Mini-Theming

Tinwarble, you might check your PM box :wink:

Hi Tinwarble Your stuff on this post is quite brilliant and frankly I don’t know how you do so many different mini-theming. ?!?!

Anyhow, great stuff. As you can probably gather I am not too clued up on the theming side of things, however I have been very interested in trying to understand some of the principles, but as yet I’m still a little aprehensive in trying to do this myself cos I reckon it could take days and days?

That said, how easy / or quickly would it be to change the number of music folders to say 2x in your view below (from 12 to 24)?

I have looked at your other post explaining (where known) what each line of XML text specifically does, but how do you go about setting out sizes of thumbnails and then thier corresponding x and y co-ordinates to suit screen size? Is there a simple way to work this out or is it just trial and error?

That’s ony one question and i’m sure i would have more regarding pngs/ images etc, but this springs into my mind first. 

Cheers.

Hey architectonic,

FIrst, I’d like to say thanks, I’m glad that you like what I’ve done.

As far as understanding how to modify the themes, well I really don’t have the time to make a complete guide, because there is just really to much to explain.   But if you keep an eye on my Tips and XML threads, I will have some things on there  in the next few days that might help you along.

The reason that I did the Album View as 12 & didn’t do more than that is because a lot of the music guys complained about the album art being too small, so this was my resolution.  Also, something else to consider, is that by having 24 icons, your Text for each album is going to have to be so small that you won’t be able to read it.  At the most I wouldn’t go more than 18 (3 X 6), but even for that, to keep everything at a usuable size, you’ll have to move quite a few thing around.

Finding were everything needs be (by way of the x & y coordiantes) can take some time, the best thing that I can tell you is to learn to use Photoshop or GIMP (which is what I use & its free), then get out a calculator.  Then you can create renderings of what you are working on a figure out where everything belongs.  Just remember, the x & y of each icon begins at the top left corner of your icon, so say, if you take the x postion of your first icon, then add it’s width, then add a space (something like 5 pixels), then you will know were the icon to it’s right needs to go.

Hope this helps a little.

T

One thing that I forgot to tell you, in the Album view, the background titles & lightbar are automatically spaced.

You will find them mark as <!—bg—> & <!—frame—>, the x & y postions are the start postions for these & the width & height controls how wide  & high all the icons will be displayed on the screen.

This is a little tricky to work with, just make sure that however many icons you have will fit with in a 1170 x 458 space.

HEY TINWARBLE!!

thanks 4 such a detailed reply and educated response to my querry!!

I’ve decided to give the theming a bash sometime soon!

BUT may I say that your MINI THEMING POST IS THE BEST and COULD BE THE DRIVING FORCE FOR ALL THEMERS TO SHARE  KNOWLEDGE, TIPS AND TRICKS BASED ON ONES EXPERIENCES!!!

Tinwarble -

Great work!

I was wondering if you would share how you’re able to create such perfect screen captures?!   They are absolutely perfect. 

Steve_V,

Thanks!!

The reason that the screen captures are so perfect, and this is my little secret so don’t tell anyone :wink:, is because they aren’t screen captures, they’re CGI.

For anyone interested in playing with this idea here is a copy of my gallery view for v1.6 of my moviesheet theme

I have only tested it with my own theme however i see no reason why it shouldn’t work with other themes as well

The idea is to get a cover tickle effect in the end, i haven’t had the time to play around much with it but i want to add different sizes to the folders (ie The Center thumbnail is Bigger, and they get smaller going out) 

and perhaps position them a little lower if possible this should give the appearance of depth.

**EDIT Download link removed as things moved on since this version**

extremedigital,

That’s pretty nice.  I’ve been looking into trying to do the trickle style also, the only problem is that to make it look right you would either need to change the way it scrolls via a change in the firmware or have the ability to add multiple “disables” to xml line (which doesn’t work).

