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+---- Thread: [Archive] Arctic (/showthread.php?tid=170954)
RE: Arctic - drsynister - 2014-01-14
I installed this skin a few days ago and disregarded it but i went in and tinkered yesterday and was very happy with what i saw. This is my new daily driver on my PC (replacing Amber). Its a little slow off the bat on my AppleTV 2 but that's being replaced with an i3 NUC soon enough so it'll find its way there too. Can't wait to see the new revision!
RE: Arctic - GoogleRocks! - 2014-01-14
(2014-01-14, 16:49)locomot1f Wrote: @jurialmunkey,
have you thought about putting the power button on the side with the settings button?
i have the favorites button activated, and it just looks kinda weird next to it.
I'm sure if you don't have the favorites button activated, it looks okay...
but, aesthetically, with the fav icon, it's not easy on the eye.
-------------------------------
oh! i see, favorites is in the submenu now... nevermind.
I agree with locomot1f, it is a little distracting having the widget icon's (Favourites, Power, Disc and Settings) split at both ends of the menu. It would be really nice to see them all presented together as a group - either left or right of the menu bar. Since our eyes tend to take things in from left to right, the right side is where I would place them.
IMHO, lol.
RE: Arctic - warlion - 2014-01-14
Remember that jurialmunkey is still working on the skin, as he told before is planning to change the home screen lets wait until he show us the changes he's planning
RE: Arctic - locomot1f - 2014-01-14
@warlion -- well said.
somedays i wish we could delete our posts... instead of just editing.
RE: Arctic - GoogleRocks! - 2014-01-14
Nice update for Movies-Info Strip View with the larger posters (sans labels). I really like that view!
While I'm in a visuals mid-set, would you consider adding a toggle setting into the left menu (Movies), to Show/Hide the Watched Flag? I'm not fond of the green check mark particularly and for me at least, the status doesn't serve much of a purpose. I know that I can eliminate the flag altogether with an advancedsetting.xml attribute (<playcountminimumpercent>101</playcountminimumpercent> -Minimum percentage that a video has to be played before it is marked as watched, or conversely set to 101 to never auto-mark items as watched). This latter setting however, doesn't increment the Played Count and alternatively, manually flagging "Mark as Unwatched" wipes out the Last Played date/time stamp altogether in the files table of the database. I find this information to be useful, however it isn't displayed anywhere either. This brings me to my next suggestion, which is to add both the Played Count and Last Played date to the Information Screen below the Runtime section. That would be very cool - and useful too! This data is already available in the Movieview.frm table view.
And... Music-Album View, the sort order options do not seem to work properly. When I select Sort-Year I expect it would give me Artist-Year-Album, Sort-Artist should give me Artist-Album. The Jump-to (Shift+Letter) follows the Album index in all cases, which it should for Sort-Album, however should jump to Artist in the other two sort scenarios. Take a close look when you have a chance.
RE: Arctic - jurialmunkey - 2014-01-15
(2014-01-14, 16:52)drsynister Wrote: I installed this skin a few days ago and disregarded it but i went in and tinkered yesterday and was very happy with what i saw. This is my new daily driver on my PC (replacing Amber). Its a little slow off the bat on my AppleTV 2 but that's being replaced with an i3 NUC soon enough so it'll find its way there too. Can't wait to see the new revision!Thanks
Glad you like it! Whilst it is perhaps the lightest skin in terms of colour, that doesn't necessarily translate to lightness in terms of cpu!
(2014-01-14, 21:16)GoogleRocks! Wrote:(2014-01-14, 16:49)locomot1f Wrote: have you thought about putting the power button on the side with the settings button?It would be really nice to see them all presented together as a group - either left or right of the menu bar. Since our eyes tend to take things in from left to right, the right side is where I would place them.
*snip*
oh! i see, favorites is in the submenu now... nevermind.
(2014-01-14, 21:57)warlion Wrote: Remember that jurialmunkey is still working on the skin, as he told before is planning to change the home screen lets wait until he show us the changes he's planningActually I could use a little bit of input on this. I initially had it on the right but thought it might get confused with the settings button, but after letting it sit for a day I definitely think it should go on the right. I'm thinking of making the favourites and power button switchable via an option -- i.e. you have either a power button or a favourites button but not both (because there is a favourites button already in the power menu)
Two Questions for Everyone
1. If I took GoogleRocks! suggestion and moved all the icons to the right would that cause any problems for anyone??
2. Does anyone need both a favourites button and a power button in the main menu?
(2014-01-14, 22:22)GoogleRocks! Wrote: (1) While I'm in a visuals mid-set, would you consider adding a toggle setting into the left menu (Movies), to Show/Hide the Watched Flag? I'm not fond of the green check mark particularly and for me at least, the status doesn't serve much of a purpose.1. Seems a few people want this so I will add it when I have a chance.
