[axbmcuser]

@BoroSK @kerenmac23 
Ok. I now added both buttons for CoreELEC. (They can both be hidden separately via Skin Settings). Will be included in the next version.

[axbmcuser]

New skin update(s) online for all Kodi generations.

Changelog:

Code:

(2023-03-24)

- Improve sort order for "Recently added" movies/albums widgets on home screen by removing the additional sort parameters (dateadded desc)
The sorting is now identical to what you see when entering the "Recently added movies/albums" dialog windows itself. This is how it should be and would be expected by the user.
(The "Recently added episodes" widget already had the correct code)

[DialogButtonMenu]
- Changed localization string from hard coded "Restart Kodi" to translated $LOCALIZE "Kodi Restart"
- Changed CoreELEC specific reboot buttons. CoreELEC has now two Reboot buttons: The regular "Reboot" and "Reboot eMMC/NAND" which can be enabled/disabled separately via Skin Settings

– Added sidebar buttons "Wall Density ++" buttons to MyPics, MyPrograms, MyMusicNav (MyVideos already had this button)

- Fix for situations for items without fanart: "Fanart" (508) view which did show old fanart because of a Kodi background-loader bug. (Workaround was already implemented before, but transparent.png fallback had wrong path missing "colors/" folder prefix)

- Remove now unused workaround code for removed "AllowMyVideosSelectActionByUser" option [Startup]

- [VideoOSD] When Playing more than a single video (episodes, other multiple videos via "Play from here" or similar), the "Skip To Next" button is now shown in Video OSD

- Further reworked and expanded "Fanart" View: This View is now available for (Music) "Albums". In exchange for this, the old deprecated Music Fanart View has been removed. Also: Minor improvements regarding darkening of items when control 508 has no focus.

[Includes] Hide letter indicator while scrolling for Current Playlist window

[VideoFullScreen] [VideoOSD] [MusicVisualisation]
- Localized top left "Chapter" text is replaced by a new chapter icon for more simplicity. The same new icon is now also used for the VideoOSD "chapter/bookmarks" button which used the "favorites" icon from home screen before (which was not ideal to be used) [Textures] Changed OSDBookmarksFO.png OSDBookmarksNF.png
- Chapter indicator is now only shown when VideoOSD is opened
- Added a playlist icon and position indicator to the top left area which is shown when VideoOSD is opened. [Textures] Added "playlist_icon_large.png"
- Removed top left LiveTV "Channel group" label+value for more simplicity. It wasn't a benefitial information for the user since it's only important to be shown when opening the [DialogPVRChannelsOSD] dialog where it acts like a "group-filter" indicator.

Kodi (19/)20+ only

[Includes] Changed scrolltime for the at the time of writing optional [MyFavourites] dialog to the "StandardScrollTime"-include [MyFavoritesLayout]

[axbmcuser]

...and some minor corrections regarding the updates from past friday:

Code:

(2023-03-26)

"Fanart" View (508):
- Use text "0 Seasons" instead of "0 Season" if empty tv show is shown

Kodi 18+ only:

"Fanart" View (508):
- Fix missing Plot for completely unwatched tv shows (bypass System.GetBool(videolibrary.showunwatchedplots) on Kodi 18+)

[BoroSK]

@axbmcuser 


Hi, great work as always, thank you very much!

I also have a small, modest request
I do have a big TV, and when I sometimes open the "story/plot" window to full screen, I get small letters. Could the font size be increased in this specific window?

...elsewhere, in other windows  on your skin I have no problem with the readability and size of the text


thank you in advance.

[axbmcuser]

@BoroSK 
What do you mean by "small letters"? Screenshots of the video info dialog and also the fullscreen text viewer would be good.

The font size should be the same for the shortened plot as well as the full screen text viewer at the moment.

[BoroSK]

hi, sorry for my english

I would like a larger font in this window

thank you for your patience.

https://ibb.co/mtyRhKG

[axbmcuser]

@BoroSK 

No worries. ^^

Thanks. I'll have a look and make some tests to see if i find it potentially too small also.

