What makes a good Skin?- Your Opinions

[noviceboy]

Skins are so personal I thought it might be interesting (for Steven's commercial versions) to see if there is some "middle ground" that would work for a wider market than "ethusiasts" . Split your comments to "my personal tastes" and into things that the average consumer( read non HTPC wild ethusiast) would like.

Try to be as specific a possible( easy to use is not specific ).

[MR]

As someone who has not contributed with a skin, my personal opinion is:
1 - I like 2d graphics as opposed 3d buttons and backgrounds on skins. I think this is why jowaldo's skin looks so sharp.
2 - I also like less contrast in colors than more, and would prefer something on the grey side as I am using a RPTV to display Xlobby. I don't really want the red, green or blue gun to run hotter than the other two as it may cause uneven burn-in.
3 - Button highlights are a must for using a remote control
4 - Easily moving back out of a subsection easily wiht a remote is important for me. WIth the default skin, I can't do this in the TV guide. Once I get in that screen I can't get out of the guide matrix to the home button by using the directional arrows. Not sure if that is a skin or Xlobby issue.
5 - My feeling is that vector graphics (gradients for example) look better than photo realistic textures.
6 - A small number of buttons that expand into more options is better than putting all the controls on one page. My feeling is that the default album viewer is too busy and takes a long time to navigate from one side of the screen to the other via remote.
7 - If animations are included (if they can be included) they should occur in response to an action as opposed to happening on a static page as it ends up being distracting. I'm thinking about web pages when I say that, but maybe I just haven't seen this implemented well yet.

I guess that's all I got. I would love to have the time to play around and try to make my own some day. I might become less opinionated then.

THanks,
MR

[Tracie]

I'll agree with almost all of what MR said, especially the part about colors on a RPTV. I'm doing the same & the blues that you see so much on these skins are really hard to take on that much screen, the greys & more muted/softer colors are much more pleasing/easier on the eyes.

He also touched on something that we have trouble with. A skin needs to be easy to navigate, & part of the problem with Steven's skin is that you need to know what each button is to navigate the program. My husband was browsing the music section a while back & couldn't figure out how to get back to the main menu because he didn't know what the symbols stand for. Less clutter on each page would be good thing, but the links themselves need to be self-explanatory to even the newest of noobies.

[MR]

Us Oregonians have similar opinions. Make our skins grey and rainy.
I'm in Beaverton BTW.
-MR

[Tracie]

HIJACK ON -

How small is this world anyway? I grew up in Portland. So are your feet & hands webbed?

- HIJACK OFF

Seriously, though. It's refreshing to see someone else make the comment about the colors. So many skins are being made around blue backgrounds & it's a bit on the intense side on a big HDTV like that, not to mention the burn-in question. I'd like to see a skin built around a background like one of these:

http://myhtpc.net/images/backgrounds/full/HALFCIRC.jpg
http://myhtpc.net/images/backgrounds/full/cubic.jpg
http://myhtpc.net/images/backgrounds/full/illusion.jpg


I like the first one best & the green in the last link the least, but you get an idea of what I mean. I would love to see someone put something together that looks like the Itunes program.

[Arthur]

Gray? colour please !
Easy lay-out, not to much buttons (No small buttons as I use a touch screen)

Arthur

[noviceboy]

All good comments. By the way I am not proposing myself as a skin developer- not a graphics artist. I did mine for my personal needs and a very clear LCD display. I expect on a TV it would be not so great. But this is the point here, to define some best parameters for various scenarios.

What is starting to emerge is that teh output device will play a big role as to what/(and for who) is good. RPTV from what I see are very colour weak, unsharp and so colours you with those devices describe work much better.


Blues have always been used (on PC sreens) for reasons that studies show 90% of people find them easier on the eye( given right output device). But blues on low res display are also pretty poor.
Actually I did a setup with grey on my LCD. Was not as easy to view from a distance as the dark blues.


3D works very well on clear high resolution displays and 2D much better where the output quality is not so good.

Keep it coming. Actually I would want a setup to switch to diffrent variatsions of the same skins depending on hthe output device in my house.

P.s how Americans can stand watching NTSC I just cannot understand. It's simply awful colour and clarity wise. Seen enough on my business visits.

[MR]

Noviceboy,

Just to clarify, the reason for using grey or neutral colors on a RPTV is so that you don't cause uneven burn in on your RGB tubes. That is, if your screen is prominently blue, your blue gun will run hotter and may degrade faster over time or even burn a static image into the tube if you display a picture with high contrast for too long. I have already had to replace my green tube once due to burn in, and it's not cheap.

Note that the reason is not because the picture is blurry. I am not displaying NTSC, but rather converting the RGB output from the computer to YPbPr and displaying an ATSC (HDTV) picture at 720P. Note that 720p (1280x720) is actually more "pixels" than 1024x768 (pixels is in quotes as a RPTV actually displays lines, but the resolution is equivalent.) Furthermore, the colors are very crisp.

My concern is static pictures of high contrast and colors that contain more red, or green or blue, for burn-in issues.

Thanks,
MR

[noviceboy]

MR

I realised that's what u meant.

[noviceboy]

text should where possible not be embeded into the interface graphics so that people can change to their own language. Also leaving sufficient space on the screen for longer translations.

[Twit]

Noviceboy,

You hit the nail on the with the embedded text.

Most of the skins i have downloaded are always embeded with text - a real bitch to change. Maybe if people like to embed they should post the buttons seperatly with no embedding.

Later
Simon.

[jowaldo]

Noviceboy,

You hit the nail on the with the embedded text.

Most of the skins i have downloaded are always embeded with text - a real bitch to change. Maybe if people like to embed they should post the buttons seperatly with no embedding.

Later
Simon.

I agree... I do like to use embedded text on most of my buttons, but every button style that I will have in my skin, I will create a blank template style button also.

[noviceboy]

Jowaldo,

FYI I sarted this thread just to gather best practices, for public/commercial quality skins, so don#t feel you need to change yours based on anything here.

What was behind using text was that skins are just text. (XML) It would be easy to supply utilities to let consumers change their text

[sdumas]

I like the minimalistic approach. The less the better.

Clean, not too many buttons
Consistant interface from one menu to the other
Big easy to "push" buttons
Contextual approach

It's easy to put everything known to mankind on a menu screen. It gets confusing as hell for most. It's very difficult to make it seemless and easy to use.

I like this small story from Winston Churchill during WWII. He was writing a letter to the Queen of England and it was a pretty long letter. He started by saying: "Excuse me my Queen for this long letter, I didn't have time to make it shorter".

Making a system easy to use for everyone is much more complicated than throwing everything but the kitchen sink in the equation.

Now - for my own skin... I am getting there. I'll post it as soon as it is finished... but it's taking some time