(2) This brings me to my next suggestion, which is to add both the Played Count and Last Played date to the Information Screen below the Runtime section.
(3) Music-Album View, the sort order options do not seem to work properly. When I select Sort-Year I expect it would give me Artist-Year-Album, Sort-Artist should give me Artist-Album. The Jump-to (Shift+Letter) follows the Album index in all cases, which it should for Sort-Album, however should jump to Artist in the other two sort scenarios.
2. There are quite a few pieces of info that I would like to add to the info screen, but the main issue is making it too cluttered. I really want to make sure I preserve the minimalistic sort of style that the skin has. I'll have a think about it
3. This sort of thing is handled by xbmc so not much I can do about it unfortunately. Thats the way I think it should work too - can't really see much point in sorting only by Year (except when only viewing a particular artist's albums but artist-year-album sorting would cover that anyway...).
RE: Arctic - warlion - 2014-01-15
(2014-01-15, 02:02)jurialmunkey Wrote: Two Questions for Everyone
1. If I took GoogleRocks! suggestion and moved all the icons to the right would that cause any problems for anyone??
2. Does anyone need both a favourites button and a power button in the main menu?
Actually I never use neither of both , but I'm kind of found to the current shutdown menu but its actually you call
But perhaps we can give you a better input if you told us what are you planning to change for the sub menu and widgets
RE: Arctic - jurialmunkey - 2014-01-15
@warlion: The four main components of the homescreen are: main-menu, submenu, shutdown-menu and widgets. The changes to the navigation would be as follows:
- Shutdown menu is activated by clicking on the shutdown/power icon in the main menu (old way was pressing down)
- Down would now be free to be used to open the submenu (old way was pressing up)
- Up would now be free to go directly to the widget (old way was pressing up twice)
RE: Arctic - warlion - 2014-01-15
This changes are only for the simple mode right?
I think the shutdown button will look much better on the right after settings
This changes will be a good improvement, a better way to access the widgets
Talking about the widgets I think will be good to had a setting to be able to keep the widgets always on, a toggle between the automatic delay and this new setting
RE: Arctic - GoogleRocks! - 2014-01-15
Actually jurialmunkey, I love the current menu behaviour. Intuitively, from the center menu bar pushing Up once opens all visual widget components (In Progress, Newly Added, Spotlight, etc.) I have the Favourites widget configured to pop-up the Weather panel "Up", Settings widget to pop-up the System Info panel also "Up". I think its' uniquely attractive and simplistic in its' presentation.
Keeping in mind that the skin is a remote-focused menu system where power options are presented/activated with a single push button on the remote, you really don't need a lot of real estate for it. The opportunity I think, is to reorganize the bottom (Down) menu. Remove the 4 Shutdown options and attach them to the Power Icon Widget. Hitting the Enter or Down keys could open a Shutdown Menu in its' own menu panel. Remove the Favourites widget from that menu as well, seems redundant anyways with the better-positioned/functional Icon Widget. That would open up the current bottom widget menu (5 open widget spots now) to include quick access to more Library related functions for both Video and Music. Essentially better exposing them outside of the Settings Widget. Skin/Appearance/System settings should stay with the Settings Widget. Easy-Peasey! My two cents worth anyway, lol.
Since we're on menu items as a topic, perhaps you could add links on the Library and Files Context Menu's to enable switching between modes. As it is, for me it's not user friendly having to back all the way out of the menu system to get to either mode from the main menu.
Lastly, for Users with Library Editor enabled, you could reduce a little side menu clutter by eliminating the "Edit Title" option since the "Edit Movie" option includes that function anyway.
Peace.
RE: Arctic - warlion - 2014-01-15
Jurialmunkey
Missing on line 94 over Custom_PanelSelectMainItems.xml
<textcolor>red</textcolor>
RE: Arctic - jurialmunkey - 2014-01-15
(2014-01-15, 06:06)GoogleRocks! Wrote: Actually jurialmunkey, I love the current menu behaviour. Intuitively, from the center menu bar pushing Up once opens all visual widget components (In Progress, Newly Added, Spotlight, etc.) I have the Favourites widget configured to pop-up the Weather panel "Up", Settings widget to pop-up the System Info panel also "Up". I think its' uniquely attractive and simplistic in its' presentation.
