Could you explain?
Everything that follows is aimed mainly at Theater View while watching movies, Obsidian skin. For Series, all other types of contents, and xml structure I have other comments.
- every section - [Audio], [Images], [Video], [Television], etc - should have its own individual settings (from background to all the other things on every page; keep everything together to actually look like a skin is the designer job)
- fonts should be custom choices, for every element that a font pertains to (so different fonts can be set for rollers, for titles, for displaying metadata)
- top rollers should have settings regarding position and height and - maybe - a zone that defines the spaces that they...well, roll in, in order to keep the corners free, so maybe we can put there other details (clock?)
- navigating thumbnails (where do I start?):
- the number of rows and columns should be a custom setting (with the current behavior as the automatic choice if no custom specified)
- consistency - there are some settings that are not really well documented, which provide a nice effect, but are not really known (I guess); and not working right. Select a movie (normal thumbnail view). You have the thumbnail, the title text, the rectangle selection and a slight difference in transparency that highlights the selection. You can also have a special "background" under the thumbnail and text, for the selected element. But when you move, that thing jumps while the selection rectangle moves smoothly across. It should fade.
- per the second suggestion above, we should be able to choose the font used for titles.
- very dear to me - transparent thumbnails, that is PNG thumbnails. You already use PNG for certain elements of a skin. It has to be largely allowed if we are to go anywhere with a nice skin. I know some implications of this request but not all.
- distance between thumbnails (coupled with the idea of customizing the no. of rows and columns) should be a custom setting
- certain other kinds of distances should be more detailed, not just bundled together as skin overscan and zoom (is there the space between the scroller bar at the right and the right margin same as the selection rectangle on my left most thumbnail and the left margin? Thank kinda thing, don't judge my example I know it's extremely picky)
Regarding the... whatever-it-is-called-page that appears when you select a movie. Small thumb at the left corner, big cover on the right, the rest is empty. Unless there is a secret purpose for this, it should go. It makes more sense to me that when one selects a movie the next screen shows all the data about that movie (just arranged differently than now), with the active selection on the "play" button. No 2/3 of the screen empty, no repeated clicks to display details. Now it's [select movie] - [click to display details] - [click to start play]. Too many steps, not much info presented.
Regarding the details (metadata) displayed for a movie. Displaying those fields should allow for:
- custom field choices
- in custom positions (if I have to scroll the keywords to get to description, no good, I'll ditch keywords entirely. Just an example).
- and they should have settings in order to determine the fonts, the background... and a couple of other things that it'll come to me if I draw a mock-up for this
- since for this screen the second roller from atop has been put in the right middle part of the screen, I can't help but ask to be able to place it anywhere, everywhere.
If the movie plays and I stop it, I returned to a screen that's not the one above (at least the perceived view) and it's not "Playing now". For the cover of the movie I have a screenshot of the last played frame. Instead of three different screens (the one described above, the let's say "Pause" screen, and the "Playing now"), can we have only one and less headaches? If we don't then my points described above would apply to each of them.
I'm just getting warmed up. I'll write more specifics as I have time. Let me know if screenshots for anything I described are required.