Couple of requests if possible.

1) Make the wallpapers full screen when disabling the RS feed - at the moment the black bar is still showing where the feed runs.

2) Maybe have the option to move the 'film strip' from the middle of the screen to the bottom so it doesn't cover the wallpapers as much.

Thanks.

Great skin.

Cheers!

Done 1)

'am having a think about 2) - doesn't seem to look right to me - was thinking more along the lines of some sort selectable fade effect after a period of inactivity perhaps.

Don't put it on the bottom. This would look crappy. We have all been here before. I would like to see the selectable icon flash and not the outside ones on the alternative film strip. This would look alot better bro.
I must say everything is dreamy. I also like your last idea. Maybe make it disappear after a few seconds.

You can translate the homepage into other languages?

I would agree about not putting the filmstrip towards the bottom again. It fit's much better in the center where it's at. Also, the flashing of the side icons just doesn't fit. Almost makes it look like something is wrong with xbmc. Maybe have them smaller and the selected one bigger instead? Or use a gradiant to have them a little dimmer. Or add 2 more, so one is in the center, and 2 on each side.
Another idea, maybe have an option to the skin options, and add a filmstrip-esque info panel when bringing up info while in movie? (Instead of the darker info bar at bottom, which already still looks just fine now, have it look a little more like a filmstrip for the background.) Just thinking of course.
A 3rd idea, how bout for the big wide icon view, instead of using "> <" arrows for the selection, how bout a box with small lights around it for the selection instead?? (ie-small overlay panel or even small box around title.) the lights don't have to move, just so each other is lit to give the effect it's intented for. But moving lights would be cool to, 2-3 frames gif would only be needed. (1-2-3,1-2-3)

First of all thanks to Sharpe for the new updates.

I like very much djda ideas (even if I don't use the alt-home screen very often), especially the one about the new graphics with filmstrip for info that appears hitting the "Info" button while watching a movie.

Cheers!

Uli666

I sent Sharpe a new Busy icon. But I prefer the text on it. So if there are other movie collectors also you should have this. Enjoy. Some may like it also without text. But I feel the text compliments the current theme of the movie theatre, plus I redid the color also.

http://www.4shared.com/file/29099173/21d5406a/Busy.html?

Great job Sharpe buddy. Check out my version bro.

Good stuff

I've added djdafreund's osd info suggestion and faded out slightly the 2 side icons in the alt home screen.

Thanks Sharpe for adding that stuff!!! One more thing, is it possible to make the icons bigger when using any form of "Change/Update Thumbnail for Movie/Season/Show" (dialog windows), i thought it would make it easier to see which thumbnail you want to use. I noticed PM3 skin did this already as well. Thanks in advance if you decide to do this also.

The new busy icon is so-so, but i much prefer the filmreel icon. Looks decent, and thanks for contributing it for others to us.

I guess opinions vary, because I thought the movie reel was so-so?

I've done that - made the icons twice as big.

Hey thanks Sharpe for doing that. I was noticing the new busy icon that replaced the film reel icon. I guess i didn't do anything to have noticed it change until today, which is why i didn't mention it earlier. The film reel seems to fit much more appropriately to the theme, and wondered what exactly the new icon is supposed to be, or is it just made up? Thats not supposed to be a cut down or anything, just confusion as to the change, and what it is.
I also have a couple new ideas me and my room mates are fine tuning. Might try to make a few mockups to proper show how that would actually look. I personally think this skin is SVN worthy at this level, it already surpases some other skins in functionality and demand then ones already in svn. No effence to ANY of the skins currently in, thats simply complimenting Front-Row if anything. And the fact that NO other skin can compare with the being open-minded about almost all idea's given to date. You are a very fair person, and some of us here that have given a lot of idea's are very respecfully appreciative at the fact of how great you've been with adding about all of them given. Thanks big time. Keep up the great work!!!!

Ah the busy icon is just something different - give it a while see how it gels...I might change it again - I'm still trying it out.

/looking forward to seeing what your ideas are.

