Too many skins, too many options, too many plugins...

[Fatman_do]

What Reboot said is that skins are not up to date and are not working with the plugins.
The current way of making skins does not work.I would say that 90% on the Wiki are more or less "dead" right now. They don't even work fully with GBPVR core.
What I am saying, is:
Skip the Blue skin as soon as possible.
Dont make Blue skins anymore.
Plugin developers - do not make more than one skin.
Define a standard skin that uses images.
Define image naming and location of the images.
Just make one skin "Standard" skin....that is "general", that can be used with all skins......like the Blue can today.
What I have tried to say....there is a skin that has all this already has the features .....BlueMCE2.
Rename this to "standard"......so you and users dont think of the graphic design.
What all skin designer do is keep their images in the resources folder. This would not to be to hard to agree on ?
The issue is naming of the images and location of the images.
Don't make it more difficult than it is.

Same thing pretty much what I have been saying (today anyway). If BlueMCE2 is the model or not makes no difference (I have no problems one way or another).

Lets get the ball rolling in maybe the developers forum? We need more input than just myself, MixMan and Old Dog.

Of course Blue may never be retired, so even if developers do not support a second skin scheme, any one of us can quickly make a "Standard" version of the blue skin for that plugin and post it on that plugin's wiki page.

(Edit, maybe plugin authors would be willing to support two skin standards if the skins they use are based off of the image standard)

[MixMan]

The plugin developer has sai that they hate the skinning part.
So why do they make the Blue skin since almost all skiners use image based skins?
The plugin developers have to decide on One image based skin.
I guess someone can makeimages that emulate subs vector drawn so the image based skin "emulate" Subs Blue.
This way Reven, McBainUK, Spartan, Jeff, Jorm ....and all plugin developers just have to make one skin.
These guys need to have a discussion,,,,,to minimize the skinning that they "hate"
I have written on the Wiki....if a plugin skin dows not work...copy the plugins Blue skin to the BaseSkin. Blue is the "Standard" today.....but not has no possibility to change appearance at all....so the users have to live with that design then.

[Old Dog]

But you see, I would use list backgrounds in a "standard" as dynamic because those would be something I would rather place on top of backgrounds (no skin that I know of use these in the background image). Then locations can be moved and resized by xml code (this mimics blue as well). Look at the plugins (off the top of my head), RssReader, Calendar and MusicLibrary2 as examples that use "list backgrounds" in a dynamic way. A static image for list backgrounds there doesn't work as well. Plus, this puts image creation back onto the shoulders of developers which they would not want.

..

I agree that list backgrounds are static in some plugins and dynamic in others. When they are static, include them in the static image file. When they are dynamic, you have no choice, leave them uin their own file and consider them the same as buttons or selectors.

BTW, note that the static image file is indeed drawn on top of the "background.jpg".

[Fatman_do]

The plugin developers have to decide on One image based skin.

Maybe not, see below.

I guess someone can makeimages that emulate subs vector drawn so the image based skin "emulate" Subs Blue.

That would be the ideal. Something that the plugin author doesn't have to think about and can compare between the two. They just would swap out <DrawRoundedRect...> with <DrawImage...> and everything would work. No repostioning or anything.

Blue can be the model with just image conventions applied. No tweaking of anything else needed. Just a simple swap out and done.

How does that sound? The entire blue skin and all plugins could be swapped out in probably a few hours.

I don't think any skining scheme will make the plugin authors hate doing it any less than another.

[Old Dog]

Only you three chatting here? Old Dog, Fatman_do and MixMan...

Actually, no.

By the way Tipster, why don't you like AM? Beleive it or not when I was first creating the design for AM, you were my target skinner-user. With all the skins you were maintaining, I tried to design a system that could make that job easier.

Please reply here...http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...post125003

[Fatman_do]

Only you three chatting here? Old Dog, Fatman_do and MixMan...

You are here as well.

All are welcome. Please join in the discussion.

[Old Dog]

Maybe not, see below.


That would be the ideal. Something that the plugin author doesn't have to think about and can compare between the two. They just would swap out <DrawRoundedRect...> with <DrawImage...> and everything would work. No repostioning or anything.

Blue can be the model with just image conventions applied. No tweaking of anything else needed. Just a simple swap out and done.

How does that sound? The entire blue skin and all plugins could be swapped out in probably a few hours.

I don't think any skining scheme will make the plugin authors hate doing it any less than another.

I have already AM-skinned Blue Main Menu, TV Guide, Archive, Search Guide, Recordings, Music Library2, Video Library2, Photo Library, System, Videos, and Net Radio. Oh yes, Appearance.

[Fatman_do]

I have already AM-skinned Blue Main Menu, TV Guide, Archive, Search Guide, Recordings, Music Library2, Video Library2, Photo Library, System, Videos, and Net Radio. Oh yes, Appearance.

Ah, yes, but are you using xml for popup backgrounds and selectors?

Can you drop in any plugin and have it look close to the rest of the skin without any editing of that xml file? Would an image based standard speed up skin development and support for the dozens you don't have? If you wanted purple "popup backgrounds" would you have to edit dozens of files? Would you rather just color an image instead?

Not picking on you Old Dog, just using this as an example.

AM support (minus se.png) is by defualt, built into this idea. AM could even be extended to handle on the fly changing of these other elements as well!

[Jeff]

The plugin developer has sai that they hate the skinning part.
So why do they make the Blue skin since almost all skiners use image based skins?
The plugin developers have to decide on One image based skin.
I guess someone can makeimages that emulate subs vector drawn so the image based skin "emulate" Subs Blue.
This way Reven, McBainUK, Spartan, Jeff, Jorm ....and all plugin developers just have to make one skin.
These guys need to have a discussion,,,,,to minimize the skinning that they "hate"
I have written on the Wiki....if a plugin skin dows not work...copy the plugins Blue skin to the BaseSkin. Blue is the "Standard" today.....but not has no possibility to change appearance at all....so the users have to live with that design then.

I think the only reason the plugin developers all support the blue skin is because sub has requested that plugins do so and that blue is the 'standard' skin today. I am not sure that any of us actually use blue. I use my own customized version of bluemce2, for example, and spend all of my time on that skin. I only check blue at the very end right before I release an update and I spend very little time on it trying to make it look pretty, which is partly why it does not. I also do drawing with xml on the blue versions of the skins because that seems to be what sub has done in his. In my bluemce2 version I use images.

Jeff

[Fatman_do]

think the only reason the plugin developers all support the blue skin is because sub has requested that plugins do so and that blue is the 'standard' skin today. I am not sure that any of us actually use blue. I use my own customized version of bluemce2, for example, and spend all of my time on that skin. I only check blue at the very end right before I release an update and I spend very little time on it trying to make it look pretty, which is partly why it does not. I also do drawing with xml on the blue versions of the skins because that seems to be what sub has done in his. In my bluemce2 version I use images.

Jeff

Thanks for the comments Jeff!

I imagine developers use a custom skin of one version or another. Changing file names would be the easist change to make if it was different from a new standard.