Skin documentation?

[blacklist]

I'm a bit of a newbie to MP but have already started working on creating a custom skin. While I've figured out a lot of things from dissecting some other skin's XML, I'm beginning to think there are some things I'm missing out on. I've looked at the wiki and such, but have yet to find a good source that discusses the nuts and bolts of what commands are available and how are they properly used?

For insance: What is the correct format for nesting controls with <type>group</type>? How do the nested controls interact with the top control? What is <layout>StackLayout</layout>?

Can anyone point me at a good resource to learn some of the seemingly more advanced commands?

Thanks!!!

[jburnette]

I can't point you in the direction of an advanced skinning guide, but I can tell you that the way most people have learned is just by looking at other skins and how they do things. Take a look at xFace/Monochrome/Aeon (the parts that are done)/Spinsafe/etc and you'll learn a lot more than what you'll find in the wiki.

To answer one of your questions, a stackLayout allows you to group controls and position them all at the same time as one "stack" of controls. I'm pretty sure that when you group controls, you can then assign a predefined layout to position them in. I'm not really sure what other layouts exist, though.

[blacklist]

Thanks for your reply, that's kinda what I figured. I've figured out a good bit now by trial and error - its just too bad that you have to close-delete cache-open media portal in order to view changes, adds a lot of time to the process *shrugs*

Such is life I suppose. I'm pretty proud of what I've got so far - I'll post some screen shots when I get a few mins. Thanks again.

[surfermc]

Originally Posted by blacklist

its just too bad that you have to close-delete cache-open media portal in order to view changes, adds a lot of time to the process

There used to be a dll called refresh (myrefresh or something similar), that allowed quicker skin development, it would erase the cache by pressing F5. I'm not sure if it is still supported or even working, especially with the changes to the cache location in RC1.

[blacklist]

Yeah, I gave that a try and couldn't get it working, unfortunately.

At the moment I'm working on the MP-TVSeries portion of the skin and trying to find some documentation on the available data fields (#TVSeries.Series.Genre, etc). If found a dozen or so different fields that I can pull, but combing through different skins seems like a silly way to get the info.

[Anff]

Apparently the current Wiki is vastly out of date
But there's a new Skin Engine in the works and once it's released, ther'll be a Wiki to go with it

[jburnette]

Here's the refresh plugin I use with 1.0 RC1. Speeds up skin work a LOT. Just put the DLL in your plugins\process directory, and then hitting f5 will force reload the skin files.

[blacklist]

Awesome! Thanks alot, works great

Since you're being so helpful, one of the things I'm trying to do is hijack the My Videos page, and do some customization using the IMDB information, mainly in that, when I choose a file I want it to go to the IMDB information page rather than starting to play immediately. Alternatively, I'd like to do some sort of info box (maybe underneath a thumbnail view) that would show a subset of the IMDB info. Anyone know off-hand how to make this happen?