Hi all!
My 2 cents about the new stuff...

- Busy icon
I kind of like it... bright colors are nice. Maybe imho it's a bit too big. Can you try to make it smaller?
Anyway even the old one was nice, with a brighter red moving part maybe.

- Video OSD
The new "info" osd at the bottom looks way nicer with that film reel shape. I just don't like the color very much. Can you make it darker? Black or dark gray maybe? Or with a black to gray gradient to give it a more "glossy" look?

- Bigger movie info icons
Nothing special to say, of course they look better and easier on the eyes now.

Thank for your work Sharpe!

Uli666

No worries - thanks for all the suggestions.

I've shrank the busy icon a little.
Thought the info osd might look a tad "pink" with the red theme - I've made it a standard black film strip now.

Thank you Sharpe!

Now the info film strip looks way better in black!
I just noticed that on my 4:3 TV the time goes a little outside the screen on the right. Can you place it a little more on the left, and maybe at the bottom of the film strip?
One last think for the videoOSD, can you change the color (for the red theme) of the "title" and "select" OSD too? That brown is not very nice. You can just put the same as in the default theme, or try a red-to-black gradient.

The busy icon looks better, still a little too big imho.

Did you think about a toggle for having scripts and file manager in the home screen?

Uli666

Quote:The busy icon looks better, still a little too big imho.

I don't think so! It looks fine the way it is. What do you want invisability?
Also, bro I don't see any option anywhere that lets u select 512x512 icon size like u said?

No what I said was you need to create a file called AdvancedSettings.xml and in that file put in the following code:



Then put that file in the userdata folder of XBMC.


uli666 -

I've, just now, addressed what you've said with the red theme and the osd info overlay. As for putting more in the homescreen, I might get round to that this weekend when I've a bit more time - bit busy at work this week.

Thank you so much dude!
Now the "info" osd looks perfect!
I don't want to sound too picky... but the little gradient grey-to-black was nicer on the osd that appears on top of the screen. Anyway it's nice also as it is right now, don't worry.

I like the new "reel shaped" busy icon better. Cool!

Take your time for the next changes my friend. Your skin is already awesome even right now!

Uli666

Hey maximusoctavious, just a heads up on the 512 setting, i would rather recommend using 384, looks barely any different, but that way you won't get a lot of blank/missing icons due to xbmc running out of memory. I used that one first and noticed a lot of missing icons, and noticed after looking at my LCD screen, it was showing "Freemem: 0MB), so i switched it to 384, and redid my thumbs, and can't really see any worthy difference (IE- On a 48inch LCD Sony widescreen, 720p) They look very close to the same at least, but i never see it drop below 12-14MB Freemem now, no missing icons anymore. Hope that helps.

Still going to make some mockups of the ideas, been busy between 3 different projects. I'm dead serious about thinking Front-Door is worthy enough to put in SVN.

Update time...

Just changed things so that you can now add Scripts, File Manager and Weather controls to the home menus.

Cheers

Oh man, that's what i was looking for!!!! Excellent idea. Thanks a bunch for adding that. Do you think you might consider adding 2 icons on each side of the selected ones (IE- 5 total instead of 3), which would make it easier to navigate to the one you want by seeing a little more of the selectable ones? Now that we have a lot more icons to choose from. I will personally be using advantage of the scripts, weather, and Explorer now for sure. (I love the Nav-x, and now being able to add AMT to home as well. VERY NICE!!!)
I'll draw up a mockup in a little bit to illustrate.

Ah I've not quite gone that far - it's not set up to add individual scripts to the home menu just the main script control itself.

Ah, just noticed after messing with it. Thats cool, take your time.

Here's the quick mockup to better show it's effect. The center can still be tweaked if needed. I just threw the "Now Playing" for added highlighting effect. I tried darkening the background, but it didn't quite look right. Also, i thought, if possible, to have the other icons slightly smaller, and the center bigger, but i didn't know if it was easily possible with xbmc to do or not. Or maybe even use the current "Now Available" overlay for the center selection.

