[Helly1206]

Thank you for your prompt and precise support

I really do not know how that became enabled...?! I did a complete wipe and refresh of my Amazon Fire TV and then installed RC 2, latest at the time, of 15.2 Kodi. I never enable mouse or touch screen support as it is not applicable to my set-up and so I would not recognise what it meant.
It was enabled but like I mentioned I haven't got a clue how I did that, my wife does not use Kodi.

Thanks again for the mod to the skin it is appreciated.

If you could consider one thing and that is when I press for information or pause a running show or film it does not give me on the right of the timeline bar a time to finish, like you can see (for example) if you use the transparency skin. I am not sure tha tit would be something that you would want but I did find it useful.

For example this skin....

transparency...

(sorry for blurry photo)

Hi Vimes,

In the next release the clock is moved when mouse support is enabled (as stock confluence does), so the close button will not be in front of the clock again.

I decided not to add finish time in OSD settings as I couldn't find space for it. However it is already displayed in the info screen (press i) or when paused. Only during OSD with buttons it is not displayed. Hope you don't care.

Helly.

[Helly1206]

Thanks for this great skin.

Nitpicky:
When watching a video (with video enabled in background), navigating there - using "Videos/Files," -
I cannot back-out to the Home-screen using the double right-click on mouse, when video is playing, but have to press ESC key on keyboard.

Hi Nitpicky,

This probably has to do with your keymaps settings. I tested it but at my system I can just press back on the remote or backspace on the keyboard.

You may send me your keymaps files if you want me to have a look.

Helly.

[Vimes]

Thank you for your prompt and precise support

I really do not know how that became enabled...?! I did a complete wipe and refresh of my Amazon Fire TV and then installed RC 2, latest at the time, of 15.2 Kodi. I never enable mouse or touch screen support as it is not applicable to my set-up and so I would not recognise what it meant.
It was enabled but like I mentioned I haven't got a clue how I did that, my wife does not use Kodi.

Thanks again for the mod to the skin it is appreciated.

If you could consider one thing and that is when I press for information or pause a running show or film it does not give me on the right of the timeline bar a time to finish, like you can see (for example) if you use the transparency skin. I am not sure tha tit would be something that you would want but I did find it useful.

For example this skin....

transparency...

(sorry for blurry photo)

Hi Vimes,

In the next release the clock is moved when mouse support is enabled (as stock confluence does), so the close button will not be in front of the clock again.

I decided not to add finish time in OSD settings as I couldn't find space for it. However it is already displayed in the info screen (press i) or when paused. Only during OSD with buttons it is not displayed. Hope you don't care.

Helly.

Hi

Good news about the mouse support and clock, for those who need mouse support.

When using your Mod for this skin I find that when I press pause I get the synopsis of the film but no end time shown.

As I use a Amazon Fire TV I do not have a "info" button to use on the AFTV remote, it is kinda limited. So I would have to get out my BT keyboard and switch it on to use for that function. As noted with the Transparency skin it shows the end time, most useful and needed by us, when it is paused.

The screenshots provided show what can be seen on both skins when paused.

[Helly1206]

Hi Helly...

Nice continues updates!
Helly's Xonfluence 3.1.4 greatly improves slideshow behavior: adds 'enter' for pictureOSD with in slideshow controls and 'm' for music controls. And for those who want more (or better) touch-control in slideshow, see this post to add touchscreen.xml.

Some of my feedback:
**With the addition of Wall-view for pictures, the slide screen on the left has gone missing which leaves the user not able to switch view type.**

The "["-bug is also present in in the music playlist dialog.

It would be great if the pictureOSD could give info like "Playlist (or playlist name): 12/43". and access to some more slideshow settings. Some other inspiration.

Slideshow's "pause" button could be extended by

Code:

Playlist (or playlist name): 12/43

Then, onscreen pause is similar between video, audio and pictures.

