[Skin] Rapier Clarity Mod (3.5.49)

[byron]

@ Dom...coming from another person that really unserstands what it takes to get your way out of this program as a skinner...much appreciated

Here's what's new since the thread just flipped a new page...

[byron]

Movies/Seasons Large Poster Wrap updated:

(flows very well with several options to fit your tastes)...

On a roll now...I'm gonna keep quickly plugging along until I get all of these done

[skatulskijean]

nice

[byron]

Movies/TvShows/Episodes/Albums/Songs Wide Icon View updated:

@ jan...thank you

Not the most exciting view in the world, but part of the skin media views none the less. Originally there were 8 items on the screen (seems pretty standard for most panel views from skin to skin) but I took a chance here and limited them to 6 so that your eyeballs weren't popping out of your head by straining to see the info for a particular item. Not my favorite view, but standard and this is what I've done to update it trying to keep in-line with my other view styles.

I took care of a bug that was going on with the sorting, it was stuck on :YEAR: if changed from :NAME: - Since I rarely use these things, this is the first I've noticed this in almost a year since I've been messing around with Rapier. I Also took some time to make sure that the ViewOptions, Sort, LibraryOptions, and ViewMode dialogs have longer labels/buttons (dont get cut off anymore) plus made the animations seemless for when they open and close. It actually looks MUCH better and puts customizing views in harmony with everything else where as before it felt forced and out of place imo. Hope you like the changes that I've been making, as always the overall goal is based on RAM saving, visibility, and custimization - all is fantastic as of right now. So...now onto more Media Views

[5l1p]

Thank you! I don't use library mode but i like all the new sprites, especially the new highlight for the selector. I did spot a bug with the background setting for less ram - 'red' not displaying correctly in your previous version but haven't tested in the new one.

[byron]

Movies Showcase View:

@ 5l1p...glad you're still liking what I'm throwin out there, and yes I fixed that bug right after I released my theme update. Thanks for looking out, and I'm going to get around to updating the common views (list, icon, big icon) with a few changes pretty soon as well as trying to add the "list 2" view that you requested some time ago

Movies Showcase View was originally with this skin but I removed it because quite frankly it was jaggedy at best, and ultimately ended up crashing the skin. I gave it a go and tried to make it work and all seems to flow well. This view has a trailer option which does work, but if your trailers are in 720p it will lag I'm affraid. At any rate, this is the last of the movie views that needed to be redone, and I gave this one a good effort (worth trying as it's a pretty cool media view). From the pic above you can see all of the available movie views in this skin, all of them updated, and all of them functioning quite well and running smooth...only a few more to go with TvShows/Episodes and a couple in the music library and they will all be done

[byron]

All Common Views (List, Icon, and Big-Icon) updated:

I went through and updated all three of these views (mostly for the non library users), and I'm happy with the outcome. I personally haven't used the library views lately as I've been using plugins mostly. List view is what I'm usually using honestly, and I had my way with it I made it so that the stars can now be hidden (text reaches the end of the focus bar), the list icons can be hidden, and I added a color to the "selector" (if you don't like the change it's reversible in the view options). Did a good once over on the Icon views, but nothing more than eye candy really.

Top-Bar Focused Highlight:

Since I've been digging into the "views" I've really been struggling with this...not being able to find the focus of where I'm at on the screen. This is something I should have done a long time ago, sorry I'm just getting around to it. Now when you are in the top bar area, the entire bar is highlighted with the theme color you're using and it really takes care of this issue imo.

Just a couple more views to knock out and then pretty much done with them for now...

[fxmech]

First of all, *BUMP* because this thread should be toward the top of the heap.

I'm posting this from the shortcut I added to the 'general' section. Forum Browser
It's pretty hard to see and check for typos in this script. Except for the first few words in a paragraph None of text is visible. Not related to this pust.
With that note aside. I will continue my feature request!
Can you add custom submenus to the custom top level one and add toggles for the in-built submenu items?
I have a hunch I gotta manually edit the 'stock' links. That is at least an easy enough task for me. But customizing on-the-fly
The custom top level items need submenus --killing my buzz.

Next, if we could always show the submenus as another option.

Can the weather conditional background be made to also apply to all?

Finally, but I think most important request is for the "applied" dropdown option item be indicated somehow. It is a little troublesome flipping through the viewmodes and it not showing in the list which one im *using* and which one I'm *hovering/highlisted*.
That'll do it. And note it was difficult to type that last "line" into the input view . Only screwed up my last word, good enough.

