[skin update] "theatre" simple to use and nice to view (4 Viewers)

[kyleh0000]

What about the original skin?
Has the development stopped with beta 0.8?

last i heard from nanogod who developed the skin originaly, he was busy with work and he asked me to develop a skin editor and also look at adding weather, RSS and the cycling the backdrops (this was about 2 weeks ago)

I just took it a step further and changed the way some of the plugins look.

As for the skin being 1.1 compatable if you use the original skin it will work fine in 1.1, but i would recommend just using the skin editor and turning off weather and RSS which will give you the exact same look as the original skin. This is because the skin editor generates a more steamlined basichome which make navigation quicker, but if you havent noticed any lag in navigation it doesnt realy matter

Hopefully RC1 will be released as planned then i can start using this on my production box

 

[petrovice]

Nanogod is still very busy, but the skin development is definitly not stopped.

Suddenly RC1 will not be released as planned. But the Developers will make a Beta1 to provide the community a newer Version to test.

kyleh0000: Have you talked with nanogod about different colour themes? He has made some different version i.e. white, black, ..., it would be nice if you could include it into your mod, because a lot of XML files must be modified to change the appearance of the skin.

Best regards,
Peter

 

[WileECoyote]

What about the original skin?
Has the development stopped with beta 0.8?

last i heard from nanogod who developed the skin originaly, he was busy with work and he asked me to develop a skin editor and also look at adding weather, RSS and the cycling the backdrops (this was about 2 weeks ago)

I just took it a step further and changed the way some of the plugins look.

As for the skin being 1.1 compatable if you use the original skin it will work fine in 1.1, but i would recommend just using the skin editor and turning off weather and RSS which will give you the exact same look as the original skin. This is because the skin editor generates a more steamlined basichome which make navigation quicker, but if you havent noticed any lag in navigation it doesnt realy matter

Hopefully RC1 will be released as planned then i can start using this on my production box

Thats cool, we all like to try to improve from one verson to the next, but I just prefer the original skin. For example...

..The weather screen of nanogod's was perfect for me. It has VERY large text and is very easy to quickly determine the current temp, time, etc.
.. The header text on the originals were very nicely tucked in the upper left corner, your modded version has (in my opinion) an unattractive black bar with the MP symbol on it.
.. I preferred the cleaner look of the original Moving Pictures & TV Series. The fanart and DVD cover were enough for me. If I want to see details I can click on the movie.

Again this is my opinion and as well all know looks are subjective, but I think it took the skin in a different direction.

And please understand, I am not trying to degrade your work as I am sure many appreciate the mods you have made. But I think it would be nice to have a 1.1 version of the original. I know you stated above that the original is 1.1 compliant, but I get skin errrors in the log whenever I run the skin on 1.1. Im not sure if the errors are significant, but I would be happy to attach the logs when I get home if you would like to take a look.

 

[kyleh0000]

What about the original skin?
Has the development stopped with beta 0.8?

last i heard from nanogod who developed the skin originaly, he was busy with work and he asked me to develop a skin editor and also look at adding weather, RSS and the cycling the backdrops (this was about 2 weeks ago)

I just took it a step further and changed the way some of the plugins look.

As for the skin being 1.1 compatable if you use the original skin it will work fine in 1.1, but i would recommend just using the skin editor and turning off weather and RSS which will give you the exact same look as the original skin. This is because the skin editor generates a more steamlined basichome which make navigation quicker, but if you havent noticed any lag in navigation it doesnt realy matter

Hopefully RC1 will be released as planned then i can start using this on my production box

Thats cool, we all like to try to improve from one verson to the next, but I just prefer the original skin. For example...

..The weather screen of nanogod's was perfect for me. It has VERY large text and is very easy to quickly determine the current temp, time, etc.
.. The header text on the originals were very nicely tucked in the upper left corner, your modded version has (in my opinion) an unattractive black bar with the MP symbol on it.
.. I preferred the cleaner look of the original Moving Pictures & TV Series. The fanart and DVD cover were enough for me. If I want to see details I can click on the movie.