In order to speed up first time access to picture sources, includes can be reduced:
1> "Big list"-view has no extra value above "List". Integrating into 1 view and replace "filesize" with "Date taken".
2> "Thumb" and "Pic thumb"-views can be integrated to one. Also add some EXIF data like "Date taken", location, comment.
Adding folder statistics (duplicate code from audio and video) for both views makes sense.

Also, in the context menu in pictures, "switch media", "Go to root" and "regenerate thumbnails" could be removed. "Start slideshow" should be on top. "Start slideshow" is "Recursive slideshow" and "slideshow" integrated into 1 option. Ideally, I would move "settings" to the slide-screen on the left (and as well in music and video sections) and add album information.

Favorites and power icons (home.xml) could be moved up a little to not interfere with RSS-feed.

Lot's of dialogs sliding in from the right (like favorites.xml, CU Lyrics overlapping musicOSD, changelog in addon manager,) could be redesigned to be more central (i.e. like Aeon Nox). This would upgrade Xonfluence lookslike this.

Skin settings needs <label2> for description texts to describe the options.

For performance reasons, I don't like the Massive font. Besides, it leaves the user with some none-fitting text boxes.

I hoped you also would update the revamped work by universal.

videoOSD
Volume controls may, specially for touch users, could better be moved to the far right of OSD.
Some conditional logic to show either bookmark, chapters, none or combi seems the best solution. In most case GUI get's a lot simpler and in all cases it is better. Then there are only 3 or 4 icons on the right which is a lot more comforting for users. But this would also need 2 extra icon: star and current sheet with a star combined from Universal revamped theme.

musicOSD:
Cluttered with 3 icons for vizualisation while not giving direct access to current playlist. And also that silly CD icon. The cd icon could be conditionally shown if there's optical media.
I also think it's wrong that the recording button isn't close to player control like play, pause, rewind, back etc. IMO it's on the wrong side of musicOSD.

And the widgets on home (weather, music, tvshows) suggest that you can click right while you can't.

Hi Robotica,

Thanks for giving a lot of suggestions to make the skin even better. I implemented some of them in the next release, some not and some I cannot reproduce.

I do not add the revamped theme's. Every user who like it can do it him/herself. This because textures are rather large and a don't want to make the skin larger as required. Furthermore are some textures colored. This doesn't work with colordiffuse and I do have to change those textures and keep them up to date what is a lot of work.

You are writing about 3 cluttered icons and a silly CD icon in the musicOSD. I don't know what you mean. There is no CD icon in the music OSD. Did you change things yourself or added something? Can you send me a screenshot?

I didn't merge views as they are used at multiple places and this will mess up confluence compatibility (it makes it harder for me to do a diff with future confluence releases to keep this skin up to date). Same counts for positioning of buttons.

However I do like your remark on the dialog slidings. This I may implement in a future update.

Thanks for your input.

Helly.

[Helly1206]

New release:

3.1.5
- Changed entering sidebar for picture full wall view to up/down #159
- Show slide index on a paused slideshow #159
- Add daten taken to pictures list view #159
- Move clock on close window button if mouse enabled #162, #172
- Show slide info on picture OSD
- removed unneeded '[' on various places #171, #173
- Removed strange appearance of Clearart dailog #180
- Cleanup and keyboard/ numpad according to confluence 2.8.0 (Thanks to msduketown)
- Added option to have graphical textures on keyboards

Enjoy.

Helly.

[pepepe]

Could you change or tell me how to change the SYSTEM [info stats bar] to show the external IP address (VPN ip) instead of the Internal IP?
Sorry if this is a re-post as you may have missed the previous one..
Thanks for the latest update.

[Helly1206]

Could you change or tell me how to change the SYSTEM [info stats bar] to show the external IP address (VPN ip) instead of the Internal IP?
Sorry if this is a re-post as you may have missed the previous one..
Thanks for the latest update.

Sorry, I indeed missed your first post. I am going to check what's possible in the next release.

Helly.

