Simple is Good

[mememe]

Haven't had much time lately to work on stuff so I figured I would check in now that I have some free time. I finally abandoned the whole glass idea I had. There were just too many variables for it to work appropriately. There were simple headaches like having to constantly adjust alpha levels for each person that tried it, differences between 0-255 and 16-235 colorspaces, and of course the random nature of most people's TV settings for brightness and contrast. What I saw on my TV was rarely what anyone else saw because I'm the only one of my friends anal enough to make sure my TV is calibrated. As such, I decided to cut my losses.

Anywho, I got bored and decided to start something different. I decided to stick to design goals that have always gotten me what I want. I've kept the darker tones for the overall theme because quite frankly I prefer them. I've also continued with integrating more data into the skin as well as fanart and such. This is what I've managed to do with a few hours a day this weekend:





Obviously it isn't even close to finished, but as per usual I welcome feedback or ideas. It's not gimmicky at all. I'm trying to keep the layout consistent and as clean as possible. It is my intention for it to appear quite simple, but still be quite good at what it does. I'm building it from the ground up so there is no extra stuff left in it. As it is now it loads in less than 5 seconds with the fast interface option turned on, and only a second or two with the slow interface option on.

Comments, opinions, and suggestions always welcome and encouraged.

[Marbles_00]

Good start. I've realized also to gear the skin towards the media (fanart etc.) opposed to the technicalities of the skin. Most people don't get the "skin", and don't appreciate what you've done, but they sure appreciate the artwork.

[S Pittaway]

very nice and clean. a lot more polished than the last skin.

i like the use of the fanart images, pretty subtle and not in your face (i am interested to see how you all are doing it - at the moment i only use it as a background when a film is playing and show it via a parameter).

If you are on V3 some simple reflections could be added to the "filmstrip" bit at the bottom of the screen.

if you post it, i would probably download it and nick bits of it... which is a compliment

[mememe]

Made a little more progress and some minor tweaks. I was having trouble with oddball size shapes of the fanart that made it bigger/smaller vertically which ruined the look I was thinking of. I didn't want to have to make it where every image had to be resized to a uniform size so I simply framed them and they will now always appear centered for their aspect ratio. I think it keeps things a little more balanced too, but I'm interested to hear what others thinks, or any ideas for an alternate solution. I also added darker patches behind pretty much all the text to make it easier to read from a distance, and I added the same type of strip to the category display areas to add what looked too empty. The last addition was now playing info in the top left corner that shows what music is playing at any given point, and change the categories so that they automatically pause the music before launching any movies or tv shows. Here's how it looks with the changes:






Feedback is always appreciated.

[mememe]

I've had a brain fart. What is the text string to show a single item out of the total for a category? For instance, I have 5 movies and want to have it show 1 of 5, 2 of 5, etc.

[Marbles_00]

Code: Select all

category>menu>previous>-1>0

or

Code: Select all

category>menu>next>+1>0

The -1 and +1 indicate how many category entries you want to deviate from the actual selected item, so it could be +/-2, +/-3, etc.

previous and next can be replaced with the item you want to display. So if you want to display coverart, then you would change this here.

change menu to your category you want to affect.

[dhcf23]

%music>position%

or you could put it like this "No. %music>position% Albums" for a result of "No. 6 of 300 Albums" is this what you were looking for?

[mememe]

%music>position%

or you could put it like this "No. %music>position% Albums" for a result of "No. 6 of 300 Albums" is this what you were looking for?

That was it. Thank you. I didn't even know what marbles mentioned was possible, so this brain fart was actually profitable.