Community skin project

[McBainUK]

My thoughts. I have been playing with Chameleon for a few hours, swapping and changing things with AM and love it. I belive that the layout does not need tearing apart, possibly tweaking (checking for overlaps etc).

I once again ask for a Merger of AM and Themes.

Question for old dog - Can AM be expanded to include BaseSkin/ThemePack end user choices.
* Can the AM plugin have a extra button to allow the user to change the layout of the MainMenu - just like you can scroll through backgrounds, you just scroll through MainMenu skin.xml files in Appearance\MainMenu. These skin files could be MixMan's ones from his theme packs (editied if required to suit Chameleon image names etc).
* One more thing from MixMans system which is good is that a user (like me) who has no idea about colour etc can just apply a Theme which changes the whole look of GBPVR. Where as with AM you can only change parts individualy, its up to you to work put what colours go etc. Can an extra button be added, "Themes", which can apply Button, background etc changes all at once in a set combiniation.
* Add the excellent Button sets and backgrounds of MixMans themes into AM. I assume its just a matter of renaming the files and dropping them into the right folder in AM.
* Can the file ListView.PNG be added to AM switching?
Once these things are done surely that is the benifits of BaseSkin merged with AM!? Thoughts?

What good is AM, Advisor, Base Skin, Chameleon, etc., to me (the user) if it doesn't support insert all your favorite plugins here? Frankly, not much use at all.

This point is valid. I propose a community effort on skinning plugins. The "group of 3" can work on GBPVR core and a few plugins. I would help by skinning my own, and then moving on to reven's. The way fatman has implememented "pluginpacks" with version numbers suit this way of working (currently doing updating the gmail skin).

Its 6am here so please excuse me if it dosn't make sense

[Fatman_do]

Had you turned off the graphics, you would have discovered that many of the dynamic graphics were still hard coded xml. I thought we might start our improvements here.

Instead, I will retire.

Sorry, I was being a smartass before I was going to bed. We live in the same timezone and I have to be at work at 6:30 am, it was getting late. I view directories with thumbnails so I could see the images for se.png and only looked at the xml for the main menu and music library. If I had looked at 'music library2' I would have seen what you mean by still using xml. I still at first glance think 'music library2' by sub is 'musiclibrary2' by Psycik.

The xml for the main menu and 'music library 2' that I did for the blue+ demo will drop right in and use images without affecting blue-am. The only difference is the list backgrounds. I did have to tweak those locations and sizes slightly to accomodate a transparent border around the list background image. The main menu I swapped out the popup background for an image as well.

I am first going to look at baseskin.xml
See what MixMan and I are doing with themes and see if there is stuff in there we need to add, or things to remove. I will give the graphics talk a break for a while and look at structures. I will search all the text styles used and see what ideas need to be addressed there.

[Fatman_do]

The way fatman has implememented "pluginpacks" with version numbers suit this way of working (currently doing updating the gmail skin).

If you are updating that skin, you can make a fix for me as well

<DrawImage filename="..\AllTitleLogos\mail_logo.png" loc="0,0" size="720,60"/>

For some reason I stuck a 5 there on many plugins. It is a copy-paste error.

[McBainUK]

I am first going to look at baseskin.xml
See what MixMan and I are doing with themes and see if there is stuff in there we need to add, or things to remove. I will give the graphics talk a break for a while and look at structures. I will search all the text styles used and see what ideas need to be addressed there.

This looks like a plan. Is it ok if I go ahead and skin mine, and then reven's, plugins? Will make the requred logo position change.

Anything else?

[Fatman_do]

This looks like a plan. Is it ok if I go ahead and skin mine, and then reven's, plugins? Will make the requred logo position change.

Anything else?

No, not that I know of. If you are going to do Reven's I started in on the betas but didn't get very far before I got side tracked with tutorials and such.

[MacsRock]

Long time user of GP-PVR and quietly lurking on these forums, I have been wanting to contribute to the skin front publically. I have dabbled a bit with some conceptual ideas, but have been reluctant to create anything useful to the public due to the complexity and different approaches to skinning. I would rather focus my efforts on new ideas as opposed to having to provide "support" for different ways of skinning.