I'm hoping with some polishing we can get this skin into SVN. It seems to have some potential
Highly recommend, two thumbs up
Thanks will be to keep testing and to make sure all my versions are straight. Can you just make a 'unified' download in the OP? I'm still scrambled on why some of these top bars aren't highlighting on this box. I have too many xboxes.

[byron]

First of all, *BUMP* because this thread should be toward the top of the heap.

nice okay, so custom top level means what exactly? If you're asking if a predefined custom home menu could have a custom sub-menu (which is what I think you're getting at), then yes that should be possible...lotta work though so that would be the last of the things I would tackle, but sounds like a good idea for sure.

Next, if we could always show the submenus as another option.

That should be easy.

....and add toggles for the in-built submenu items?

"Toggle-able" sub-menu items that are already hard coded...lotta work to figure it out...probs not on that one (if you can figure it out in the meantime I'll include it for sure). I think it can be done, but I don't have time to dig in to that right now (but not a definite no).

Can the weather conditional background be made to also apply to all?

If you mean is it possible to see changing weather fanart on every homescreen container then yea, that is also possible but the RAM will take a pretty good hit...

Finally, but I think most important request is for the "applied" dropdown option item be indicated somehow.

Also something that I've been meaning to get around to actually...so I'll tackle this first and post when it's updated.

As for the download situation, I guess it might be somewhat confusing...I never know whether or not to get rid of the old version (3.2.1) just in case someone is still using it but perhaps it's time to delete the links for them. If you want to make sure you have EVERYTHING current as far as the skin goes...just click the download skin link and it will give you the latest version (720 update is so you don't have to download an extra 40mb of stuff you already have). And if you could let me know which windows are not Highlighting on the top bars with focus, I'll cross check and update them quickly if there are probs there. Thanks for the feedback, I'll straighten out the two problems asap...right now I'm wrapping up my port for Transparency

[fxmech]

Great. I thought your heap of work was getting low, so I burden thee.

Really, this is a great white-labeling type of skin. Only custom menu&submenus. It would make a most useful little setup to give them as bootable dashes custom to them

[fxmech]

Thought i had it in there. Must have missed it somewhere along updating this box. Doh

[byron]

Okay, here ya go...This makes it much easier to tell which view you're using currently. I played around with it for a bit and chose this method, it brings the themes into play and I personally liked how this looked best (also did the same thing for sort methods).

I worked on the "constant" submenus for a bit, but then got sidetracked by playing around with making the home menus have a transparent skin setting which led to me just wasting pretty much an entire day accomplishing nothing except sitting in front of my computer again I've got some ideas that I'd like to play with, but in the meantime I'll try to get that sorted pretty soon...I think that would be a nice option to have. I took care of a couple of other little bugs, check the changelog on OP if you're interested.

[fxmech]

I certainly am. I understand all too well wasting days that way. Thanks again byron. We should find a kosher solution for re/installing skins so updating can go a little more smoothly.

Just http:// or ftp:// network sources will be enough. Ideally updated periodically on the same server with all the updated /current skins

[byron]

I've been thinking about installing visualSVNserver. At that point I could just package it with a build.bat and then someone could check it out with tortoise or whatever svn client and build it easily that way. What do you think about that software? I don't think that's exactly what you're suggesting though, sounds to me you are saying that it should be done within running xbmc. If that's what you're getting at, I'm not really sure how to go about that. Whufclee had a mini repo on his navi-x homepage for skins (not working), but that doesn't get you updated skins (i.e. A file is changed but then how would it auto update the link to a zip?).

We have a skin section on a4x installer, but it's empty atm...maybe that would be the first place to start digging in. It's all there, just needs to be set up by someone. I mean it would be fantastic to just turn the xbox on and have "all" installs auto update, but starting small and seeing if we could get a skin to do it first might be a huge step in the right direction.

I think there's a built in function for us to check for updates, but I don't know where/how it crosschecks. So say I have changed something in the skin (auto update on start would be implemented in startup.xml), it would check the repo, find new version, install while running...it might work

[fxmech]

Considering setting up XBMC4XBOX SVN was on my list eventually, I think putting one up for your skin releases will be great. I used to CVS checkout/contribute on a PHP CMS a long time ago; I imagine SVN will be much the same process. TortoiseCVS was what I used come to think of it.