[DiMag]

@axbmcuser , would you please consider reworking your skin to 1080p? It is odd that you include UHD (4K) artwork, yet the skin's resolution remains anno 2023 stuck to 720p. Practically everyone enjoys Kodi on 1080p by now, many on 4K. It seems reasonable to ask to upscale to 1080p to increase screen estate.

[axbmcuser]

@DiMag

Hi. I considered the (big) change and commented on this in the past.

As correctly stated by other skinners, there are not really any much relevant downsides of still using the old xml-files with 720p original confluence based values.
Example: On a 1080p display, Kodi just multiplies all xml values with *1.5 _before_ rendering and if you write the code as precise as possible, there is no visual difference for the textures with this in comparaison to 1080-xml-code.
The UI can already be pixel perfect on 1080/2160 displays texture-wise even with the 720-coded-xml. Therefore already having 4K textures is not really that odd but works very well.

Resolution-rewriting the xml code will get you two things: 1) more grid-precise positioning of controls and 2) more precise handling of border-textures. That's about it.

There always were legit reasons to keep using the "720"-based xml files (which came this way on Original Confluence):

- Massive time amount for the xml-resolution-rewrite/conversion (especially because i release the skin for up to 5 Kodi generations)
- Also, conversion is not automatic: Even when using the old Kodi Skinning Tool, you still have to spent countless hours of correcting, testing and debugging stuff when doing such a big code change.
- Easy code merging updates between Original Confluence and this skin itself upstream/downstream

- Due to the messed up UI/texture scaling Kodi has on all official versions, Kodi UI will always have visually broken texture scaling resolution regardless of the "xml-resolution":
See https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=348790 for more information on this.


That being said, as coincidence strikes:

- A few weeks ago, i've updated the Kodi Skinning tool to help (a bit) with the previously announced 1080/2160-xml-code conversion
- The last skin updates contained the scrollbar- & progressbar-rework which was also done in preparation for the xml-file-resolution-rewrite/conversion
and finally:

- ! My main skin version (Kodi v17) has been converted to 1080-xml-files some days ago. I spent many hours validating/correcting/testing stuff so it's at a good point.

If things go as planned, after much more work the xml-file-resolution rewrite will end up in all releases of this skin in the future.

Stay tuned. Cheers

[DiMag]

Thanks, I was (obviously) unaware of all this small print.

And you are certainly right: After basic UI usability is achieved, time spent on functional improvements renders far more value than time spent on aesthetic improvements.

[DiMag]

@axbmcuser 
I have to ask you another question: What is the upside of staying, anno 2023, with Kodi v17?
I am not asking out of pure curiosity, or because I consider this anachronism weird and in need of an explanation. The fact of the matter is I have been experiencing several ---not to say constant--- instabilities with Kodi v19, and true disasters with Kodi v20.0/20.1 But because the move to 19+ is intertwined with the upgrade form python v2.x to python v3.x I am reluctant to go back. What say you?

[axbmcuser]

@DiMag I'll reply at a later time. A bit busy this weekend. :-)


Meanwhile, today's medium size updates before the ongoing xml-resolution-rework:

Changelog:

Code:

(2023-04-01)

[Includes] Hotfix for missing season art posters due to a minor code merging issue. Mostly affects views "Seasons", "List", "Media Info 2" and "Media Info 3"

Kodi 18+ only:

[DialogPVRChannelGuide] [Includes_DialogSelect] Add scrolltime standard includes which were missing in comparison to Kodi 17 skin version

(2023-04-01)

[_variables] Hotfix for missing season art posters due to a minor code merging issue. Mostly affects views "Seasons", "List", "Media Info 2" and "Media Info 3"

(2023-04-01)

[Defaults] [Textures]
- Reworked textures for spincontrol and spincontrolex (Rounded borders, higher quality and more precise dimensions)
(spincontrol-down.png spincontrol-down-focus.png spincontrol-up.png spincontrol-up-focus.png)

