[Plasmatic]

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Also, i've been thinking about the poster view and small list. On the mockups they look fine, however on a large lcd they are a bit small. So i've tried out a hybrid list based on the small and big lists (so in the end there will be only one list), and a larger poster design...


new poster view



old poster view




What does everyone think? I'm trying to find the right font size, plus the right usability size.

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Cheers

I am relatively new to XBMC (and HTPCs in general) but what has made me want to convert the most is the variety of skins available and their excellent polish (especially when compared to standalone media players... the one I currently have is sorrily lacking!).

I have been looking at all the nice skins that are in development and I really like the progress you have been making with Welo.

If you do not mind, below I have attached two images.

Movie Poster View template:


With respect to readability, consider the area outlined in red. That area could contain the movie title (at a good font size) and then pertinent information below the title.

With respect to usability (and I don't know how hard this would be to implement, please forgive me here), consider placing buttons in the yellow area. One possibility I thought of is to have a single button with UP and DOWN indicators positioned above & below the button. Then, when a user presses UP or DOWN, the text in the button would change. For example, PLOT would change to DETAILS then to CAST then to CODEC / TECH. INFO etc ... The appropriate information would be displayed in the area outlined in red.

Here is an image to get an idea of what I mean should go in the yellow outlined area:



Of course, that is a really quick attempt at making a button and I did not try to put in nice anti-aliased arrows, but hopefully you understand what I am getting at.

Ideally, the end user would be permitted to select which button (and therefore which information) is present by default and then set the order in which they should scroll. For example, I prefer to have the movie details shown first and then plot second .... but someone else may prefer the plot first and the codec (media flags) second.... etc etc.

Hopefully you have followed me this far!

Finally, in the area outlined in green, the star rating could be placed. I intentionally made it the width of the next two posters so that there ought to be no confusion that the rating refers to the currently focused (larger) poster that is immediately on the left.

Basically, I think the width of the yellow and red areas could be played with to fine tune the font size (& hence, readability). I know there will be people that prefer to have as much information crammed onto the screen at once... I intentionally omitted a spot for fan-art because I think it adds nothing of real value and takes up valuable screen real-estate, but that is just me.

Thank you for offering your spare time to develop skins for XBMC and thanks for reading my long-a** post! LOL.

PS: the entire time that I thought up my suggestions, I could not help but think that this skin would potentially make a great skin for a touch-screen interface. It would probably require much more work than I care to understand at the moment, but does anyone else here think so too?