateWindow(MyVideoLibrary,moviegenres,return)

and pressing 'Back' will take you back to the home screen instead of navigating to the parent folder.

The suggestions are very helpful. My experience (I assume most) is that when you first start reading skin and source code that you are very disoriented and it takes a while before you can trust that you are interpreting things correctly. The use of hard coded numbers for message ids and window ids makes it a bit tougher. I'm sure these are used for a good reason, but it does confuse things a bit.

the message id's (i assume you mean those <label>id</label> entries) are needed to properly translate the skin to each language. the id's reference to entries in the language file for the currently selected language.
the window id's...well, when i started skinning i thought it was the way to do it, but later found out it was better to use the 'window names' instead. so this is still something i'll need to change one day. i'm sure that'll make the code a bit more readable.

i realize customizing xbmc to a large extend will be quite a task. there are many places where you can alter things, so i guess it's best to explore all these possibilities in this order:
- profiles, first create a separate profile and lock access to any xbmc section that you want to hide.
- settings and skin settings, for all the things that can be disabled though the gui
- advancedsettings.xml, will allow some further customization
- keymap, as you already figured out, a clever keymapping can also be used to deny access to some parts of xbmc

and last, if you're still not satisfied with the result, alter the skin files.

[Bram77]

first, let me start by saying i'm skinning in my spare time, purely for fun.
i consider myself lucky to have a full time job and i'm not interested in any extra money.
over the past year i've had several people offer me money for skinning jobs and just like this one, i've declined them all.

in case you ever want to donate some money, please donate to xbmc.

These kind of responses make me proud to be a xbmc supporter and promoter. It's the attitude true OSS needs and why XBMC became the best there is. Way to go Ronie!

[fbacher]

XBMC.ActivateWindow(MyVideoLibrary,moviegenres,return) did not work for me at first.

Then I discovered that my advancedSetting of rootovershoot=false was the problem.

[fbacher]

Regarding message ids, a numeric id is simpler to implement, is slightly faster and takes a bit less memory, but using a string as key to a hash table of messages is nicer.