Release - Confluence ZEITGEIST (Kodi 17-22)

Code:
(2023-03-15)



Reworked, improved and expanded section "Skin Settings – Background", including:



- Added new background option/feature: "Hexagons Advanced" with many sub-variants (most of them Animated!)

- Added new background options: "Hexagons Flat /Grey", "Hexagons Flat /Blue"

- "Auto-Preview/Simulate Home Screen background result within this section" (Enabled by Default)

This gives you a simulated preview on what your Home Screen background(s) will look while choosing them.

Note: Simulation can be a bit darker compared to the real final result, but should be a good help nonetheless



Note: Animated variants have higher idle GPU usage (Be aware for low end devices)





- Added two new Skin Settings options:

Skin settings – Advanced – Views and visual options

- - "Automatically disable "Show parent folder items"   (Default: On)"

- - "Automatically set "Default select action" to "Show information"  (Default: On)"



Important: The Skin now automatically sets these two Kodi settings by default (supported by service.cinema.helper addon),

since the skin is intended to have these options configured this way for the best overall user experience.



! You absolutely can disable this behaviour by simply disabling the above described Skin Settings.



- Expanded feature "Always force Preset Views" (now also enabled by default)

Including a new option "– Always force focus on first episode item on window load   (Default: On)"



You can now configure additional view ids for TV show / episode content windows.

See Skin settings – Advanced settings – Customize View IDs for "Always force Preset Views" for more information



- Added two new default view types which are highly recommended: "Seasons" and "Episodes"

"Episodes" features a modern look similar to modern streaming services, also featuring a custom progressbar which further indicates resumable episode progress or the already-watched-state.



- Reworked existing "Modern" view (which was used for Episodes in the past)

This view now also features the new custom progressbar from the "Episodes" view and received some further optimizations.

"Modern" now uses 6 rows when being used for non-libary video content (6 rows was the only variant in the past), but only uses 5 rows when displaying libary content like Episodes



- Reworked all "progress" controls which were used within itemlayout/focusedlayout. (Most prominently DialogPVRChannelsOSD, MyPVRChannels and the new "Episodes" view and reworked "Modern" view)

This workarounds/fixes the long standing Kodi visual glitch of a short visual progressbar distortion when focusing an item under described circumstances)



- "List" and "List Wide" views are now available again for Episodes and Seasons content windows when having the option "Enable Confluence Old Views" enabled.



- Reworked [DialogKeyboard] to automatically turn off auto completion functionality if user is inputting a user name, password or API keys (script.module.autocompletion)



- Reworked "scrolltime" tween types and durations (Including home screen "Recently added" widgets, which should be the most noticeable)



- Changed some dialog/window backgrounds from almost black to full black without transparency for a cleaner look (Avoids strange ghosting of some elements shining through which could have been irritating for the user.)



- Improved legacy dialog "DialogMusicInfo" with a simple default mood background. This improves visuals of said dialog before it being completely reworked in the future.



- Improved [FileBrowser] window animations/transitions



- Changed some colordiffuse values to use variables (Including [Home] and [IncludesHomeRecentlyAdded]



[IncludesBackgroundBuilding] Replace old "MakeTransparentForVisualization" code with better variant for rare cases of using music fanart and visualization at the same time



- Wall Views: Added new option "Make Wall Views higher density"

(can be accessed through Videos Sidebar button "– Wall Density ++" or Skin Settings option "Make Wall Views higher density    (Default: Off)"

Wall Views by default are now less dense (Item count reduced by 1 column in all three Wall Views)

This may be more suitable towards casual main stream users. The previous density is still available via the previous mentioned option.



- Reworked login/logout/exit screen feature functionality.

This feature is now enabled by default and has reworked Skin Settings options which you can find here:

Skin settings – Advanced settings – Kodi Startup/Exit

Includes a new option "Startup / Exit Screen logo type"



- Minor optimizations for some Views Like "Fanart" (508) hiding default icons which should be visible for a short while while loading



- Reworked all Actors + User Icons with a more suitable modern look

(DefaultActor.png DefaultActorSolid.png DefaultArtist.png DefaultMusicArtists.png DefaultMusicRoles.png DefaultUser.png)



- Added CoreELEC settings addon button to system submenu (like Open/LibreELEC). Only shown if CoreELEC is detected.



