First off....
POST 1000 
Now, I have posted a first beta release of Mirage. See my first post for download. Please read the installer, and included pdf files for details.
Basically, I think it's pretty feature rich, and uses a good assortment of plugins.
As mentioned it was tested on the last free version of xlobby.
The background image is 1920x1080, but I was designing on a 1024x768 computer monitor so I was using a 960x540 xlobby screen. I'm hoping that things won't have to be resized and reorganized, so anyone running at the opitimum res, and have problems, please let me know. Not much I can do about it until I get my HTPC running...but that's another story.
Now there are some obvious problems which I will address, and they are with the PPC screens. I tried to set up the PPC screens to compliment the main screens and act as a controller as opposed to having a "thin" client control. Meaning I used mimic, and whatever is done on the PPC screen, is done on the server as well. The PPC will control movies, music, weather, and games screens. Below is a list of problems that I ran into while using the PPC:
News screen
- No control of news category from PPC meaning selecting a different news category on the PPC does not change the actual category on the main screen.
- do have scroll control of whatever news is on screen at time the news screen is entered. Meaning if entertainment news is up and entertainment is selected on the PPC, then you can scroll the different news titles.
YouTube
- 100% control but does not display coverart when controlling via PPC. Meaning when selecting most popular daily videos, the category changes, you can scroll the different titles, but there is no coverart displayed. Videos can still be selected and played.
Files
-No PPC control of drive select or file management
-100% control of CD Tray
-no PPC navigation control of directory
Settings
-No PPC control of Theme selection (they don't take effect)
Exit
-Exit client does not exit xlobby on server, only client exits (event is setup to exit client then close xlobby).
-All other functions correct from PPC.
There are other issues, hopefully I can get answers from the individual plugin developers.
Remember, this is a first beta, and the skin is still under development. Use at your own risk. Feedback is very much welcome.
Now to answer some questions above:
you have volume controls for all of the zones built into xlobby do you also have volume controls in the rooms?
No all volume is controlled via thin/fat clients. I currently use one PPC to control the whole music server system. This will eventually grow as the family matures more and the "better half" has more of an understanding as to how convient it is to have extra computers or PPC to control the system from anywhere in the house.
does this skin process room to room volume changes in the background? for instance if you were navigating the movie screen of the primary instance of xlobby and someone else in another room tries to change the zone volume, does xlobby process it in the background?
I only used this skin on a test system that either acts as a server (to test the PPC screens) or connects to my music server and a fat client. Judging that I can have multiple clients connected to the music server at once, it will alow for mutliple control of volume in the background, and will update both clients at the speed of the client refresh rate (setup in the server.txt file). Though I don't know what would happen if two clients tried to access the same volume at the exact same time.
Marbles_00 wrote: Found out how to integrate my music-server volume and sync control across the network recently,
im bit curious how do u do that...
Ahh my friend, it's called the XReceive plugin. Though I have to find out how to run an os:execute command properly so I can send an event to put my music server to sleep on demand.
Sorry for the long winded post.
by Marbles_00 on Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:52 pm 
. I'm hoping to have a trial version up soon...though could be a little buggy. I'm designing the ppc screens, trying to not bundle so much into them. Just the basic menu structure for the most part. So when in use, you will want to use the mimic command so the actual screen follows the ppc screens. The whole flow of it will make sense when its done (cough *hopefully*). The other thing that will require some modifications depending on use will be the zoning requirements. This skin works with my music server which is running ZoneSkin3...this may not be what everyone else will be using.
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. Took me a bit to figure out still how to do it. Both in formatting and how to actually display the images. Up until now, to display images with the menus (besides coverart...hint, hint), I've been using the "image" variable. I think it's pretty neat, and should make navigating with a remote a better experience. I've also been able to do away with a dedicated "Now Playing" screen as that info is displayed for all the top level menus (Main, Video, Internet, Help, Exit...etc.).