Hello community,
as there shall be a "Confluence for xbian" skin that will be shipped with xbian we need your help on that one.
How can you help?
Give us ideas, features you would like to see anything skin related that comes to your mind...
What is THE feature that the skin must have?
Feel free to post suggestions, ideas, feature request and so on...
Also feel free to discuss about these things here...
With your help, we can make the perfect xbian skin...
Let the creativity flow...
mad-max
My ideas:
- Remove the RSS reader
- Remove the recently added (movies/music) in the XBMC home menu
RSS and recently added can be disabled in skin settings...
Why remove them? Should not increase performance...
Got (at least, for now) one remark.
I often find myself time-constrained but wanting to watch one more movie before hitting the sheets. Most of the times I just want to see a good movie (detabable, but imdb-rating 7.5+) within a 1.5 hour time-frame.
I can't find a quick way to make such a list.
So a listing of your movie database with 2 or more variables (rating + duration) would be a nice feature in my opinion.
That's what smartplaylists are for
So it's not really skin related
(22nd Mar, 2013 12:40 AM)mad-max Wrote: [ -> ]That's what smartplaylists are for
So it's not really skin related
Well, sorry for ruining the topic, but your comment just made my day
Tested this yesterday and it did exactly what I wanted. Thanks a lot!
I use it for my kids and what I have not found in a skin so far is a sleep timer. Just a button asking for minute before playing stops. Theiß timer feature is available in XBMC but no button for this.
Custom shutdown timer is a button in shutdown menu (pressing s on keyboard) and exactly what your looking for...
I really like the recently added stuff
(But it seems to be kinda broken, my couchpotato downloads stuff and recently added for movies doesn't really follow the order files came in).
What might be nice is a good music/movie search function, something that is _easy_ and fast to administer using a tv remote
The XBMC keyboard is way to sucky for that (slow and un-comfortable).
Other things that could be cool:
-display similar movies in library (scraped from imdb per example) next to movies
-any tv remote optimisations!
I'd like a recently-watched menu/tab on the home screen, along with the recently added thumbs staying, perhaps under a separate tab.
I often find myself stopping a show, because I know I can use the resume option rather than pausing, and then when I want to come back resume that show, I have to dig through all the menus again, which is slow on the Pi if you have around 100 TV shows like I do, or 850 odd movies.
I also find that I don't really need the thumbnail from the show in recently viewed lists. it would be better as a list, with the a thumb on the right, if necessary.
I'd also like to see the sub-menus listed vertically, not horizontally, at least as an option, since that makes more sense to me.
A wishlist item would be to have the background synch with online desktop background services so changing the background doesn't have to involve getting onto your computer and preparing something, then moving the file across or hunting for it on a network share. If there was an option to have randomly changing backgrounds that would rock!
I also feel that the XBMC word/logo on the home screen should be removed/replaced with the XBian word/logo since it's better branding and easier for those unfamiliar with the many layers of projects that make up XBian to understand. Acknowledging XBMC as a project is important but I don't think this has to be done constantly on the home screen background.
Another option I'd recommend is hiding the time when it has not been updated within the last few minutes or so. The lack of a Real-Time Clock (RTC) on the Raspi makes it impossible to keep the time when network issues appear, so in situations such as immediately after boot, the time should be hidden rather than displayed incorrectly.
I'd remove the favourites star from the home screen as well. Or at least provide an option to do that. I never use it.
An option to sort by resolution would also be handy.
Also, because the Pi is so slow when viewing a significant library and/or when using HDMI-CEC (why is CEC slower than a WiFi remnote like Yatse?), the sorting options should not take effect immediately. That can result in slow delays while we cycle through the 3 or 4 sorting options that we don't want, in order to get to the one we do. It's worse when you can't make up your mind! LOL. So this step should be a two-step process whereby the user scrolls quickly up/down through the sort options, then clicks one when they've decided what they want. This will be a lot more snappy.
(25th Mar, 2013 01:17 AM)gizag Wrote: [ -> ]I really like the recently added stuff (But it seems to be kinda broken, my couchpotato downloads stuff and recently added for movies doesn't really follow the order files came in).
That's a new feature from core...
