Xface Skin Version 1.6 ready for download 09.06.2008 (6 Viewers)

HTPCGUY

Portal Member
February 1, 2007
38
0
Home Country
Germany Germany
Hey Guys !!!

Great work !!!!!!!! I love it :p

:D HTPCGUY
 

spuck

Community Skin Designer
April 6, 2007
397
59
Home Country
Sweden Sweden
The regular home menu looks great! Problem is the text is being displayed too slow (REALLY annoying), I'm sure a lot of people are fast browsers like me. :p
There is no OSD (only text) when you want to skip in videos (+15sec..30sec).

Great work anyway! :)

Been working some more on the mytvseries skin file, should be completely done soon but I have a question. How can I remove the image-hyperlinks in the right bottom corner? Are they somewhere in a common xml file?
 

Bobb25

Portal Pro
November 26, 2006
232
0
Durban
Home Country
South Africa South Africa
Ok, now i am primarily a TV Series Whore, so my first comments relate to that.

First off, on the main screen where the banners are displayed, You will see the the right hand corner, the TV, Camera and Headphones overlap the text. If we could do away with those three icons, this would neaten it up a bit. Also, what are the chances of squeezing another banner in so we can get 5 per screen? With 180 series it would help a lot to have 5 on the screen at one time.

Second, in the actual season of the show, i notice that the screen shots are not showing if there is fanart... my suggestion (PLEASE ignore the crude graphics etc!) is as follows (see attached screen shot):

1. Remove the 3 icons circled in red (Camera, TV and Headphones)
2. Can we squeeze a screen shot in the blue square perhaps?
3. Move the Logos to the yellow square areas

My only other issue with this screen, is if you have a very light fanart, the menu becomes difficult to read. Is it possible to flag it to display the menu darker if the fanart has the word "light" in it?

Other than that, i absolutely love this skin. It is truly a work of art :)
 

Attachments

  • TV series Banners.JPG
    TV series Banners.JPG
    117 KB
  • TV series screenshots.JPG
    TV series screenshots.JPG
    169.7 KB

patricon

Portal Pro
June 16, 2007
543
18
Home Country
Spain Spain
Well it's time to do some constructive critics to this skin. There is some bugs and also some aesthetics than can be enhaced:

1) Icons in basic home screen. The colors should be more simmilar beetwen them, right now it appears to have two groups of icons: Pictures and Music, and in other side, Plugins, Video and TV. The black parts should be in the same gamma and also may be that the metallic parts are too bright.

2) There is no now playing overlay in basic home screen, so please, consider this: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showpost.php?p=178826&postcount=141 and also this: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showpost.php?p=178826&postcount=141

3) Top bar. The selected button is not very visible, it's hard sometimes to identify what button is selected.

4) News reader. There is some overlapping bugs with the title in top right zone. Also, the news content overlap the white zone to the bottom and it's hard to read it.

5) Full screen OSD when watching movies. I think that the right approach to this design is something like Replicant skin, your info covers almost all the screen and it's not very practical. I think that it could be more useful only a little top bar, and also a horizontal semitransparent area at the bottom. Also, when i pause the movie i like to see at the top the progress bar showing the remaining time and other info (like in Replicant skin)

6) Home screen (not the basic one) the crystal selector should be bigger (horizontally) to allow wider text. Also all plugins have the same picture (bug). Also please, consider to use here the icons that i've sent you i think that they are like the basic home screen ones and fits in a better way the aesthetics of this skin. Or change the basic home screen to fit that pictures that you've used in home screen...

7) Worldmap plugin doesn't work.

8) File explorer plugin have some bugs (the list is displaced to the right)

9) Web browser plugin. Please consider to have the top bar with simmilar design than the used in basic home screen

10) My lyrics. Please consider to have a button link from the Now playing screen (like in Replicant skin) it's very useful and also, a button link to current playlist from this screen.

11) Fonts. Font used as title for Movies, when viewing in filmstrip mode, is very small and may be it's to low. I think that it could be better to use a bold font, and also, move the texts a bit to the top (near the bottom of the video case icon)

12) In Now playing screen, there is a small speaker at the bottom, please consider to use here the black speaker that i've sent you (that fits better with other icons in the bottom right)

13) White zone at bottom of most screens. I¡m not sure about this colour/desing. I think that you could work a little more improving the bottom zone to keep the same high level of design as in other screens and gfxs..


I agree with others who thinks that this is a fantastic skin, you are doing a great job, but it still can be better.I hope that my critics don't bother you a lot.

thanks again, and best regards...
 

-ltb-

Portal Pro
April 10, 2006
4,204
21
Home Country
France France
first of all,
great work Harley as usual

My config : MP 0.2.3.0 RC2 +svn 15813 (090907)
Ive got a little issue with the labels in the basichome as you can see in the screenshot above.
Is it a bug skin or my svn's version is outdated? Have you changed something in the skinengine since the beginning of september?
thx
 

Attachments

  • xf.JPG
    xf.JPG
    33.9 KB

spuck

Community Skin Designer
April 6, 2007
397
59
Home Country
Sweden Sweden
Damn so many shows? I've only about 40 and I find it hard to browse! :p
I was actually thinking about having 3 banners side by side in the beginning (Like big icons view in myvideos) but I don't know if that's possible/how to do it, I'm not that experienced with skinning. :(

I'm actually searching for why those 3 icons are displayed.. Haven't found anything yet though. :(
When I find out how I can remove those I'll try putting the logos there and see how it looks.
I don't really see the point of episode thumbs but I'll make one XML with a episode thumb for you guys.

Light fan art is not an issue I'm making the fanart fade to black.

Thanks for the help!

Edit: Made a screenshot of the plugin with light fan art, thinking of makeing the fading a bit darker though.
 

