TV Listings Update

[Hairy]

Standard mode is now the images, which are colorized by the recording status and genre colors. Explanation by the plugin author alibert is in this post.

Do we have any access to how they are colourized, alpha levels and such. If we do, then maybe we could marry both up. Design the graphics like masks to sit over the solid colours?

[roy]

I've attached my first go at it (I'm stressing first go here people ). Check it out and see what you think. I think we can get the left/right arrows more polished/slick, but for now I just roughly copied the idea thats there.

I have to say that from my very primitive initial tinkering I really like the way alibert has implemented this, I think with a little tinkering this could look very slick. And it's infinitely more professional than the bodge I used for the default TV Guide formatting with Reflect

alibert may have won a convert

Me likes! I too am liking it more and more. I think legacy mode may be...well...a legacy. Your tinkering is what we need.

Note that I've reduced the width of the arrow CompositeImages in my skin (from 2.4 to .8) so as not to lose so much space for text.

[roy]

Do we have any access to how they are colourized, alpha levels and such. If we do, then maybe we could marry both up. Design the graphics like masks to sit over the solid colours?

Beyond me, you would have to ask alibert. :confused:

[roy]

I've attached my first go at it (I'm stressing first go here people ). Check it out and see what you think. I think we can get the left/right arrows more polished/slick, but for now I just roughly copied the idea thats there.

Have you done anything further with these images? My humble request would be for the glassy highlight to be larger than just a few pixels, more like the upper half of the image, and the arrows be lighter. The overlayed colors are mostly visible on the highlights, and the border, so a larger lighter area would be good, IMHO.

[Hairy]

Have you done anything further with these images? My humble request would be for the glassy highlight to be larger than just a few pixels, more like the upper half of the image, and the arrows be lighter. The overlayed colors are mostly visible on the highlights, and the border, so a larger lighter area would be good, IMHO.

Yep I've spent some time messing around with it, trying out different things. But when I finally found a set that I preferred and compared them to what I knocked up first, a few days ago, they're virtually identical (typical ).

The thing (I find) is that it's difficult to create a sense of depth on a black background (and the main listings really should be black for compatibility with the various themes in CS3), you need light and dark. But take for example the glassy hi-light, it's effectively just a block of white, you then have to be careful because the listing text is white. Also the overlay colours are more visible in the borders but you can't make the border too big because the guide then looks weird (although the hi-lighted overlay colours do look better).

I think our best bet is to ask alibert if he'd consider adding a "programme record" set of graphics and at least then the recordings would stand out more for those who prefer it.

Attached is what I settled on and also my attempt at formatting the skin.xml, (I still can't get the "@statusHighlighting" formatting to play ball - it looks okay but I must be missing something.) I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look and let me know what you think.

Cheers

[roy]

Yep I've spent some time messing around with it, trying out different things. But when I finally found a set that I preferred and compared them to what I knocked up first, a few days ago, they're virtually identical (typical ).

I like them, alot.

The thing (I find) is that it's difficult to create a sense of depth on a black background (and the main listings really should be black for compatibility with the various themes in CS3), you need light and dark. But take for example the glassy hi-light, it's effectively just a block of white, you then have to be careful because the listing text is white. Also the overlay colours are more visible in the borders but you can't make the border too big because the guide then looks weird (although the hi-lighted overlay colours do look better).

Completely agree with all of that.

I think our best bet is to ask alibert if he'd consider adding a "programme record" set of graphics and at least then the recordings would stand out more for those who prefer it.

This would just mean more images to mess around with. I was hoping the overlayed colors could work better.

Attached is what I settled on and also my attempt at formatting the skin.xml, (I still can't get the "@statusHighlighting" formatting to play ball - it looks okay but I must be missing something.) I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look and let me know what you think.

Cheers

Looks fine to me, positioning is just off a little. By formatting do you mean positioning? The @statusHighlighting is the position of the Timeline NamedColors within the timeline image. It takes some tinkering to get this full length image to line up properly with the grid and the individual time texts. I'm out of touch now for the weekend, but could have a go at your 2 hour timeline next week.

Thanks

[Hairy]

This would just mean more images to mess around with. I was hoping the overlayed colors could work better.

I added a quick post about this in the TV listings support thread and alibert was kind enough to point me in the direction of how he achieves the effect of the colour overlay. I'm no programmer, so you may already know that he seems to alter the RGB value of the image itself rather than overlay a block of colour, i.e. he removes all the green and blue from the image so that anything on the white scale is then red - unfortunately we're using predominately black .

As far as the formatting goes, it's no biggie I was just trying to format it similar to the TV Guide formatting I did so they would look similar and the length of the "@statusHighlighting" didn't really line up with the pending recordings in the grid, as I said no biggie.

Enjoy your weekend.

[roy]

"@statusHighlighting" didn't really line up with the pending recordings in the grid

If you've not sorted it already, try the attached.

[Hairy]

Cheers roy,

I appreciate that, I'll take a look. If I'm honest I had applied the "Meh good enough" principal to what I'd already done :o

Thanks

[nemulate]

For some reason although Roy's theme works for me when I select the program it goes back to the menu and nothing else happens! Anyone else had this?

Thanks