Hopefully you can ad the new "Enable Auto-scroll" function in the skin settings. Such a nice feature they could have added too!!!

heh - great minds think alike.....been messing with that - I've put some support for that feature into the plot views. (Still finalising what I'm going to do with it though).

I'm still not totally down with the 5 icons though - I've done it and tried it - and I think it makes the screen look too crowded personally - again I'll have a play around with it.

Ah, that's cool. I still like the 3 icons also. No biggie. Thanks for working on adding the autoscroll. Can;t wait to see someof the new stuff your working on.

Also, could you please add 'Plugin Settings' compatiblity stuff to the skin? I know currently PM3 is the 1st proper one to support it. Thats why it will just go back to the icons when trying that selection, and PM3, it actually brings up the settings window, it has to be added to the skin to work right.

Done - I think.....again it's something I don't really use.

Hey Sharpe! Thanks for the new update!
I really like to have scripts and file manager in the home screen.
Just a couple of things that could be tweaked (as usual imho):

- little bug: when going left from the settings icon (on the standard home screen) it jumps to the Apps icon instead of going on one of the new "scripts/file manager/weather" icons.

- the skin setting page needs to be a little arranged... now that contains so many options it can become a bit confusing, especially for a not so experienced user.
First of all I suggest you to chose if you want to use the "hide" or the "visibility" formula, but not both of them. If you chose to let people hide some icons from home screen, then by default you show them all and then the user can highlight the ones he wants to hide. If you prefer the other way around you put only the minimum icons by default and then you let the user decide which extra icons to add highlighting "visibility" options.
Personally I would choose this second option and I'd suggest you something like that:

Settings -> Skin Settings -> Home options

- Enable Weather Information
- Enable RSS Feeds
-------------------------------------------------------
- Show Settings
- Show TV Shows
- Show File Manager
- Show Scripts Control
- Show Weather Control
-------------------------------------------------------
- Video Library Mode Toggle
- Alt Home Screen Layout Toggle
- Multiple Custom Alt Home Wallpapers Toggle
- Single Default Alt Home Wallpaper Toggle

Like that I think it would be easier to understand even for first time users.
Moreover for the "toggles" I would rather make them "active" when they are highlighted (now it's the other way around).

- I don't like very much the icon for the File Manager...

That's all for now!

Thanks for everything!

Uli666

Thanks for that spot - fixed it.



Yeah you're right it was getting a bit unorganised - I've altered it sort of on your suggested lines - cheers.



Yeah it was just something I put in as a place holder really - I've made another one which "fits" a bit better I think - a simple NAS drive image.

Anyway I guess people can always download the skin.builder.rar and put whatever icons they like in it.

Thanks again for adding that as well. Oh man, you should try it out some time. It's pretty cool. For example, the Movie Theater plugin one allows a lot of configuration without having to edit the file now. I have a couple videos i found ('Coming Soon Featurette', and a "XBMC Presents" universal studios looking format someone made) that by setting the plugin options, Now when you select a movie (which same view you normally use) it shows 'coming soon' video, then a random movie trailer (also limted to rating of movie you selected, using plugin option currently there), then another trailer (or 2 more, you select the # in plugin options), then the 'XBMC Presents' video i d/l'ed, then the main selected movie. All those options are in plugin settings now, thanks to those guys. Works perfect in my theater setup when people come over, or my nephew (IE- Won't show SaW 4 trailers if a rated G/PG movie was selected, because of the rating option in plugin settings."
Check it out, definitely has it's usefulness. Just wanted to point out the advantages in case you haven't messed out around them in that aspect. And the new Joox released plugin also has 'Save video's/Folder selection' options and then some. Thanks again for such an incredible usefull skin. I turned at least 8 peoples xbox systems over to using Front-Row exclusively (Ok, 3 of those are mine).

I do have to agree with Uli666 about maybe reorganizing the skin settings now, with so many options, and please don't DARE think of removing some as the workaround. LOL

One more small request, possibly make 'Games' icon removable? (Dare i say? Haha. I also read the xbmc team rarely plays games ever as well.) So i guess i'm not the only one anymore. Funny, it goes to show how useful xbmc REALLY is now.)

