Appearance manager

[nemulate]

I really like what Old Dog has done with Appearance Manager. Is this likely to be integrated into the core of gbpvr and if so will it mean all skins can be customised this way? Would be nice to be able to go into detail settings like change width of coulumns in TV guide etc but realise that might be taking it a bit too far!

[KingArgyle]

I don't think the Appearance Manager will be incorporated into the Core, but with that said. There is some movement from the community to try and make various skins work with the Appearance Manager. Dottore's latest skin is supposed to be designed to work with the Appearance Manager, hopefully it won't be the only skin out side of The Collection series that works with it.

Sub has some additional features that he has been working on to help make the Apperance Manager plugin even easier to work with inside GBPVR.

[psycik]

Is there anything that need to be done from the plugin side to support the appearance manager?

[Old Dog]

Is there anything that need to be done from the plugin side to support the appearance manager?

Off hand, the only thing I can think of is -- let the skinner control the rendering of your buttons through composite images.

The appearance manager is about giving the end user flexibility. Plugin creators can do their part by giving the skin designer flexibility too.

[Old Dog]

So you have this AM and it's suppose to change buttons, backgrounds an etc. But does it work on the MVP since I use that 99% with GBPVR and PC 1% with GBPVR just for designing and editing skins.

The manager works with a PC, multiple MVPs, and a mixture of the two.

[Old Dog]

Off hand, the only thing I can think of is -- let the skinner control the rendering of your buttons through composite images.

Note that the appearance manager requires that the skin use .png image files for buttons and that these files be stored at a specific location. The skin designer needs the ability to specify these images in the button's CompositeImage element.

-David

[dottore]

i am just download the appearance manager and the collection, just to see, how i can change Olbia to fit it.

and there is the first problem: for the buttons i use a transparent png and a drawrect command. so this won't work with appearance manager....
i think it would be better to have different "baseskin"-files, this would give more flexibility.
for instance, there is this cyan-coloured bar in the selected buttons. i would like to have this bar in several colours, the user should then decide.

and this is the next problem: the same cyan-bar is used for list-views and icons ...... i have tried to define a named-colour, but it didn't work. the bar was just gray. if it were possible to define named colours in baseskin and to use them throughout the skin, this could easily be changed with appearance manager....have to try a bit!

great plugin though.

[Old Dog]

i am just download the appearance manager and the collection, just to see, how i can change Olbia to fit it.

and there is the first problem: for the buttons i use a transparent png and a drawrect command. so this won't work with appearance manager....
i think it would be better to have different "baseskin"-files, this would give more flexibility.
for instance, there is this cyan-coloured bar in the selected buttons. i would like to have this bar in several colours, the user should then decide.

and this is the next problem: the same cyan-bar is used for list-views and icons ...... i have tried to define a named-colour, but it didn't work. the bar was just gray. if it were possible to define named colours in baseskin and to use them throughout the skin, this could easily be changed with appearance manager....have to try a bit!

great plugin though.

Yes, the appearance manager was designed to work with available functionality, and does a pretty good job with that.

As for wishes, I refer you to this small list...
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=12448

-David

[Old Dog]

and there is the first problem: for the buttons i use a transparent png and a drawrect command. so this won't work with appearance manager....

I will be brazen...

If you are willing to focus on what you have accomplished rather than on how you have accomplished it, I think you could find a solution that would work with AM and would be better than what you have now, but not as good as the ideal solution.

I would be willing to participate in this experiment, with you.

-David

[dottore]

sure i could. i could include the rectangle in the png. would take about 2 minutes. but the colour-problem persists: the lists could not be exchanged easily....

have to think over it a bit. thanks for the help!