Upcoming Skinning Contest (2 Viewers)

[infinite.loop]

Remember that the Microsoft WPF documentation covers most of the skinning info and it doesn't need duplicating. Animations, brushes, control interfaces can all be found there. To some degree normal WPF can also be used to do layouts and test some stuff outside of MP2.

Yet we could put together a list of documentation links for our skinners. To make it easier.

 

[mattsk88]

I'm not sure if a skinning contest as I understood your intention is a good start in first place. Although it would be nice to see some skins available on release of MP2, I'd personally perfer only one skin that's really good instead of several lousy ones (don't mean to offend anybody here). So maybe the contest should not incorporate full working skins, but just wireframes, mockups and UI concepts instead. Users then can vote for those in different categories (like general appealing, ui-concept, features) and after that form a skinning team out of the contest winners, add some core devs to the team, call a team-leader and create a fantastic default skin for mediaPortal. That's how I would do it.

As it just came to my mind when talking about skins. PLEASE change the way the handling of skin files works (if not done already). It really sucks if you install a plugin and your skin doesn't support it. There should not be the need for a skin to support certain plugins, nor to copy any XML files to skin directories - this is not userfriendly at all. Plugins should provide default skin files so that they work in any case. If a skin then is providing a optimized version for a plugin, use this one - if not, fall back to the default MP skin files or the plugins generic skin file.
If you need some more conceptual ideas/help - let me know

I agree with your thinking here, I think there should probably be two default skins

- A simple, fast basic skin, limited fanart etc

- A more advanced heavier skin, with more focus on backdrops and cover art etc

Just my 2c

 

[da-anda]

I agree with your thinking here, I think there should probably be two default skins

- A simple, fast basic skin, limited fanart etc

- A more advanced heavier skin, with more focus on backdrops and cover art etc

I don't think we need two skins for that - should only be a matter of the selected view. Not sure if you're familiar with XMBCs Confluence or Rapier skin, but those have a good mixture of fanart related views and ones concentrating on the content.
My personal taste is, that when I'm in a view dealing with information about my media, then I want to read that information instead of having a useless fanart covering 80% of the screen and the information is packed to a minimal space, has a too small font-size one needs goggles to read it or is only showing 2 autoscrolling lines of the plot and you have to wait ages until it repeats from the beginning so that you finally can start reading it. Don't get me wrong, I like fanart views, like when browsing movie posters in a film strip etc, but once I decide to read more information about my media (be it movies, tv-shows, music artists), this information should be in the focus - not the fanart anymore.
So in my eyes, a good skin is providing both possibilities, depending on the context that's currently viewed. Fanart-Only skins are in my eyes to specific for a small user group - the aim should be to provide a skin the majority of the user base is pleased with and is easy to use, even for housewifes or children.

Getting a bit of topic here, but I got the feeling it fit's right now:
In my eyes a media center (like any other software) has to be easy to install and shouldn't need much (if any) configuration to work in the first place. The software has to hide complex tasks it might have to deal with from the average enduser. If one is more of a pro he should be able to have a possibility to adjust advanced configuration options (maybe via a external configuration file/tool), but the basic configuration options should be covered by the gui of the software (I like the way XBMC is doing it).
My first experiences with MediaPortal where just the other way around. While installation itself was not too hard for me as experienced PC users (alhough lot's of dependencies had to be fulfilled) the necessity to find my way through the complex configuration managers was simply too much. I asked myself, why do I need to leave the media center only to add a new folder to my movie database, or what do I have to do to get covers and fanarts, and what are fanarts? Installing plugins was (and in my eyes still is) a bit of a pain in the a... The installer is a good start, but again, it should be a GUI only task - as well as the configuration of the plugins. The users are sitting in front of a HTPC, thus a few meters away from the screen. Having a full-HD screen resolution the regular OS windows etc. might be a bit tooooo small for easy reading and handling from the couch - that's why one likes to use a media center software and not the Windows Explorer and VLC, right?

Just some thoughts of mine.

 

[da-anda]

Just read some of the MP2 specs and noticed it already covers the flaws I wrote the other post. Good to see. Thanks for your work on this.

 

[msj33]

Nice to see a skin contest - I do not have coding experience myself, but do have some concept ideas.

Overall I think you should look towards StreamedMP - and Why? Because it is undoubtly the best skin available for MP1 at the moment.

Especially features like:
Adding/Deleting/Renaming & Arranging menu items - I want to build my own menu!
Stylish Splashscreen - Way better experience, when resuming and restarting MePo
Automatic skin updating - Automatic updating is soooo missed in every asepect of MePo.
Fanart - Just makes the whole experience much better
Infoservice - RSS feed ticker should be available on all skins

And best of all.............all in one package, easy to configure.

Things I would hope improved compared to MP1 Blue3skin (Which is my 2nd preferred skin....Why.......It is damn stable
-General - Make usage of our nice big flatscreens - Most have 32-42" - option to put more info/features on front screen.
-Click sound - Use another one as default, or make an option to choose your own.
-Mouse navigating - I personally do not use this, but mouse navigating is a bit annoying - Make it more "focussed" on menu items. The scrolling function when navigating outside the center of menu is confusing and too sensitive.
-Weather - Should be available on front screen with todays weather, with the availability of entering, to see next 4 days. Don't have to be a menu item
-Option to create shortcuts to other program - Like games and such.
-Skin resolution should always follow Windows - When on HDMI and powering off TV/AV-receiver, the Windows resolution changes, but MePo does not follow - when powering on Mepo again, screen size is halfed. (maybe this is not skin, but MP feature/bug).
-Option to choose MP startup sound - Maybe make default a 5.1 sound file, so that users experience surround effects.(Like the cinemas)
-Sound navigating - control MP with voice like Myvoice or windows 7 speech recognition.

Just some of my ideas

/Morten

 

[bedlam]

a set of real-wpf dummy-controls would make it possible to use Blend as a design tool for the skins.. if i´m not mistaking.

 

[pilehave]

The default skin should be reasonably simple, as this will most likely be where new skin-designers will begin. I'm not saying that it should be ugly, but it must not use any of the 101 hacks I have seen (and made) in skinning...

Will MP2 have coverflow?

 

[Albert]

AW: Re: Upcoming Skinning Contest

Will MP2 have coverflow?

I'm no WPF crack, but maybe some WPF developer is able to answer what we have to do to provide a coverflow view.
WPF/MPF are quite powerful, I think it should be possible to provide such a feature.

 

[Baboonanza]

You can get pretty close with vanilla MPF I think. One thing I don't think you can currently do is get the asymetrical look as in this picture.

I will think about what we must add to make it possible. The great thing about MP2 using it's own version of WPF is that we can extend it when necessary.

 

[rkooten]

This is fascinating... but what do we use to test the skin on? Can we find MP2 dev version somewhere that is advanced enough for us to build skins for?