[MyPVRGuide]
- Code clean-up: Removed unused ids 11, 12 and 13 in views-tag and also removed the non existant includes
[ViewsPVRGuide]
Changed texture item order: Moved focus border texture item (focus_border_2px.png) down by one item for more precise pixel perfect rendering

Legacy Views "Media Info 2" and "Media Info 3":
- Changed $INFO[ListItem.Icon] to $VAR[PosterThumb]. This corrects missing poster for the "* All seasons" item (Now identical to List View (50) poster)
- Visually improved labels which showed watched and unwatched episode count
[Includes]
- Added additional tv show / seasons poster value condition for rare intances when using legacy Views "List", "Media Info 2" and "Media Info 3". This corrects missing poster for the "* All seasons" item on these views.
[ViewsVideoLibrary]

- Removed unused parameters "CloseButtonLeft" and "CloseButtonNav" for DialogBackgroundCommons-include in multiple files. (Unused since mouse buttons removal some updates ago)

[DialogKeyboard] [_includes]
Usability improvements for Keyboard Dialog:
- Removed "onup" actions within top rows: Auto-completion and most top keyboard letter row. Before, pressing up made the focus jump to another element further down which just felt wrong in regards to intuitive usablity.
- Removed "ondown" actions within bottom row: "Done", "Cancel", "Space", "Move Cursor Left", "Move Cursor Right" and "Backspace". Before, pressing down made the focus jump to another element  further up which just felt wrong in regards to intuitive usablity.

[MyPVRSearch]
- Corrected x-position of ListItem Icon. Channel icon was displayed a bit too far left so it collided with the focus border texture.

Kodi 18+ only:

[DialogVideoInfo]
- Changed target of Movie "Sets" button, so that the button leads directly into the Movie Set as it has been before with Kodi 17.
- Code was also changed on the Kodi 17 skin vesion for codebase consistency, but has no difference in functionality on this particular version.

[DialogSelect] [DialogPVRChannelGuide]
- Fix for missing black dialog background: Replaced two rare instances of code referencing 100x100_black.png with colors/black.png which were missed during the recent texture structure changes of one of the previous updates.

[DialogPVRGuideSearch]
- Fix "Reset" button label localization within PVR Guide Search dialog. On Kodi 18+, this button wrongly showed "Skin Settings" as label instead of "Reset". Changed $LOCALIZE[10035] to 13007 to correct this.
(At the time of writing, this issue also exists on Original Confluence for Kodi 18+)

[kerenmac23]

Hi @axbmcuser  First of all, thanks a lot for the updates and changelogs!

With CE, to make the feature “Reboot to eMMC/NAND” work it is necessary to add “<onclick>Reset()</onclick>” under “<onclick>System.ExecWait("/usr/sbin/rebootfromnand")</onclick>” in the “DialogButtonMenu.xml” file.

Regards.

[axbmcuser]

@kerenmac23 
Thanks for the info. I removed it because i thought it wasn't needed in this exact case. I'll change it for the next version.

[axbmcuser]

@kerenmac23 
Should be fixed now on all skin versions. Feel free to confirm when updated.

Code:

(2023-04-01)

[Textures] and corresponding xml files:
- Renamed and moved "_added_img/black-back2-noborder.png" to "black-back2.png"
- Removed xml border parameters for "black-back.png" because there is no border in this texture
- Removed unused texture "HomeSubEnd.png"
- Renamed and moved "_added_img/posterwall_100x100_clear.png" to "colors/transparent_1.png"
- Resized all "colors/*" textures from 100x100 to 50x50
- Resized "black-back.png" and "black-back2.png" textures from 64x64 to 50x50

- Reworked and added special texture variants of the home screen playback control buttons "Play", "Pause" and "Stop". Before, especially the "Stop" button showed some unpleasent blurriness on focus.
(OSDPauseFO-full.png OSDPauseNF-full.png OSDPlayFO-full.png OSDPlayNF-full.png OSDStopFO-full.png OSDStopNF-full.png) [Home]

- Fixed one of the two CoreELEC specific reboot buttons: Added missing Reset()-onclick for "Reboot eMMC/NAND" button [DialogButtonMenu]