Again this is my opinion and as well all know looks are subjective, but I think it took the skin in a different direction.

And please understand, I am not trying to degrade your work as I am sure many appreciate the mods you have made. But I think it would be nice to have a 1.1 version of the original. I know you stated above that the original is 1.1 compliant, but I get skin errrors in the log whenever I run the skin on 1.1. Im not sure if the errors are significant, but I would be happy to attach the logs when I get home if you would like to take a look.

its all good i know this mod is not for everyone, this just the way i like the skin to look, if other people like it thats great if not that fine

The whole idea of this mod was the skin editor, but before i started this mod i had not even looked inside a skin file, now i have pulled about a rewritten all the skin files 3 times over, this gave me skills i needed to make the editor

Im not a designer and i dont pretend to be, I have tried to make these skin files as cusomisable as possible, so for example if you like the way the header looked in the original skin you can have that, and if you like the way i have done the time and weather in the top right you can have that as well.

there are a lot of hidden options in the skin editor that i havent enabled due to time mostly and also i didnt want to take things to far to ensure it still fits in with what Nanogod is doing

as for the header the idea of the icon was to have a seperate icon for each screen, so if you where using MP TV series it would be a little TV icon or something like that, i just dont have any icons as yet. i know its a little intrusive but agian it can be removed if you please

and as for the editor supporting color themes yes it does, you can change the back ground and i have also built in a feature to scan the XML files and replace text so if something has to be changed in any XML it can easily be done (or not done) as the user pleases

ill send a PM to Nanogod with some more details about what the editor is capable how to best fit it into the skin should he choose to use it

 

[WileECoyote]

its all good i know this mod is not for everyone, this just the way i like the skin to look, if other people like it thats great if not that fine

The whole idea of this mod was the skin editor, but before i started this mod i had not even looked inside a skin file, now i have pulled about a rewritten all the skin files 3 times over, this gave me skills i needed to make the editor

Im not a designer and i dont pretend to be, I have tried to make these skin files as cusomisable as possible, so for example if you like the way the header looked in the original skin you can have that, and if you like the way i have done the time and weather in the top right you can have that as well.

there are a lot of hidden options in the skin editor that i havent enabled due to time mostly and also i didnt want to take things to far to ensure it still fits in with what Nanogod is doing

as for the header the idea of the icon was to have a seperate icon for each screen, so if you where using MP TV series it would be a little TV icon or something like that, i just dont have any icons as yet. i know its a little intrusive but agian it can be removed if you please

and as for the editor supporting color themes yes it does, you can change the back ground and i have also built in a feature to scan the XML files and replace text so if something has to be changed in any XML it can easily be done (or not done) as the user pleases

ill send a PM to Nanogod with some more details about what the editor is capable how to best fit it into the skin should he choose to use it

Thanks for the reply kyleh0000,
Again we do appreciate you taking the time to do all this work, and its good for some and not for others. I just fell in love with the original skin...

And your right, I would like to have the weather and RSS on the home page, so I will probably look to incorporate some of your mods. Its all the other screens I just dont want to clutter it up too much

Im like you, not really a skinner, more of a developer. The Netflix plugin was my first and like you I went through many xml pages to figure out how things fit together. So I understand the learning curve

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

 

[csapollo]

I do like where this skin is going, but it's not ready for my production HTPC yet. I'm running Windows 7, 1.1A, and the latest SVN (and your Nexus mod). These are my comments/questions (keeping in mind that I've never used a skin editor, I try to use skins that work well out of the box):

This is what my basic home looks like:
Basic Home Issue 1
Basic Home Issue 2

This is what my weather looks like:
My Weather Issue 1
My Weather Issue 2

When I enter my tv.. this is what it looks like:
My TV
and I can only compare it to what I have in StreamedMP which is:
My TV (StreamedMP)

Then you've got the TV guide.. it just looks like a mess in comparison to other skins.. I like the bigger font in the mini guide but once again it looks messy:
TV Guide
compared with:
TV Guide (StreamedMP)
and:
Mini Guide
compared with:
Mini Guide (StreamedMP)

I also have noticed that when using this view in my tv series.. the last TV show in the row gets cut off (eg Weeds):
My TV Series

Thoughts/comments?