- Reworked Shutdown Menu including related Skin Settings, added RestartApp() button for android+CoreELEC,

Exit button is now configurable via Skin Settings "power options menu" (Before: advancedsettings.xml - which was very uncomfortable/unintuitive)



- Slightly reworked layout of home screen addons (Label styles, Focus texture had strange too wide dimensions which were visually unpleasing)

- Slightly reworked visuals of home screen "Recently added" widgets, including:

Focus texture dimensions+position, labels,

"Recently added" texts are now hidden unless the corresponding widget is focused which makes for a more cleaner look



[ViewsFileMode] [ViewsVideoLibrary] Changed some views "list" controls to "panel" with no further changes to fix/workaround a weird Kodi history focus scroll bug



[Textures] Added some higher resolution textures: OverlayWatching_uhd.png OverlayWatched_large.png OverlayWatched_uhd.png which are used in some situations

[Textures] Added OSDPauseFO-full.png OSDPlayFO-full.png OSDRecordOffFO-full.png OSDRecordOnFO-full.png OSDStopFO-full.png which are used for the Home Screen rework of the "Search" and "Power" buttons



[Settings] Changed settings.png and settings_uhd.png (Kodi logo is now smaller which should be more visually suitable)



[DialogExtendedProgressBar] [DialogVolumeBar] Changed background opacity from 93% to 100% to avoid weird ghosting of background elements shining through.





[Home] [Textures] Reworked top left Home Screen buttons "Search", "Power", "Play/Pause", "Stop" and "Record" for more simplified visuals



[Textures] Reworked external live ratings icons (Rotten Tomatoes, Rotten Tomatoes Audience, Metacritic, IMDb)

[Textures] Further improved 2K variant of _home_icon_videos_pseudolib.png due to very minor scaling inaccuracies



[ViewsVideoLibrary] Fanart view: Minor code improvements; Fixed focus/unfocus Kodi bug via small code changes

[IncludesBackgroundBuilding] Hide barely visible background display of the focused items Fanart for all Wall Views.

Fanart isn't really visible due to how the Wall View items are spaced and showing background Fanart there just feels very wrong and unintuitive while focusing items and scrolling.

[DialogContextMenu] Increased visual top and bottom margin size for a better visual context menu feel

[ViewsMusicLibrary] Media Info (Artists) Views: Hide Artist Genre row if Artist_Genre property is unavailable



[VideoFullScreen] Improve sub-label visible condition for MusicVideos and added FullScreenInfoVisibleAnimations accordingly

[VideoFullScreen] [MusicVisualisation] Code clean-up, also simplfified code regarding the now default reduced Info OSD



[DialogSeekbar] Improved visible condition in regards to PlayBackJustStarted/Ended. If VideoOSD is open, always show DialogSeekbar despite the value of both properties



[DialogButtonMenu] [SkinSettings] Shutdown Menu entry "Hibernate" hidden by default (still can be enabled), added entry to explicitly enable "Custom Shutdown Timer" (Default: Disabled). Changed font style for text shown if ShutdownTimer is enabled



Improved Skin Setting feature "Fade In Kodi UI on Startup": Preventing navigation as long as Startup fade in is in progress is now handled better resulting in visual main menu focus improvements.

Added option "Logo Screen / Fade In Screen logo type" accordingly. Also affects option "Show Logo Screen while in progress of shutdown/reboot/logout"

Changed "madVR" full logo text color from green to white

Added new values for "Delay Fade In" (added 1 and 2 seconds)

[Custom_1181_StartupFadeIn] [Custom_1180_StartupFadeInCheck]

Added [Custom_1182_StartFadeInFocusStealer]





Code clean-up and textures clean-up

- Removed or moved some unnecessary or invalid xml tag attributes (border, align, aligny, ...)

- Removed multiple textures which could be realized by using other dummy textures or similar textures with same results as before

- Renamed some textures

- Moved some textures to more clearly named sub-folders

- Removed unused TVNextAiredListCommonLayout from Includes.xml (This skin does not include customized xml for third party addons by intent)

- Removed button-focus2.png (changed to almost identical button-focus.png)



Reworked HomeSubFO_2.png to replace all sub-type2-hover textures on home (type1=sub menu items):

button-darkbase.png (unused already) button-darkbase-focus.png (now unused) RecentAddedBack_hover.png (now unused)





folder-focus.png removed and replaced with focus_border_2px.png

Removed HomeSubNF.png from code+texture



Code optimizations

- Aded missing background="true" to some textures where it made sense



Kodi 18+ only



[Home] Changed condition "Player.CanRecord" to "PVR.CanRecordPlayingChannel" (Correct record button visibility. Most likely a minor merging regression)