Community Project - IRC Channel is #mp-skins on EFNet (4 Viewers)

[mofux]

hi,
when i first read that the mediaportal team is searching the "default skin" i got an idea. i thought it would be nice if there were some kind of community project where all interested people work together on the SAME skin.

this has multiple advantages like a fast and reliable development, and everyone could work in the sector he likes most (doing gfx / sound / xml-work / skinning-engine work / plugins). also future support would be granted by that! it's a good motivation to be a part of the team who developed a default skin as well!

later on i talked to dman and told him my idea and he agreed that this would be a great thing for the whole design community.

we may also have a cvs where the current skin /mockups are lying arround and everybody who'd like to participate would get access to it!

So, if you think this is a good idea and want to participate in the project please write down here!

it is not granted that this will finally become the default skin!

 

[mofux]

okay - to make it a little more interesting to you i just created a mockup on how the skin could look:

 

[carreno]

Very good idea!
I can make xml-work.

:wink:

 

[zombiepig]

is that view even possible at the moment??? if so... that's damn sweet

and i fully agree - making skins more of a community project will surely benefit everyone!! it'll help ease the tremendous load on skinners and hopefully will mean more skins get to a fully completed state

 

[mofux]

no, it's not possible atm but with some improvements it could be implemented soon... there are still some questions beloging this layout because f.e. you can't read the album title for each album displayed, only the title for the selected one... or what happens if there is no coverart...

but maybe when thinking a little more about it we could have fun with such a layout

 

[smnnekho]

great idea....... to be honest, i've had a similar one (-;

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/viewtopic.php?t=14062&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75

i mentioned it in the clarity skin. (end of 6th page)

i would love to join the team and contribute with XML-related work. i'm not that kind of a graphic-geek though, but i always do a lot of changing in the skins i'm using. so i'm quite fit in things to do with the xml's.

how are you planning to do this? would it rather be SVN-style in any way?


edit: i think i'd really like to hear something from "schrottgrenze" *gg*

 

[Eeyore]

its a great idea in theory...but

1. If this is going to be a default skin...it needs to be conservative, consistent and clean. This is something missing from most of the current user skins

2. I'm not 100% up on Revision Management, but how do we control saboteurs? or just plain bad coders? I don't want a skin put together by a bunch of learners....this is not an attack at the learners, for i am one....but trying to highlight the real issues

2a. Maybe the answer here is that someone applying to be a part of the team you need to submit some examples of your work...but obviously each user would need to be "watched" incase they stole the work from somewhere else

3. What happens if a user finds a fault with a page, the fault is linked to XML, and the user that coded the original XML is away/bored/dead and another user comes along and decides to rework the whole page? It's that type of "i know better" mentailty that i'm scared of

My vote is for BlueTwo to be made 4x3 and 16x9 and maybe one other popular skin, again...something clean, conserative and consistent

 

[mofux]

carreno wrote: Very good idea!
I can make xml-work.

yehaw! Nice to have you on board then

smnnekho wrote: i would love to join the team and contribute with XML-related work. i'm not that kind of a graphic-geek though, but i always do a lot of changing in the skins i'm using. so i'm quite fit in things to do with the xml's.

how are you planning to do this? would it rather be SVN-style in any way?

great - another one well, this idea is very fresh for me as well, but i think together we can get this working! of course we would use some kind of cvs / svn to keep us all up-to-date and we could create ourself an IRC channel! btw: Schrottgrenze is really great

nitro wrote:
1. If this is going to be a default skin...it needs to be conservative, consistent and clean. This is something missing from most of the current user skins

first of all - we can't say for sure that this will get the default skin because this relies on the people who use it, but we would head for creating such. we have a guy called _ender_ who's working as UI-designer and knows how a good UI should look and how it's easy to handle - so we have a good background for creating a user-friendly skin...

2. I'm not 100% up on Revision Management, but how do we control saboteurs? or just plain bad coders? I don't want a skin put together by a bunch of learners....this is not an attack at the learners, for i am one....but trying to highlight the real issues

if i'm right cvs / svn has the possiblity to rollback changes and also to see a change-history so that we know if someone wants to fool us... but for real - i don't think that we need to take this possiblity...

2a. Maybe the answer here is that someone applying to be a part of the team you need to submit some examples of your work...but obviously each user would need to be "watched" incase they stole the work from somewhere else

i don't know if i get you right there, but of course we share the work among each other as this all is opensource - so why should someone complain that another team-member (or fake team-member) stole his work? sorry, i don't get the point of that...
nevertheless i don't like that way of thinking about it... we are NOT doing commercial work here... if someone "steals" our work we should be happy that we have done a good work then

3. What happens if a user finds a fault with a page, the fault is linked to XML, and the user that coded the original XML is away/bored/dead and another user comes along and decides to rework the whole page? It's that type of "i know better" mentailty that i'm scared of

again, i don't really get the point. when working in a team you're not a "Single Person" that is able to change whatever he wants without looking on the surrounding. the best way would be to ask the team if the changes he wants to make are okay and if yes he applies the changes to cvs/ svn...

 

[Harley]

Hi all,

..i can make the gfx for the skin and also the animations. Iv you want.
Bavarian will make support to implement animations by starting with commands, So it would be great to play arround with this.

Greetings Harley

 

[Hawkeye]

First of all I like that idea - although I probably can't contribute.

2a. Maybe the answer here is that someone applying to be a part of the team you need to submit some examples of your work...but obviously each user would need to be "watched" incase they stole the work from somewhere else

i don't know if i get you right there, but of course we share the work among each other as this all is opensource - so why should someone complain that another team-member (or fake team-member) stole his work? sorry, i don't get the point of that...
nevertheless i don't like that way of thinking about it... we are NOT doing commercial work here... if someone "steals" our work we should be happy that we have done a good work then

I think he doesn't mean that one steals from another mp-user/skinner but from another source (code from other program or trademarked graphics). That really could be a problem an has to be screend.