Thanks dude!
You are really the best!!!

Unfortunately the little bug is still there, I'm sorry...
Since you are working on the navigation... would be possible that when you go back from one section (movies, music, etc.) to the home screen, hitting "back" or "menu", the selected icon would be the one of the section you are leaving? For example if I'm on the music section and I hit "menu" I go back to the home screen with the music icon selected (now it always go on the "movies" one).

Yes, now the home settings screen looks more clear, well done!

The new File manager icon fits really way better. Very nice!

Uli666

P.S. Thanks djda for explaining the Plugin stuff... I didn't knew that. Cool!

Damn that's annoying - I must have forgotton to copy over the fixed home.xml - it should be right now.



Right I think I get what you mean - never really considered that I suppose - I've slapped a <controlgroup> around the main home controls and that seems to have sorted that out. Let me know if it's what you meant.


djdafreund - those plugins sound really good. I can see why they're so popular - it's a really cool way to integrate scripts like that.

Looks great!!!

Yes my friend! That's exactly what I meant! And even the bug is gone. Great work you did (as usual)!

*thumbs up*

Uli666

Happy thanksgiving everyone. I hope everone has a good time today. Smoke up!

Off topic: but where can I download these? Could you post them somewhere or maby upload to a public torrent site?

yeah,i can do that when i get home.ill post a separate thread, and post a link to you in a pm.

I'm having some issues with some blades appearing out of the screen..

When I'm playing a video, when I press 'Y' to resize, the detailed information that is supposed to appear on the top is far too out on the top. Also when I press the black circular button to see the movie information while it a video is playing, the information is out of the screen at the bottom as well.

Does anyone know how abouts I can edit and fix this? I've tried to calibrate the screen and managed to get the top left and bottom right aligned with the corners of the screen, but it doesn't seem this has helped.

Many thanks.. This skin is looking excellent.

Hi there

A few things to check first...

What screen size type tv are you using? 4:3, 16:9 HDTV etc...

In appearance settings, what resolution have you got XBMC set to use?

And in video settings, what resolution screen have you got the player set to play videos in?

Make sure they all match up right.

hello,
i' new here and i like your skin...but where can i download it?
the links on the previous pages are not more valid.

thank you

Is this april fools day again? Are you REEEEEEALLY serious? OK, just look at the BIG words "Back-Row Skin - Download Link " in sharpe's signature about 1 inch on your screen above your own post. I'm sure you simply missed it, hoping your eyes aren't really THAT bad.

Any kind of new updates coming?

I noticed there is no progress slider when moving through a movie, making it hard to tell where your position is when moving it. Could you make a little slide bar to show the new location when moving the stick please? Currently you don't see anything but the time, when you move the stick to the right, or left.

IE-
[========--||-----------]
Slider Bar ---^
When moving

To be fair the topic title is 'Front-Row'.

I know that, because it started out named that. But still, it's been the same link since day one, that make no difference. You would still think someone would as least TRY clicking on the big link JUST TO SEE anyway, even if it was just a guess. Make SOME effort at least? All the picture's in the signature are pretty clear it's the right skin, despite the old forum title.
Maybe it SHOULD be changed though in case. (This slight grumpyness is in honor of the great 'Spiff' )

He could have signatures turned off.

That could be true, but since he said he was new and also mentioned the other links weren't working (Which was on 2, post#84 on page 6, and post#126 on page 9.), nothing since then but the only link, which has been in his signature. And also mentioned by Sharpe "The download link is in my signature" since then. I just re-read them all to be sure.
No biggie, just pointing out that someone mentions they love the look of the skin, and totally missed the big words saying "DOWNLOAD LINK" right above, which illustrates clearly what is it, unless he did really have signature's turned off, which would be surprising for someone new, since by default is turned on. Ok, i think i'm just bored here. Time to get out of the house and eat something. Sorry. LOL.