At the very least, it will help me merge my customized changes with your bugfix and feature updates... :idea:

I was driving at getting it for the end user on their XBMC install earlier. And I do recall the A4X Installer successfully installing a couple skins for me just fine. Problems only happened when a filename had unsupported chars, from what I noticed.

I think it would be suitable simply to strip out all sections but the skins. I should get my stuff organized over on my end a little so I can easily find these answers without posing the suggestions. Maybe I can be productive? :D

[byron]

I should get my stuff organized over on my end a little so I can easily find these answers without posing the suggestions.

both of us...maybe google code or something for this project. I really have been racking my brain on it all day, basically for us (x4x) this isn't an addon (e.g. skin.clarity) it's set up different. I've been trying to figure out how to set up an unofficial repo that could be checked from x4x and then updated for the general user but I can't wrap my mind around anything else today. Backporting transparency fried my brain

[sahib12]

Nice skin dude, but i'm getting frustrated, i saw that screenshot you posted with the other views but all i have is icons, big icons and list. Why aren't the other options appearing? Because that's all i need and this skin is officially the best ever

[byron]

Hey thanks man, I'm actually about upload a huge update tonight...just one more thing to iron out. As far as the views go, if you're not using the library then those views won't be available. Main containers e.g. VIDEOS, MUSIC, PROGRAMS, etc have those three views as standard and unless you scan your content you won't have those other views (e.g. MOVIES, TVSHOWS, MUSIC[library]). If you're interested check back later and I'll have updated the OP with a new download link and if one prefers an option to export via SVN (google code). If you like it now, you'll more than likely enjoy it even more as it's even faster with more options and I've added transparency to the home window and top bars (skinwide).

Here's a couple of screen shots showing the transparency (which can be switched off in skin setting if you don't like)...

Check your inbox...I'll send you the link so you can check it out ahead of time if you want

[5l1p]

Hi byron, glad to see you are still working on this. The transparency looks very nice! Unfortunately my xbox is packed away due to moving but I will get round to looking at this at some point.

A few posts back I asked for the text to "info pane" to be extended in videos, if my memory serves me correctly I believe file names in the music section are currently cut off, would you mind applying the same fix?

[byron]

Major Update (moved to SVN) + Version Bump

If you look at the previous post, one thing that's major is the skin now has transparency. It might not seem like anything too interesting, but trust me it took a lot of thinking and work to get it straightened out (totally frees up the home screen's apperance). Skin defaults to having it on, but if you don't like it switch it off in skin settings.

Many things have been changed, too many to go into detail about so if you're really interested in everything that I've changed you can check the changelog (starting from 3.5.1), or check out the project home (link on OP) and that should shed some light. As far as other notables along with transparency...


Custom Sub-menu Filters:

This gives a user the choice to customize what's on each sub-menu, or to totally disable the menu entirely. It basically just allows you to further customize things if you wish.


Constant Home Submenus:

Pretty self explanatory here, if you wish to always see the sub=menus on the home screen then this is something you'll enjoy. I thought about making this default for the skin, but It's not something I was really sure about. The whole point is really to make things easiest for a noob I'm starting to feel, and this might aid quite a bit with this skin...maybe just an "easy" mode for everything or something like that would be a good idea.

Also slightly notable would be the addition of a settings menu:

I really should have done this a looooong time ago, but it's done now. If you're used to not having this window from using this skin, sorry but it was pretty much going to happen eventually. It won't take much getting used to...

As far as other things that were done that are worth mentioning, most of the time I spent updating really went into getting rid of a ton of code via SkinVariables.xml -- it also created a very nice bump in performance suprisingly to me. Recently Added got a code overhaul and MUSIC VIDEOS was added as a legit home menu item (not visible until music vids are scanned). PICTURES and GENERAL bg's have been changed, MUSIC will now take you to the library if you have music scanned into it, and other than that check the log for more info...BTW, if you're going to grab this from SVN make sure you "export" if you plan on transferring it to the xbox. If you do a "checkout" it won't transfer because of the hidden .svn folder that you get with a working copy. The goal is ultimately to auto update, but for now svn will suffice for quick reliable updates without much fuss at all

@ 5l1p...I went ahead and changed the label width on that, I thought I had already done it but must have missed it or something