Attachments

  • XFaceMPTVSeriesLightFanArt.jpg
    XFaceMPTVSeriesLightFanArt.jpg
    198.6 KB

Bobb25

Portal Pro
November 26, 2006
232
0
Durban
Home Country
South Africa South Africa
Damn so many shows? I've only about 40 and I find it hard to browse! :p
I was actually thinking about having 3 banners side by side in the beginning (Like big icons view in myvideos) but I don't know if that's possible/how to do it, I'm not that experienced with skinning. :(

I'm actually searching for why those 3 icons are displayed.. Haven't found anything yet though. :(
When I find out how I can remove those I'll try putting the logos there and see how it looks.
I don't really see the point of episode thumbs but I'll make one XML with a episode thumb for you guys.

Light fan art is not an issue I'm making the fanart fade to black.

Thanks for the help!

Edit: Made a screenshot of the plugin with light fan art, thinking of makeing the fading a bit darker though.

To be honest, the episode thumbs are not that important to me. My only issue, is that they show as little icons next to the episode name, but you cant actually see what they are... in fact, i would prefer it if they didnt show at all. I suppose i could just go and delete all the thumbs, but it only goes and re-downloads the entire lot when i do a full import :/ maybe an option in the My-TVseries to NOT download thumbs? (Inker? :) )

If thumbs are not displayed, then the logos are perfect where they are. Just those 3 icons to lose.

PS. I like the fade for light fanart, is that standard at the moment? I had a VERY light fan art for desperate housewives which i made, and i struggled to read the menu.
PPS. The fan art for Weeds is more riveting than the actual show imho :)

EDIT: Your XML is different to mine... yours shows the file size and date and season whereas mine shows the series type... i think i prefer yours to be honest. Only thing i would do, is on the left above the logos have it display the episode number, so like: 2x11 Yeah, Just Like Tomatoes

What do you think?
 

ronsonol

MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • April 2, 2007
    178
    23
    Kingston
    Home Country
    Canada Canada
    Basic home always focuses on pictures, how do I change this behaviour - I would prefer it to always focus on the tv icon.

    And those three icons always at the bottom of the screen, can never navigate to them anyways with remote...only using mouse it seems.
     

    Spragleknas

    Moderator
  • Team MediaPortal
  • December 21, 2005
    9,471
    1,822
    Located
    Home Country
    Norway Norway
    Harley:

    A suggestion/request:
    In home screen...
    img_375_03.jpg

    .. would it not be better with 5 lines instead of 4?
    Reasons:
    - The "Fix Scroll Bar" option in home-plugin would make place the bar in the middle (it is now a bit on the low side)
    - This would probably mean smaller icons left to bar, but that does not matter (as they are large on the right side when highlighted anyway).

    Just a thought....
    (Oh, and some words in BHS are not translated - is this how it is meant to be?).


    I really love this skin. The easy to reed EPG was a nice touch!
     

    Harley

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • May 7, 2004
    2,053
    1,993
    Germany
    Home Country
    Germany Germany
    Hi all,

    many thanks for all your comments :)

    first of all !
    ...it is very important that you use MP 0.2.3.0 RC 2 and latest svn for this skin !!!!!
    ...it is also very important that you delete the old "Cache" Folder from a earlyer version of xface !!

    Only then you will have the whole Version 1.0 of the skin running. Also you will ahve then no problems with refelktionstuff and centerd labels.

    When media playing, the nowplaying data overlaps series/episode info.
    The bottom bar is grey, something missing?

    Spuck is working on a better version Tv Series screen and i will find a better solution for the 3 Shortcuticons on button of the screens.

    There are no skip gfx? I thought you have made all the OSD gfx, or did you forget some?
    There are no change ratio gfx either..

    Yes , think i have forget it, will make a gfx for that ;)

    Home menu, (not basichome):
    When media playing, the nowplaying data overlaps the menu.

    The Homescreen is not perfekt yet, i will do a better one for nexr release.

    News plugin:
    missing top and bottom bar.
    Also, the home menu news icon is rendered under the nowplaying info.

    The newsplugin and some other plugins like webbrowser and lyrics and so on, i have never used , so this skin does not support all avaibles Plugin at the moment.

    But would be great if you send me working xml´s for add them.

    TV OSD:
    How about adding next/previous program on the left and right control?
    Would be like a quick-mini-epg :p I think its doable...

    ..thats something for coders of mp, not skin related.

    Why did you change the tv-guide scaling? The bars are very big now, the text within the bar is only half size of the bar and not centered vertically. Because of the bigger program bars there are less channels shown in one screen.

    Yes will make a overwork of EPG for next release.

    Music/Playlist section:
    The icon down on the left is looking good. However, when playing a song i get the "tv" on top of it, but its not completely covered so it looks kinda screwed. Taking the scr shot i discovered another bug, see the small sircle. The blue bars moved into the "tv" when i paused playback. When taking this i was playing back music videos, but the same thing happens with music files.

    ..i will do a new musicplaylist screen, also new gfx for the listview of it.

    The regular home menu looks great! Problem is the text is being displayed too slow (REALLY annoying), I'm sure a lot of people are fast browsers like me. :p

    ..yes i have noticed that also, its a mp related problem not a problem of the skin. Will speak for this problem with Bavarian to find a solution.

    And those three icons always at the bottom of the screen, can never navigate to them anyways with remote...only using mouse it seems.

    ..the icons are a part of the topbar you can easy navigate from topbarbutton shutdown to the icons.

    But the icons are more for mouseusers, if you use a remote you can go direkt to pictures, tv and music so no need to navigate to them.

    Greetings Harley :)

    PS: I´m allways happy to get help from you all.
     

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom