new skin: black

[dottore]

i think i found a good-looking, but flat possibility to skin myVideos:



that's the way, plugins will look like. unfortunately i don't have much time, so the skin will have to wait...

i think, by changing the background-picture the skin can have different color-schemes:



if the interest on the skin is high enough i will start with the black one and try to make it work with different backgrounds.

[daphatty]

I think this skin is freakin awesome! Utilizing the black background also allows more flexibility with the font colors so that could be something you/we play with as well.

[thinking out loud]
I wonder if it is possible to have a skin with plugin settings so users can customize the skin to their liking(i.e. background image, font colors)?
[/thinking out loud]

[reboot]

[thinking out loud]
I wonder if it is possible to have a skin with plugin settings so users can customize the skin to their liking(i.e. background image, font colors)?
[/thinking out loud]

I don't want to step on anyone's toes here...but, any skin can be customized with font colour and background. You only need to learn a little XML. Changing font size can be a bit tricky though, as a larger font can cause text to run off the edges of buttons and such. Choose the wrong font color and things can disappear completely (Been there, done that!)

[dottore]

what about people who don't want to learn xml or customize a skin but just use different skins? making a really good skin takes a lot of time. to change font-colors and sizes you have to edit several skin.xml-files, for each plugin one....

what we need is some kind of centered skin-resources: a button is a button, no matter, which plugin. the background, popups, navigation-positions, different font-sizes and -colors could be saved in just one skin-file and every plugin would use those settings for the text, buttons, popups, ......and the skin-designers would just have to change one file to have a new skin. that would be very, very cool....

in the meantime i will try to maintain bluemce2 and produce this little black skin...

[reboot]

True. It would be VERY nice to just edit one XML and have it cover all the plugins and skins in each section. I guess that's why they pay us the big bucks
If every plugin and skin was standardized to have the buttons in the same place, with the same text, at the same size and colour, it may work. But that's never gonna happen.

[dottore]

why not? the myxxx-plugins could use one skin-file without any changes. other plugins just have to use other skin-files then their own....this could be made without any change to the gbpvr-core...

would be worth thinking about it! a special plugin-helper could also be helpful for the plugins. the rendering of buttons, popups and other elements could be done by a helper....

just ideas, but i think it would be cool. there will be no need for skin-designers to change their skins everytime a new plugin is released...

[HenkH]

I think there are various ways in which skin management could be done better:

1. Write a graphical skin designer which can be used to define color, font and button schemas, make screen layouts, etc. I should be able to import existing skins and write out skin files compatible with all current screens and plugins.
   
2. Define a new skin format which allows for color, fonts and button schemas. The plugin writers should not use this format directly, but instead use a set of classes which encapsulate it. This should give new opportunities such as using the layout from the default (Blue) skin, but the color/font schema from the selected skin.
   
3. Skin developers should seperate appearance (font/color/buttons) and layout. This could be implemented by putting the layout in .XML files (just like the current skins) and using XSLT (XML transformations) for the appearance. Combining these two could generate skin files compatible with all current screens and plugins
   
4. A combination of several of above options.
   

[dottore]

right you are, but maintaining a skin is very hard, since a lot of plugins are in development and some of them are hard to skin... a gbpvr-newbie first must find the wiki, then download the skin, configure gbpvr and probably has chosen a skin which isn't working with his plugins....

like blueTask. very old skin, i haven't updated it for months now, but it is available and maybe there are a few users who try to install it.

skinning must be made easier. and what we need is a download-stage like meedio has with plugins and skins. this would make gbpvr a lot more interesting for newbies. a few weeks ago i read an article in a german magazine concerning pvr-software and gbpvr was called "old-fashioned" because the writer of the article used an "old-fashioned"-looking skin....

those are ideas for the future, when it is possible to make skinning and plugin-programming easier, then: why not?

[dottore]

oh, by the way: skinning is not "just for fun". skinning is for the WAF, the readability (i use a tv, so i need large fonts...others need flat skins for mvp) and the usability of gbpvr. who wants to use an "ugly" software? (which doesn't mean, that the standard-skins are ugly, but you know, some like it some don't)

[dottore]

we, thats me and i think the whole gbpvr-comunity, wish you the best, i hope you feel better and it is nothing serious...

sure its up to sub. we can make suggestions, thats all.