Having said that, a community skinning effort is a great idea, but i think the overall goal should be to standardize and document a skinning method. It sounds like this is the intention.

One thing that has always bugged me is that, for the most part, changing skins on the fly is really in its infancy. From a user's and WAF perspective, this is probably the weakest part of the overall look and feel of GB-PVR. In addition, I think the distribution of skins should also be standardized as well. I mean, some provide installers, but most rely on the user to copy files manually and hope they all land in the right place. Another feature of having a combined AM and Theme plugin (which could simply be called "skin") along with a standardized skin architecture, would also allow the user to download and install additional skins from the internet all within the GB-PVR user interface.

Now I am starting to ramble. I guess the whole point of my post is that I have lots of ideas for new skins (some pretty radical), but have no idea how to implement them in such a way as to provide the best user experience and pave the way for easy updating. I want to be able to provide a skin that will just work.

Anyway, just my $.02

[McBainUK]

I think the way it has been going is that MixMan and OldDog wanted to modulise skinning. So the skin xmls (layout) and images (looks) were seperated. Then its a case of keeping the same xml files (or at most small set of them), and then swapping out the image files. The chameleon skin has about 30 images which cover the vast majority of user interface elements (list items, buttons, backgrounds etc).

The way AM has gone is to group these as "packs". Allowing you to mix and match. So if a skinner wants a certain look he can just make a pack of images which will effect a large portion of GBPVR. Do you think your ideas will work with this MacsRock?

At the moment I belive fatman and old dog are working on the xmls for all screens-abstracting them for use with common images and refining the layout. I'm going through mine and reven's plugins in order to add them to the Chamelaon skin, attempting to avoid daphatty's "What good is AM, Advisor, Base Skin, Chameleon, etc., to me (the user) if it doesn't support insert all your favorite plugins here?" issue.

[Fatman_do]

Long time user of GP-PVR and quietly lurking on these forums, I have been wanting to contribute to the skin front publically. I have dabbled a bit with some conceptual ideas, but have been reluctant to create anything useful to the public due to the complexity and different approaches to skinning. I would rather focus my efforts on new ideas as opposed to having to provide "support" for different ways of skinning.

Having said that, a community skinning effort is a great idea, but i think the overall goal should be to standardize and document a skinning method. It sounds like this is the intention.

One thing that has always bugged me is that, for the most part, changing skins on the fly is really in its infancy. From a user's and WAF perspective, this is probably the weakest part of the overall look and feel of GB-PVR. In addition, I think the distribution of skins should also be standardized as well. I mean, some provide installers, but most rely on the user to copy files manually and hope they all land in the right place. Another feature of having a combined AM and Theme plugin (which could simply be called "skin") along with a standardized skin architecture, would also allow the user to download and install additional skins from the internet all within the GB-PVR user interface.

Now I am starting to ramble. I guess the whole point of my post is that I have lots of ideas for new skins (some pretty radical), but have no idea how to implement them in such a way as to provide the best user experience and pave the way for easy updating. I want to be able to provide a skin that will just work.

Anyway, just my $.02

Thanks for the comments. Everyone, fire away with ideas, concerns, and feedback on what you think works well and what is something that doesn't.

[Old Dog]

I once again ask for a Merger of AM and Themes.

* Can the AM plugin have a extra button to allow the user to change the layout of the MainMenu - just like you can scroll through backgrounds, you just scroll through MainMenu skin.xml files in Appearance\MainMenu.

Are you describing a system where the skin would have a set of xml files for the plugins plus an xml file for each of the main menu layouts? If so, AM could probably do this.

-Old Dog

[McBainUK]

Are you describing a system where the skin would have a set of xml files for the plugins plus an xml file for each of the main menu layouts? If so, AM could probably do this.

In a word, yes.

The ability to swap and change the ListView.png and popup images would be a good adition too.