CommunitySkin and SkinPlugin wishlist

[McBainUK]

Use this thread to post your wishes and suggestions for a future version of the Community Skin. Please keep discussion to a minimum, just post a wish and we'll discuss the details later and elsewhere.

[LewE]

Use this thread to post your wishes and suggestions for a future version of the Community Skin.

It would be nice somehow to have new versions of the Skins be able to recognize changes made to the previous version by us users and incorporate them into the newer version.

I find that I tweak the skins to my preferences, e.g. in TV Listings to display 3 hours of listings, display the channel number and logo, and have scheduled recordings show as a solid red in the Listing. I also edit the OSD skin to move the Timeline and Videoshowinfo closer to the middle (vertical) of the screen so they are visible when I ZOOM my television to have a letterboxed widescreen 4:3 picture fill the whole physical television size. Another example is I tweak ther Weather2 skin to make the weather ALERTS use larger fonts and the High Temperature be a color that is easier for me to view than the standard used in the skin. These are just examples.

These and other tweaks I make to the skins mean that I am very reluctant to load any skin updates because I then have to go into the individual skins and re-enter the tweaks.

I know that keeping previous changes and rolling them into skin updates would probably require a major change to the whole design of how skins work.

You asked for our wish list.

[johnsonx42]

@LewE:

Perhaps some of your common tweaks could be incorporated as configuration options in the Skin Plugin, at least those deemed to be of interest to a reasonable portion of users (it can't become everything to everyone). As you say, actually detecting random changes in the skins and pulling them forward into updated skin files would be pretty difficult if not essentially impossible.

[nemulate]

Might be stretching it a bit but how about a horizontal menu theme? Maybe like Slick but bit more polished (sorry sub )and incorporating all metadata etc?

[McBainUK]

There are some metadata views in the SkinPlugin. Look at the icon/list options in Layout \ xx Library.

[BigMoose]

I would like better control over the font size. My recordings list the font is far too large and doesn't display enough of the recording title. I've hacked the XML to make it smaller but it now doesn't take up the full length of the box and cuts off mid title where it could fit more characters on. The help/wiki implies there should be a -1 (etc) option but I only get +1. +2 and +3 which obviously only make it even bigger!

I have also messed about with positions of the OSD timeline but would struggle to remember why. But yes, I'm guessing next version install I'll lose that.

[johnsonx42]

The help/wiki implies there should be a -1 (etc) option but I only get +1. +2 and +3 which obviously only make it even bigger!

The -1,-2 options are at the bottom of the list, it does scroll (but it's not immediately obvious that it does - perhaps that's something for the wishlist).

That said, I've also had some complaints with the TV Guide text size - the default seems much too large (it can't imagine wanting to increase it from there), but reducing it makes the LiveTV guide too small. I keep meaning to work up some changes in that area for review by the group, but I never seem to get to it.

[BigMoose]

Yeah, I think I changed the TV guide too as you couldn't read enough of the show title which made it kinda unusable. I'll have a look for the -1 etc when the wife isn't watching it, but for sure it wasn't obvious as I tried all i could think of as I love the skin but the size of the text did make it unusable before I hacked about.

[Fatman_do]

Thanks for all your input guys, we need all the help we can get. My personal life is quite snowed under right now, so bear with me.

[McBainUK]

Yes, thanks to all.

Don't feel under pressure fatmando. Remember what the skin is called!