Community Design (3 Viewers)

[infinite.loop]

But I think I know which video it was. You discussed that video before. Didn't you?

Yap.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
Some of the advantages of Backdrop:
A nice, clean menu residing on bottom of home screen with upscrolling submenus, freely configurable by an editor that comes with the skin. No old fashioned "hoover" images, freely configurable backdrops instead that gave a much better glimpse of what has focus. No fancy gfx to hide fanart or information, Text was readable on all backgrounds due to color and shadow, all was looking as if it was one piece. Eye Candy like Coverflow was looking especially great with little gfx to limit it.
In one word, this skin was near to perfect imho. When visitors have seen MP with Backdrop Skin they loose their breath, every single time, I swear...

 

[infinite.loop]

Hi.
Some of the advantages of Backdrop:
A nice, clean menu residing on bottom of home screen with upscrolling submenus, freely configurable by an editor that comes with the skin. No old fashioned "hoover" images, freely configurable backdrops instead that gave a much better glimpse of what has focus. No fancy gfx to hide fanart or information, Text was readable on all backgrounds due to color and shadow, all was looking as if it was one piece. Eye Candy like Coverflow was looking especially great with little gfx to limit it.
In one word, this skin was near to perfect imho. When visitors have seen MP with Backdrop Skin they loose their breath, every single time, I swear...

huge downside - text may become totally unreadable because you never know the color of the fanart that is placed behind.

 

[Lehmden]

White text with black border is readable easily on all backgrounds...

 

[CypherMK]

White text with black border is readable easily on all backgrounds...

If the transparency of the border isn't to high....

 

[infinite.loop]

White text with black border is readable easily on all backgrounds...

a black/dark stroke looks very clumsy.

if you do it very thin or light-grey, you can still end up with unreadable text, caused by TV's backlight brigness/resolution/processing/viewing distance/etc. which "removes" the stroke.


So I do love fanart. but text directly placed on a fanart background, is a very bad design idea. you have to have a semi-transparent layer (gfx) in between to ensure readability.

 

[Lehmden]

I have used Backdrop from the very first day it was published until I finally need to change skin due to compatibility issues with more recent MP versions (it was designed around MP 1.2 Beta) and I never ever got text unreadable, no matter which fanart was used... If this is a "bad" idea, then I'm into bad ideas...
After backdrop I never had a skin that was close to what I like, that's why I've done a theme for PureVision lately that has text on backdrops also and I'm just starting to create a MP2 Skin- modification of Titanium which in a later state will have this "bad idea" also. Learning XAML is not that easy as learning XML so this will take a long while until there is something to show...

 

[CypherMK]

I have used Backdrop from the very first day it was published until I finally need to change skin due to compatibility issues with more recent MP versions (it was designed around MP 1.2 Beta) and I never ever got text unreadable, no matter which fanart was used... If this is a "bad" idea, then I'm into bad ideas...
After backdrop I never had a skin that was close to what I like, that's why I've done a theme for PureVision lately that has text on backdrops also and I'm just starting to create a MP2 Skin- modification of Titanium which in a later state will have this "bad idea" also. Learning XAML is not that easy as learning XML so this will take a long while until there is something to show...

I like your 'bad idea'

 

[infinite.loop]

I never ever got text unreadable, no matter which fanart was used... If this is a "bad" idea, then I'm into bad ideas...

So you surf the "If I don't have an issue, no one can have a issue with that wave" - seriously?

This example shows the potential issue - this design is not easy on the eye if BG and textcolor are a (close) match - there will be much more severe examples.
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/attachments/music_playlist-jpg.79852/

If you don't see the problem with having text directly placed on top of changing, unknown colored backgrounds, then I don't have to discuss this further with you.

 

[wizard123]

While a lot of people may like text directly on to backgrounds i have to agree with infinite.loop on it being a bad design idea, while Lehmden's setup may be perfect for this for many other people the text can get lost and become unreadable particularly if the backdrop if very "busy" and my personal preference is to have as little text shadows as possible because they mostly look crap lol.