See here how to change this behaviour:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Userdata/advancedsettings.xml#.3Cvideolibrary.3E
Tag is <dateadded>
(25th Mar, 2013 01:17 AM)gizag Wrote: [ -> ]What might be nice is a good music/movie search function, something that is _easy_ and fast to administer using a tv remote The XBMC keyboard is way to sucky for that (slow and un-comfortable).
To search for somethhing you'll always need to type in your search string...so you will have the chance to use xbmc on-screen-keyboard...
But I think there is nothing more we can do...
(25th Mar, 2013 01:17 AM)gizag Wrote: [ -> ]Other things that could be cool:
-display similar movies in library (scraped from imdb per example) next to movies
-any tv remote optimisations!
Having similar movies displayed is what tags are used for...
So this is not really skin related...
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]I'd like a recently-watched menu/tab on the home screen, along with the recently added thumbs staying, perhaps under a separate tab.
Already watched or still in progress?
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]I often find myself stopping a show, because I know I can use the resume option rather than pausing, and then when I want to come back resume that show, I have to dig through all the menus again, which is slow on the Pi if you have around 100 TV shows like I do, or 850 odd movies.
That's why there is "Shows in progress" as entry in database...
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]I also find that I don't really need the thumbnail from the show in recently viewed lists. it would be better as a list, with the a thumb on the right, if necessary.
I don't know of what part of the skin you are talking about...recently added?
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]I'd also like to see the sub-menus listed vertically, not horizontally, at least as an option, since that makes more sense to me.
Won't be changed
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]A wishlist item would be to have the background synch with online desktop background services so changing the background doesn't have to involve getting onto your computer and preparing something, then moving the file across or hunting for it on a network share. If there was an option to have randomly changing backgrounds that would rock!
There will be an option to have multiple cycling backgrounds for home menu...
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]I also feel that the XBMC word/logo on the home screen should be removed/replaced with the XBian word/logo since it's better branding and easier for those unfamiliar with the many layers of projects that make up XBian to understand. Acknowledging XBMC as a project is important but I don't think this has to be done constantly on the home screen background.
Already done
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]Another option I'd recommend is hiding the time when it has not been updated within the last few minutes or so. The lack of a Real-Time Clock (RTC) on the Raspi makes it impossible to keep the time when network issues appear, so in situations such as immediately after boot, the time should be hidden rather than displayed incorrectly.
Good catch...will look into it
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]I'd remove the favourites star from the home screen as well. Or at least provide an option to do that. I never use it.
Sounds like a good idea...
(25th Mar, 2013 03:17 PM)raspberry_pd Wrote: [ -> ]Also, because the Pi is so slow when viewing a significant library and/or when using HDMI-CEC (why is CEC slower than a WiFi remnote like Yatse?), the sorting options should not take effect immediately. That can result in slow delays while we cycle through the 3 or 4 sorting options that we don't want, in order to get to the one we do. It's worse when you can't make up your mind! LOL. So this step should be a two-step process whereby the user scrolls quickly up/down through the sort options, then clicks one when they've decided what they want. This will be a lot more snappy.
This part comes from core xbmc...so there is nothing a skinner can do about...sorry
mad-max
I do use the favourites-star a lot. So please don't remove it. An option to remove it, is okay of course.
Of course it will be an option
I think there already is a Transmission Addon for XBMC. The skin should at least support this addon (not sure if a skin needs to support this addon specifically).
I currently use Experience1080 (on a pc, hoping to make the full switch to Raspberry soon) and will miss the Windows Metro-like style mostly because it shows a lot of content in a clean way. If I lost interest in a movie or tv show, this helps to get me interested again. Also being able to simply watch an episode from the start screen, without going to the tv show itself is great. This skin uses recentlyadded in a very good way. But this is way too heavy for Pi. So my suggestion would be: find a way to do a good integration of RecentlyAdded or just leave it disabled by default, save the resources.
Zilexa: MyEpi is the thing you are looking for I think (although in very early development). It's made by xraxor who is.....already working on the skin for us. The team plans to make that skin the 'second option' for those who want to try a very light skin.
http://forum.xbian.org/thread-434.html