[Robotica]

This skin is getting pretty awesome! Thanks for all your work. I'll just continue giving feedback and ofc I don't mind if you choose to not implement some of it.

My latest feedback:
<return>OSD</return> and <enter>OSD</enter> in keymap.xml are lost and replaced by <rotate>. This breaks pictureOSD. And
2 options I miss from CCM Helix: Media certification country, default focused menu item. And for those using Openelec, a conditionally Openelec setting would be great.

And now there is a new Confluence-clone called Zeitgeist; it's really fast (3.5 mb textures by default) and has a much better organised skin settings menu. I think a skin settings cleanup would really help this skin too; remove some unneeded settings and group them.

I also would like to suggest to look at e.g. Rapier shutdown menu. It's much more descriptive than current. A bug is that favorites dialog doesn't get a scrollbar.

[jmh2002]

And now there is a new Confluence-clone called Zeitgeist; it's really fast (3.5 mb textures by default) and has a much better organised skin settings menu. I think a skin settings cleanup would really help this skin too; remove some unneeded settings and group them.

But is Zeitgeist really fast because it doesn't do all the things that CCM and now Xonfluence can do?

Certainly I remember that Mudislander (CCM developer) always felt that more code = less speed and he was always trying to find the right balance of what to add and what to omit, to try not to slow down the skin too much.

Is this a correct general assumption?

[Robotica]

Skin speed is mostly dependent on textures. So 3.5mb textures vs. 22mb textures renders all other speed things (RSSfeed, includes, spinners, settings, etc) to minimal impact.

[jmh2002]

Ok got it, thanks So what are the (real world) disadvantages of a 3.5mb texture vs a 22mb texture? Why hasn't every skin switched to them for a huge speed increase?

Regarding the other points you raised they are valid and hopefully some of them can be tidied up at some stage

[Robotica]

Ok got it, thanks So what are the (real world) disadvantages of a 3.5mb texture vs a 22mb texture? Why hasn't every skin switched to them for a huge speed increase?

Regarding the other points you raised they are valid and hopefully some of them can be tidied up at some stage

It's not used since skins authors choose there own theming. And i.e. Zeitgeist has a complete different home.xml with a different user experience.

Disadvantage can be less GUI-candy. In the end, I hope either skin start of with minimal textures as default. Then, via theming, much more textures can be used to give this candy for those who want this. This would be best of both worlds. Should be doable with some scripting to replace home.xml when switching themes.

I like the simple Zeitgeist backgrounds since when adding Addon shortcut's and some widgets, skins are busy already; no need for more background images.

[jmh2002]

Ah ok, so I guess this is why 3.5mb is easily achieved with the plain ultra monochrome look of Zeitgeist vs Confluence/CCM/Xonfluence?

[Robotica]

yes, Zeitgeist uses only one plain and simple black background while Xonfluence uses much larger backgrounds for every section. Those needs to be loaded everytime.. On top of that, Zeitgeist has smaller icons all over the place. Hence, 95% of the speed difference for some eye candy. However, the latter is subjective since I prefer to dress up my home.xml with Addon shortcuts and widgets. This makes the GUI already really busy so extra fanart backgrounds is to much for me; I prefer all that candy once in library views.

To apply both concepts to 1 skin, maybe a script can do the work to replace home.xml (and some other files?) on theme change. Or since Kodi Jarvis "image resource addons" let you optionally install/choose from a collection of prebuilt packs of icons for various types, such as movie genres, weather icons etc.

Then you can start with an optimized stock Confluence and dress it up via theming.

[stonedaze]

Would it be possible to line up the OSD player control buttons underneath the seek bar such as they behave in CCM Helix? The left group of buttons are always lined up under the left timer and move back and forth with the seek bar, depending if "video artwork" is enabled or not, while the buttons on the right side were always in a fixed position, but they were further to the left leaving enough room for the pause icon and buffering message. Right now there's no room and the pause button moves up above the seek bar.

Thanks.