It all looks great if your at positon 3 (if you count 0 as the first postion), but then postions 0 thru 2 at the start & 4 thru 6 and the end just throw everything off balance.

But nice work.

Hi TW!

just started looking to doing a theme/ well actually editing a moviesheet, and I can’t quite work out how the X and Y co-ordinate system works within XML for the images.

What i want to do is just move some images and text around to my liking but the way I thought X and Y co-rodinates would work as follows-

X AXIS= HORIZONTAL DISTANCE

Y AXIS= VERTICAL DISTANCE

CO-ORDINATE 0,0 WOULD BE BOTTOM LEFT OF 1280X 720 SCREEN?

THEREFORE X AND Y CO-ORDINATES ARE ALL POSITIONED FROM CO-ORDINATE 0,0

however having tried this out ths doesn’t appear to be the case?

Apologies for posting on your mini themeing page but couldn’t figure out how to post a new subject.

hope to hear from you soon.

Cheers

Hi Tinwarble, you are correct when at position 3 onwards it looks good, However it is messy in position 0, 1 & 2

This is why i posted here as opposed to releasing my work in progress version 1.6

To be honest i am not 100% convinced about the idea so far BUT i am hoping someone more talented in theming can take the idea further.

I do like the ripple effect you do get and think it is worth pushing the view further…

Hey extreme,

Yeah, I’ve been giving it some thought, if the firmware allowed for infinite scrolling rather than liniear scrolling it would be a lot easier to do.  Infinite scrolling would be where when you get to the last file, the first file would begin again, rather than jump to a new page as it does now.  This actually should be possible, but whether WD would implement this would be doubtful.

Anyway, I may have a thought of a way to make this work, or at least work better so that  it would look cleaner.   I’m going to try and work on it this weekend and I’ll post my results when I get it done.

AND architechtonic,

I’ll get back to you on your question later this evening.

ok TW

Ok, this is my attempt at more of a Trickle Style gallery view.  I don’t have any pics yet, will get some up later. 

TRICKLE STYLE GALLERY VIEW.

Wow Tinwarble, i just tried your xml in my Theme,

The placement of the icons is perfect for the Trickle style view…

In fact you also set me a conundrum, the side effect of using your xml is that by having the metadata showing again…

I had forgotten that since i now generate the metadata xml with Thumbgen at the same time i create my moviesheets, i really should be making use of the metadata as well…

I Now think that either i should redo my theme to be compatible with both moviesheet and metadata OR have 2 different versions of my theme…

The biggest issue for me and metadata is that i have all my movies in individual folders, and you get the N/A on the top screen…but i recognise that some people arrange their movies all in the same folder and the metadata works very well in this method

Yeah, on my regualar LIVE I have my movies separated the same way, each in it’s own folder.  But on the HUB I didn’t really see the need in it, so mine are just seperated by Genre folders.

Also, I’ve been working on the Trickle view some more and I have a way now to display reflections for the coverart.  It takes a little work, because you have to redo all of coverart with a TG template that I had to make.  But I think the end result looks pretty good.  I’ll try to get this posted some time this weekend after I clean some things up, if you’re interested that is.

certainly TW- look forward to seeing it

architectonic,

I know that extremed has already told you about the coordinates, but I have also posted about it on my tips page, if you still need some questions answered.

T

Ok, I’ve come along way with get the Glass Top table look for the Trickle View.  This is just a beta version and I still have some things to do to it to make it look better, but I’m releasing this version so that I can get some feed back on what everyone thinks about it so far.  So, here’s the download:

Trickle View with Reflection.

(I had this as "with Perspective, but should have said “with Reflection”)

This is going to make your folders and Coverart look out of sorts, but there is a “Test” folder in the zip.  Just copy the Test folder to your internal drive, then you can see how things will look.

Make sure you back up your “rv_gallery_browse_page.xml”, and once you get done playing with this you can just copy your old xml back.

Thanks T, will check your info out too!