Scrolling options for databases

[bfauska]

I have recently seen screenshots of the Kaliedescape's movie selection screen and like the simple elegant look. I would love to try and make my movie page look like this. From the looks of the layout, I think that the selected movie is always centered in the screen and the other titles in the catagory all shift on the screen accordingly. I don't know if I am explaining this well, but if anybody understands my description could you tell me if there is a way to do this in Xlobby.

Basically what I want to see is this (pretend that the letters are movie images)
This would be if E was the selected title:

A B C
D E F
G H I

this would be if I cursured over to F with the right arrow key and now the F was selected

B C D
E F G
H I J

any help would be great... Maybe I need to figure out how to better describe this and make it a feature request.

[bfauska]

Is there a way for me to show more than one instance of the same database but have them never showing the same part of the database. If I had one half of the screen showing the first 15 titles and then something else in the middle of the screen and then another instance of the DB on the bottom half of the screen with the next 15 titles. I have been able to successfully put multiple instances of the same DB that allways show the selected item, but not keeping them from overlaping.

I have screenshots demonstrating what I am trying to do but I don't have any hosting service. I could email them if somebody wanted to see what I am talking about.

I think that these could be very usefull tricks to figure out or features to add if they are currently impossible. I have thought of lots of different layouts for browsing your DBs that would work much better if this would work.

Thanks in advance.
Brian

[m_ski]

I think you can have different categories looking at the same database (xml file). You could probably do your idea by using 9 separate categories (music1, music2 .....music9) and when you move in the different directions set an event so that it automatically pages the correct no of pages in each category. You would need a lot of events to do it but I think it would probably be possible. I don't know how smooth the scrolling would work as they would probably not all change at the same time.
Maybe have a look at the MediaCenterSE skin (keyboard/remote version) which uses multiple categories on the music playlist page for moving items up and down and deleting from the playlist. No exactly what you want, I know, but might give you some pointers of how you might do it.

If you have a category with more than one item in it then it is not currently possible to set exactly which items will be displayed. e.g. If you have a 10 item database and are displaying 5 items then you must either display items 1-5 or items 6-10, you cannot display 3-7. Because of this I think you will need to use a separate category for each item you wish to display so that you can set exactly which item you want in each category.

[bfauska]

I will definately give that a look. I know that when I use two catagories on screen at the same time there is some lag in the refresh of both when I scroll so that will likely be a problem as you pointed out. But if I can get this to work I think it would allow for a really cool movie and music section on my skin.

I also put in a fairly detailed feature request to Stephen about displaying specific parts of a catagory. Hopefully I can eventually get this working.

Later,
Brian

[Colby]

Yeah what else is cool, is if you do use 9 categories you could change their sizes, giving you "Mac dock" effects

have screenshots demonstrating what I am trying to do but I don't have any hosting service. I could email them if somebody wanted to see what I am talking about.

Sure email them to me.