Transitions between screens

[edgley]

Is this possible?

The last thing I want is a timeline in XL, but the ability to fade or Star Wars wipe would be great.

Thanks,

simon.

[stevenhanna6]

what does a starwars wipe look like? not sure I would add this because I would have to add some directx into xlobby. hmmmm....let me get back to you on this, I still want to know what a starwars wipe looks like though.

[antipasto]

isn't that sort of a trapezoid shape backwards into oblivion?

[edgley]

SW wipe: clock wipe, virtical etc.

[ingalls]

or why not zoom in zoom out effects like in windows media center?

[Jibril]

Transitional effects would make Xlobby look more refined. For example, It could, when a goto button is pressed, flash the down state of the button a couple of times, fade the current screen out, and then fade the new screen in. Beyond Media does stuff like that if not much else. Not asking for anything...just saying it would be cool.

[xlobby56]

I was going to start a thread on this myself. After playing around with MCE a bit, I was impressed the most by the cool transitions and how quickly they worked. I think having this feature in XL would have a huge impact on the look of skins. That and animated buttons (ie. in MCE the buttons give off a kind of sheen). A moving screen is much more interesting to look at than a static one. But maybe this is not so easy on the programming side.

[Colby]

But maybe this is not so easy on the programming side.

You said it.

Dont think that Steven hasnt considered animation. he has... and we have asked... and he tried... and we asked and he has always told us its hard to code, and doesnt work well. We saw a short time ago how adding animation consumed almost 100% memory. In the end, when it comes down to it, I would much rather have XL be more powerful and static than animated and weak. So Steve keep up the great programming!

[gamejester]

The way Tivo gets round this is by having the moving elements as movie files.

So far example in Xloby, if a basic movie player was integrated, probably best to go with WMV as it is a .net app running on MS, the background for a screen could be a movie clip on loop.

You could use your original background but record animated sheen on buttons, or a dancing icon in the corner as a wm9 file and play it on loop as the background.

You can then use invisible place holder buttons over the button in the movie background and just define the changed button for highlight and select.

This would give you unlimited variation with very little overhead..........limitation would be a selected button would be masked by a static icon, so no animation for highlighted or selected item.

You could then created movie files playing between screens on GOTO events that would give a degree of transition, in a similar way to what they do on animated DVD menu's.

This of course would mean more work for the skin engineer, but should be fairly simple to implement.

[xlobby56]

Maybe this is beyond the realm of Xlobby, but it seems to me the best application for development of animated skins is flash. Looking at flash-based websites, they incorporate all the elements I would be interested in (ie. animated backgrounds; icons change on mouse-over; upon clicking you could have any number of things moving or changing shape) and seem to do so effortlessly.

I'm sure there are a number of reasons flash can't be incorporated into XL that, being a non-programmer, I don't see. But to me, the ultimate frontend would combine the look and feel of a flash-based website with the functionality of XL.