[TerranQ]

I'm thinking of broadening my knowledge base by trying my hand at some skinning ideas I've had. I'm looking for beginning tips from skinners. Where do you start? What's your process flow, etc. Looking at all the lines of code necessary is daunting, and I'd like to know how others break it down into chunks to more ably manage it. Thanks

[Jeroen]

I'm thinking of broadening my knowledge base by trying my hand at some skinning ideas I've had. I'm looking for beginning tips from skinners. Where do you start? What's your process flow, etc. Looking at all the lines of code necessary is daunting, and I'd like to know how others break it down into chunks to more ably manage it. Thanks

Don't look at all the lines at once You just can't learn or understand everything in one sweep. Not because it's so extremely difficult, but just because the XBMC skinning engine is so flexible. There's so much you can do and often there's different ways to get there. Getting to know the skinning engine really is just a matter of time. Every time you learn something new or more effective.

My advice would be is to look in the wiki. It might not make sense to you all at once, but you'll get to know a basic understanding of it all. What is the structure of a window, what controls are available, what's in an info label, etc.

After that, just start with little mods to skins. Just hack away and see what it results in.

[mcborzu]

I think I figured out skinning by wanting to replace ListItem.Genre to ListItem.Duration then I was digging clearART and learned how to add that. And I love the look of Landscape thumbs so I had to learn how to modify views for those. As my knowledge increased I tried to answer the easy/medium skinning questions, that was good practice and made me try things I wasn't comfortable with.

The wiki is good but I found looking at skins and saying "I wonder how to get that bouncing effect" then I look through the code and reverse engineer it. Or I delete a code block and if it disappears I then know what that code does.

Maybe for someone with a programming background it comes easier but honestly it's just trial and error and sooner than later you realize it starts to sink in.


***Oh try to stay away from Aeon for how things are done, you just get lost in a blizzard of <includes>. While very pretty it has thousands of lines of code. My two 'go to' skins are T! and Confluence to check how things are done. Confluence because it's the standard and T! because Ronie knows alot of tricks**

[Jezz_X]

Use the wiki and start by making little changes to a skin that already exists then when you think you got the hang of it you can start on your own

[ZombieRobot]

I am a builder (houses) no coding experience what so ever i used to look at the code and just be mind boggled on what i was looking at i looked at the wiki and that blew me away too it was like looking at hieroglyphics the wiki is great for someone with some coding skills but not for someone who doesnt know so i went back to the code and stared at it for hours i picked up on things like X and Y axis so i started moving things there also learnt if i changed the png file to one i created and replaced it with the one in the media folder i could now move around my image to how i liked and so on and so on.
also search for key words like plot...

I say start with Jezz X's confluence skin its up to date and is a good skin to start modding not too complicated i also say start with modding view not the home screen im just a beginner so my advice is only a guide but thats how this complete noob started so best of luck there is a awesome community here and everybody is more than happy to help out any questions you have try to answer them yourself using the wiki first it helps in learning.

oh yeah also make sure you make a keymap xml file to refresh your skin on the fly by pressing f5

PHP Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> 
<keymap> 
    <global> 
        <keyboard> 
            <F5>XBMC.ReloadSkin()</F5> 
            <F7>ShowSubtitles</F7> 
            <F8>AudioNextLanguage</F8> 
        </keyboard> 
    </global> 
    <MusicInformation> 
        <keyboard> 
            <i>Close</i> 
        </keyboard> 
    </MusicInformation> 
</keymap> 


place it in

C:\Users\!your user name!\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\keymaps

i guess thats what the other guys do.
Good luck!