Community Skin 3.0 Open development thread.

[McBainUK]

Working through the baseskin posted earlier I've made a preliminary list of the names of the editable TextStyles and what attributes can be changed for each:

ScreenName typeFace colour size

Default typeFace style size
(global typeface, used everywhere: eg lists, popup messages, status text drawn directly on backgrounds?)

ButtonText size
Normal colour
Selected colour
SelectedInactive colour

IconViewText size (used to specidify alternative size for icon text)

ListItemText size (used for list and detail view)

[McBainUK]

Having said that I think the in place editing of textstyles will require quite a bit of work SkinPlugin wise. It may be easier and just as good in the long run to use baseskin copying, but changed slightly so instead of each theme having a baseskin, they are stored centerally in the SkinPlugin resources folder.

A suggestion is to have a range of baseskin xmls which act like themes for fonts. So you would have ones called Black&White, Blue (with font colours like the default Blue), BlueHiVis (which has larger fonts) and so on. These baseskin files can be specified by a theme or selected by a user (via a preview images and/or description). With a simpiler baseskin incorperating fatman_dos suggestions concerning textstyles and common images I think maintance of these baseskin files would be reasonably simple.

From a user's POV its much easier to choose, for example, BigFonts or PinkAndBold fonts/baseskin definition than it is to have options to change individual textstyles themselves as this would require unwanted knowledge of the skin and where there textstyles are used. The current edtiable skin item images show where they are used via the preview, so this is not so much of a problem.

Thoughts?

[Fatman_do]

So if, through the SkinPlugin, the user changed Icon View Text to size 14 then both these lines would be changed from:

Code:

<TextStyle name="IconViewItems" color="Normal" size="12"/>
<TextStyle name="IconViewFolders" color="Header" size="12"/>

to:

Code:

<TextStyle name="IconViewItems" color="Normal" size="14"/>
<TextStyle name="IconViewFolders" color="Header" size="14"/>

Correct?

Correct, there were a few more Icon texts further down, but you got it.

[Fatman_do]

Having said that I think the in place editing of textstyles will require quite a bit of work SkinPlugin wise. It may be easier and just as good in the long run to use baseskin copying, but changed slightly so instead of each theme having a baseskin, they are stored centerally in the SkinPlugin resources folder.

A suggestion is to have a range of baseskin xmls which act like themes for fonts. So you would have ones called Black&White, Blue (with font colours like the default Blue), BlueHiVis (which has larger fonts) and so on. These baseskin files can be specified by a theme or selected by a user (via a preview images and/or description). With a simpiler baseskin incorperating fatman_dos suggestions concerning textstyles and common images I think maintance of these baseskin files would be reasonably simple.

From a user's POV its much easier to choose, for example, BigFonts or PinkAndBold fonts/baseskin definition than it is to have options to change individual textstyles themselves as this would require unwanted knowledge of the skin and where there textstyles are used. The current edtiable skin item images show where they are used via the preview, so this is not so much of a problem.

Thoughts?

Sounds fine to me really. It can always be added later if practical.

I did have a thought on minor grouping of the selections to reduce monotony.

An example is in the ListView sections, you don't pick different selectors for List_Selected, Detail_Selected, and Icon_Selected. Those are all under one folder (example MCEGreen)

Then you do the same thing with "Normal" and "SelectedInactive".

Makes it only 3 choices to go through instead of 6.

Drop bullet balls as a selectable item (mentioned before).

Main menu background will always be the same, no longer different than plugins (sub has comments in the menu skin.xml that this uses less memory, so lets mind the lower end HTPC's)

Code:

        [color=Red][B]<!-- disabled by default (uses less video card texture memory loading files directly), but can be enabled if needed [/B][/color]
        <CompositeImage name="ScreenBackground" size="100,100">
            <DrawImage filename="background.jpg" loc="0,0" size="100,100"/>
        </CompositeImage>    

        <CompositeImage name="ScreenBackgroundMask" size="100,100">
            <DrawImage filename="background mask.png" loc="0,0" size="100,100"/>
        </CompositeImage>    
                -->

Drop the logo's as selectable images. Won't be using "Built up" background images like the legacy plugin for reasons as stated above. The same with title bars. Logos and Title bars would have to be "Background Mask.png" images

[McBainUK]

I did have a thought on minor grouping of the selections to reduce monotony....Makes it only 3 choices to go through instead of 6.

Good idea, will do. It makes sense for all the list selectors to look the same regardless of view.

Drop bullet balls as a selectable item (mentioned before).
Drop the logo's as selectable images.

Done

The same with title bars. Logos and Title bars would have to be "Background Mask.png" images

So drop TitleBar the 2 types of Logos as editable skin items? Can I assume you will be making some Background Masks that can be selectable? What kind of effects/looks can you get with these?

Main menu background will always be the same, no longer different than plugins (sub has comments in the menu skin.xml that this uses less memory, so lets mind the lower end HTPC's)

This is a shame as its always nice to have a interesting mainmenu background and functional plugin backgrounds. Reading sub's comments are you sure he doesn't just mean to use <drawimage...> rather than <drawcommonimage...> image for the background?

[McBainUK]

Can you think of a quick and easy way of converting all the composite images used for previews in the SkinPlugin's skin.xml to the new percentage format? Its taken me quite a while to do 1!

[Fatman_do]

Good idea, will do. It makes sense for all the list selectors to look the same regardless of view.

Here is an example of the structure, using that method. (see end of post)

This is a shame as its always nice to have a interesting mainmenu background and functional plugin backgrounds. Reading sub's comments are you sure he doesn't just mean to use <drawimage...> rather than <drawcommonimage...> image for the background?

No, that was pulled from the baseskin.xml file itself and it is a composite image. I actually don't think you can specify a different background under the new UI for the main menu (I have to double check to make sure.)

So drop TitleBar the 2 types of Logos as editable skin items? Can I assume you will be making some Background Masks that can be selectable? What kind of effects/looks can you get with these?

Yes, they would need to be background masks. The logo in the CSkin3 is from a mask.

If there is really a need to keep them and use the composite image for the background we can test out what kind of "hit" it makes performance-wise.

[Fatman_do]

Can you think of a quick and easy way of converting all the composite images used for previews in the SkinPlugin's skin.xml to the new percentage format? Its taken me quite a while to do 1!

No I don't.

JavaWiz wrote a skin resizer that scaled an xml. Maybe that can be easily modified to convert exsisting values to a percentage.

[McBainUK]

No I don't.

Shame, but with the dropping of some editable skin items it means I won't have to do all 15 previews

Here is an example of the structure, using that method.

Just what I was thinking, have put it into the Skin plugin resources folder and will make it use it.

[Jeff]

Can you think of a quick and easy way of converting all the composite images used for previews in the SkinPlugin's skin.xml to the new percentage format? Its taken me quite a while to do 1!

I created a very quick and crude Excel spreedsheet to do this that I used to convert the skin file for the weather plug-in from the old style to the new style. You had to cut and paste a chunk of lines from the file into the sheet and it would then parse the lines and create a new set of lines expressed in percent. I am traveling and won;t be able to post it for a week or so and would probably need to clean it up to be more user friendly if you are interested.

Jeff