Keeping in mind that the skin is a remote-focused menu system where power options are presented/activated with a single push button on the remote, you really don't need a lot of real estate for it. The opportunity I think, is to reorganize the bottom (Down) menu. Remove the 4 Shutdown options and attach them to the Power Icon Widget. Hitting the Enter or Down keys could open a Shutdown Menu in its' own menu panel. Remove the Favourites widget from that menu as well, seems redundant anyways with the better-positioned/functional Icon Widget. That would open up the current bottom widget menu (5 open widget spots now) to include quick access to more Library related functions for both Video and Music. Essentially better exposing them outside of the Settings Widget. Skin/Appearance/System settings should stay with the Settings Widget. Easy-Peasey! My two cents worth anyway, lol.
Since we're on menu items as a topic, perhaps you could add links on the Library and Files Context Menu's to enable switching between modes. As it is, for me it's not user friendly having to back all the way out of the menu system to get to either mode from the main menu.
Lastly, for Users with Library Editor enabled, you could reduce a little side menu clutter by eliminating the "Edit Title" option since the "Edit Movie" option includes that function anyway.
Just a quick note for the sake of using the same terminology:
-- Main menu categories are the items in the dark bar -> e.g. Live TV, Movies, Tv Shows, Music, Settings Icon etc.
-- Submenu items are the customisable grey tiles for each category -> e.g. Albums, Artists, Files, Playlists etc. for the Music Category
-- Widgets are the things in the panel -> e.g. In-Progress, Weather, System Info, Recently Added etc.
The widgets only open on up with "submenu on click" enabled in skin settings. Without that you have to press up twice - once to get to the submenu then again from the submenu to get to the widget. By changing the submenu to open on down, the widget will open on up regardless of the "submenu on click setting" -- also the navigation becomes more consistent with other skins (see for example confluence or aeon nox where the submenu is down and widgets are up).
I wouldn't move the settings out from the settings submenu because otherwise it gets confusing. However, I have toyed around with a similar idea to what you are suggesting regarding having the down menu be a sort of "jump list" menu -- e.g. with weather, favourites, file manager, configure plus options to update and clean both music/video libraries. If it was like that then the power button on the menu would open up the side power menu instead (what you get when you press the power button on the remote) for those without such a remote.
The library/files changeover is in the menu where you change the viewtypes, not the context menu.
The context menu is one of the few places where skinners can't change the visible items -- I can only add things to it, not remove preexisting ones, so not possible to remove edit title unfortunately.
@warlion -- yeah I know about that, I just haven't pushed the fix yet as I'm still messing around with the menu navigation.
RE: Arctic - GoogleRocks! - 2014-01-15
Cool, thanks for the schooling.
I believe I selected "SubMenu on Click" on the first day I configured your skin and never thought about or back at it again. Must of liked it better that way!
Edit: Had another look at it with that option disabled. Really don't like the way the widgets bounce around, at all.
We're on the same page then pretty much in regards to the submenu/jump list thinking. My thoughts were to keep the most frequently accessed settings up front and handy. Hence the Jump List idea.
Missed the changeover in the Left Viewtypes menu, expecting to see it on the context menu I guess. However, when in File Mode the changeover option is wrong - It is "Files" and not "Library" available on the menu, so you'll need to add that to your Fix list too.
RE: Arctic - sling - 2014-01-15
1. If I took GoogleRocks! suggestion and moved all the icons to the right would that cause any problems for anyone??
2. Does anyone need both a favourites button and a power button in the main menu?
The right is fine for my. I use the Favorites button, the power button I operate with the harmony touch.
I am in favour of all opportunities and to let the user choose which he wants to use.
I find disturbing the old experience menu what sometimes appears if you click on the menu button.
RE: Arctic - Kokonutcreme - 2014-01-15
(2014-01-15, 07:08)jurialmunkey Wrote: I wouldn't move the settings out from the settings submenu because otherwise it gets confusing. However, I have toyed around with a similar idea to what you are suggesting regarding having the down menu be a sort of "jump list" menu -- e.g. with weather, favourites, file manager, configure plus options to update and clean both music/video libraries. If it was like that then the power button on the menu would open up the side power menu instead (what you get when you press the power button on the remote) for those without such a remote.
+1 about jump list idea
I've actually customised the simple home menu to include a power button which activates the side menu as my wife and kids couldn't remember to press down to access it because it's a different action to any other skin they've used.