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[MrHaugen]

I know this is about skinning, but I hope the thread can be left in the MC17 forum for a wider audience. I do not want to attract only skin designers or the people that are looking for Plug-ins or skins now and then. I hope to get input of everyone that have an opinion about theater view features and skinning options, so we can get some discussions going on what's needed to to make this part of MC even better.

I'm not an experienced skin designer. Far from it! I've only tried modifying a few. People are not super enthusiastic of starting such a thread, so I'll give it a shot.

So, what can we do with today's skinning engine? I've looked through the skins I could find with different elements and tried to decipher the main.xml file for more info. There are probably more things you can do in Theater View. It does not seem to be much info on the Wiki or forum in the form of guides or feature lists. Just a short list of Question and Answers on the Wiki. I need some help to figure out what's possible to do with skinning today, and what we would like to be able to do in the future.

What’s the plan?
I would like us to identify what can be done with today’s skinning engine, so we don’t get requests for what’s already possible. And perhaps someone are willing to document this in the future?
Then I would like each one of you to suggest things you would appreciate in a skinning engine. Hopefully the JRiver development team can look into adding some of them in time. I'll try to gather some of the more obtainable ones on the third replay of this thread.
After that, it’s up to the skin developers to do their magic and create wonderful skins that we all can take advantage of.


Todays Skinning Options
I’ll need user input and feedback from the developers to identify the missing bits!

Rollers

• Change position of the rollers, change background and colors of the items and the whole roller bar. Control the size/margins of the items on the rollers. This applies to both root rollers (main menu) and sub rollers.
• All text can be manipulated
• You can add images representing the selected roller items, and this can be placed where ever you want on the main screen
• All images can probably be set with alpha levels to making them partially transparent if needed
• Roller items can be positioned horizontally and vertically

Backgrounds

• Backgrounds can be added “manually” trough Themes based on the selected roller items and entered view
• And more automatic with automatic downloading and caching of Artist images, TV Show and Movie backgrounds through online sources
• Possibly also manually and static through the main xml file?

Images

• You can add static images on views. Like Xplain's examples with Icons on the top left corners, representing the selected view type

Media List and Info Panel Manipulation

• You can add backgrounds or colors to selection and media items in the Media Lists as well as in the Small Info Pane and Big info view. You can modify the text on all of those (I think)

Scroll Bars

• Scroll bars can probably be modified with color and pictures as well as modification of size

Other Features

• Zones and playing now info seems to be available (even though it does not work here. Because I have no zones configured perhaps?)
• Clock/Data and Day can be added to views and placed where you want

[MrHaugen]

What’s needed?
This is where we really need the help of some creative minds. Users of other Media Center's, Skin developers or normal uses just looking for that specific feature.
I'll update this list once in a while with some requests that get some votes and/or are easy to implement (as far as we know...)

[flac.rules]

In no particular order of importance i think the following is needed.

- Seems like the possibility to manipulate how background images is presented is low (speed of transition and transparancy)
- More flexibility in how to select items, that is not having the white box around the choice, but instead for instance changing the font color of the selected choice.

[MrHaugen]

Here's a couple of ideas:
- Ability to get info of playing now items. Both the currently playing item and the next one up as well. Perhaps also a list of playing now with x number of items? This could be used on the main menu and later on for other views.
- Ability to get the latest x number of imported media, separated by Media Sub Type. Presentation must be both image and text if needed. That way, we could have a box with latest imported movies, latest added TV Show episodes as well as Music albums.

[StuckMojo]

And perhaps the possibility to store online backrounds in a specific folder.

My HTPC is not always connected to the internet.

No Internet Connection->Local stored Background Images from the last Session,and so on,.....
Internet Connection->Background Images from the Internet +save in a local folder option.

[JimH]

MrHaugen,
I'm going to ask you to stay out of this.  You've had a lot to say about this subject in the past, and not much has been useful.  I'm sorry, but it won't help.

We don't need a long list of features you want added.

If you want to help, why not document how the main.xml works.  Others might help.

Locking this now.

Jim