 

[kyleh0000]

I do like where this skin is going, but it's not ready for my production HTPC yet. I'm running Windows 7, 1.1A, and the latest SVN (and your Nexus mod). These are my comments/questions (keeping in mind that I've never used a skin editor, I try to use skins that work well out of the box):

This is what my basic home looks like:
Basic Home Issue 1
Basic Home Issue 2

This is what my weather looks like:
My Weather Issue 1
My Weather Issue 2

When I enter my tv.. this is what it looks like:
My TV
and I can only compare it to what I have in StreamedMP which is:
My TV (StreamedMP)

Then you've got the TV guide.. it just looks like a mess in comparison to other skins.. I like the bigger font in the mini guide but once again it looks messy:
TV Guide
compared with:
TV Guide (StreamedMP)
and:
Mini Guide
compared with:
Mini Guide (StreamedMP)

I also have noticed that when using this view in my tv series.. the last TV show in the row gets cut off (eg Weeds):
My TV Series

Thoughts/comments?

ok i can fix most of your issues...

first off all make sure that you have selected a weather city in MP configuration and that you have enabled the MP Infoservice plugin to display weather information, that will solve your problems with the weather on the basic home.

as for the backgrounds you will need to place images that you would like displaied as background in folders in the /Media/Animations folder, these should match the folders associated in the skin editor, so for example.

place images that you want to display when you select movies on the on the menu in the folder /media/animations/movies and place images you want shown when you select TV in /media/animations/tv ect ect

I cant include any of these images for leagal/size reason but.....Aeon: About has some awsome pics

now the issue with the black spot in the middle of the sun is a bit technical, but basicly Media Poratl will display pure white as transperant rather than white, this is why i had to include 2 weather images in my mod as these had a simalr issue but the only reason i picked it up was cause that was that my weather was on that day i had a feeling there was other but i had no real way to tell.

anyway the fix...basicly you need to go into gimp or photoshop and select all the pure white in the picture and change the hue slightly then MP wont display it as transperant. Ill look at uploading a fixed image some time soon but if you find and more similar let me know and ill do them as well.

As for the issue you have the TV sorry i cant comment on them as i dont use a TV card so i cant test them

and for the last item in TV Series being cut off i did notice this in my testing but forgot to fix it, im actuly thinking of making the filmstrip view much smaller and placing it in the bottom right so it doesnt get in the way of the fan art, ill look at reviewing this in the next release

there i think that all makes sense if not let me know

 

[csapollo]

ok i can fix most of your issues...

Thanks, I'll have a play with these things on the weekend =)

Just a note - not sure if this is potentially an issue but I thought I would mention it - I have remapped my folders for my databases/thumbs directories onto another drive for a few reasons. So my MediaPortalDirs.xml file reads as normal except for these lines:

  <!-- The Path for the databases -->
  <Dir id = "Database">
    <Path>E:\MediaPortal\Database\</Path>
  </Dir>
  <!-- The Path for the Thumbs, like Music Cover Art, TV Logos, etc. -->
  <Dir id = "Thumbs">
    <Path>E:\MediaPortal\Thumbs\</Path>
  </Dir>

Would this possibly explain why my relevent weather icons are missing?.

 

[kyleh0000]

nar its just that the message plugin is not configure once thats done it should work fine.

but that will affect the mymusic now playing section see thumbs folder

so the thumbs folder is referenced using the media folder of the skin so it needs to be relative to this folder for it to work, so if your skin files are also location on e drive then you should be fine.

KYLe

 

[tringler]

Can anyone explain how to change the pictures in homescreen? I edit the RadioTime.xml to change the picture and also tried replace the old picture with the new picture having the same names.

Please help.