My first skin attempt

[Marbles_00]

After a few months of development, and many, many questions later, linked is a site with some screen shots of my first skin. I tried to keep it simple for the WAF. The background is really 1280x768, but I've been working on a 800x600 resolution so when I port it to my HTPC, I will have to modify the skin to suit (hence the reason for the Xlobby logo looking squished).

I have to update the picture of the main menu screen. It looks a little different from the one posted. I also have to add my gaming screens, DVD screens and PVR screen pictures. The PVR is really GB-PVR which I've modified the screen to match up to the Xlobby skin.

I'm not sure if I will release this skin or not.

Things I still have to finish:
DVD movie section, TheaterTek is just not working out how I had hoped.
XRemote and Girder control
A self installer
General cleanup.

Special thanks go out to:
Steven - for making an awesome program
Colby, Badubo and everyone else who answered my many questions that I posted, even though, I find out after, that majority of my question were already posted in the past. Thanks for the patience.
The whole French Team for making some really cool plugins
My wife for having a ton of patience while I stayed up late at night working on this....(part of the WAF)
Anyone else I may have forgotten, I thank you too.
I also thank the engineer of another product for giving me the inspiration for designing this skin in Xlobby.

Please comment, so I can make this skin better.

http://xlobby.myphotoalbum.com/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album01&id=MayTV

Marbles_00

[rubbah]

nice work.. can see where you got some of you're inspiration.

[Marbles_00]

Updates:

I updated the main menu picture to the current screen
I also added pictures of my DVD selection, DVD information, picture screens, as well as the main menu of GP-PVR that was modified to kinda suit my theme.

[Marbles_00]

Thanks Rubbah, coming from someone who too is designing a great looking skin means alot.

[Colby]

I have some feedback.
1st did the menu change since yesterday, it looks different?

I like the background you chose, (green and blue). I know how hard it can be to satisfy the WAF. I notice you are using bits of everyones pieces for buttons. Thats fine, but it breaks up a unified look in my opinion. I think the weather page and menu are the most appealling to me, but could use a few tweaks.

The music page looks a mess in my opinion. BTW do you only use mouse, the text is too small for touchscreen and it doesnt look to remote friendly.

On the weather page you have hourly forcast, yet no clock. And I have never seen the wind direction graphic, where is that from?

The words dvd menu on the dvd info page are misleading. Do they take you to the Dvd's menu or back in xlobby?

There are other things, but I must say the important thing is that you like it and it works for you. I would like a copy so I can mock up a few ideas and post, like I did with some others. (Jowaldo),(baddabing) & (visual)

[Marbles_00]

Thanks for the comments Colby,

The weather page is actually Samurize running on top of the Xlobby screen. I've always had problems with Xlobby accessing the internet after an initial dump. Xweather, Xoapweather, even Webcams would all do an initial download and display, but none of them would ever update. So I ended up going with the Samurize route. Which would answer your question on the wind direction graphic. Such a shame because I would have liked to use webcam images to display local traffic on the QEW or CN Tower shots or something. I also would have liked to try RSS feeds but it was not worth the hassle. The browser screen, and all other internet activity (outside of Xlobby) works fine. I have have constant DSL connection, Winroute, Win2k with SP4 machine. I should add the clock to that screen as well, so one knows the current time...good point.

I did update the main menu picture. The first shot was what I was working with a while back. Now is the most current.

Thanks for the comments on the music page. I tried to group main controls to one side, mp3 stuff at the bottom with volume and music selection on the other side. My mp3 collection is more or less singles and I have not bothered to convert my albums/CD's, though now I'm beginning to understand databases more, I could set up a screen similar to the DVD movie selection. Maybe my next skin I will do that.

I don't have a touchscreen, nor am I ever planning on owning one, not that I don't want to...I'd love it, but the wife would kill me (she doesn't like gagets so much even though it makes life easy), so that basically answers your question. I know where your going with the remote, and I would have realized that it is all over the place once I sat down to work with XRemote and Girder. Re-vamping the music page is now a must. In my own defense, that was one of the first screens I ever worked with and haven't touched since the start of the project.

DVD Menu - good point well taken, I will change that.

I'd love to see your ideas. Give me a couple of days to clean up some loose ends, and figure out how to put this up on the web.

Talk to you later.

[Marbles_00]

Well, I've listened to the the comments to date and revised the skin. You can see the current skin by going here:

http://xlobby.myphotoalbum.com/slidesho ... me=album02

I made up alot of my own icons now, learned how to use overlays, and generally made it better.

I'm still tweaking it, but if there seems to be a demand for it, I would like to release it (though I've never done it, someone may want to give me some advice on how to do that).

Any comments are welcome.

[rhinoman]

A big improvement, well done.

[arkania]

Nice looking skin, Marbles, very clean and functional! Can't wait to see the finished product.

Gary.

[Aaron]

I like it thus far... a few suggestions...

ditch the Meedio backgrounds and make your own that fit the skin style and are original

change the rounded-red highlight bar to something else... the current one makes the text difficult to read.

[Marbles_00]

Thanks for the comments guys,

Aaron, the reason for designing the skin with the Meedio background was a very simple reason...I like the HDeeTV skin. Very simple looking and the colors, to me, are easy on the eyes. You are right though, I've come this far with making my own buttons and the sort, why not go all the way and create my own background. Now that I have created the functionality, to transfer that from skin to skin is almost trivial.

With that in mind, I will most likely not distribute this skin, but will wait until I finally have my HTPC built up enough to connect to my tv so I can make a proper widescreen skin.

[kugumby]

Any chance you'd distribute per request. I'd like to try it out. (I would have PM'd, but it wasn't working.)

Thanks

[Marbles_00]

Kugumby, if your still interested, email me at:
mayhem.prod"AT"gmail"dot'com

I put a halt on skinning until I'm able to get a true HTPC connected to my TV where I can take advantage of the resolution (1920x1080). For that skin, I was trying to design a 1280x720 resolution skin on a 800x600 computer screen.

I also want to create something completely from scratch...graphics and all. In the meantime, I've been playing with the functionality of Xlobby, mainly multizoning audio. I also want to learn more about Xnet and using PPC's with Xlobby. This will be a requirement for controlling the multiple zones.

I more or less stopped development on that skin, basically it is functioning, but requires some tweaking. I use it as my default skin on my computers when I'm fooling around with Xlobby. The last thing I did with it was set up Xremote basically for trying it out with my Panasonic remote, Girder and WinLirc. That worked rather well.

Other software you may need unless you modify the skin, which I don't mind and openly endorse to help make it better overall:
GB-PVR
Samurize

I like GB-PVR and will most likely use it for TV capturing once I get a capture card. I only used Samurize for weather because I was/am having a hell of a time getting Xlobby to connect to the internet for updates. I don't know why, as none of my other internet connecting software has any problems (web browser, email, torrents, file sharing, antivirus updates, windows updates). Even the browser within Xlobby works fine. I think it has something to do with my firewall, but I don't know what it could be.

Anyways, I'm honored that you are interested in the skin, and will help you anyway I can in implimenting it should you still want it.

David

[Arthur]

Nice skin. And still improving!

Things I still have to finish:
A self installer

An installer is a good idea!