Beirdobot, irc.freenode.net :: #mythtv-theming

Monday, August 22nd, 2011, 00:05 UTC

[00:05:56]

k-man:

thanks stuartm and mag0o

[00:06:18]

k-man:

I looked at that article before mag0o but felt a little faint after reading it

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[06:41:44]

k-man:

justinh, http://flip.dyndns.org/images/myth-screenshot . . . 1-16.767.png

[06:41:52]

k-man:

see how I put a clock in the top right?

[06:42:17]

k-man:

I want more room for the descrption, so think I'll make the dark blue box bigger and closer to the top

[06:42:36]

k-man:

do you think it would be confusing to put the clock inside the blue box?

[06:42:41]

justinh:

yes

[06:42:52]

justinh:

FWIW I'd do away with container boxes

[06:43:00]

k-man:

hmm...

[06:43:06]

k-man:

I thought about that

[06:43:27]

justinh:

of keep em, but use them to *contain* things :)

[06:43:45]

k-man:

err... it does contain something

[06:44:17]

justinh:

consider using a template for title & subtitle on the top line

[06:44:30]

justinh:

then you gain an extra line for the description for free (almost)

[06:44:42]

justinh:

there aren't many cases where a title is too long

[06:44:45]

k-man:

yes, thats a good idea

[06:44:59]

justinh:

and where there are, sod it.. why solve for 1% of cases?

[06:45:00]

k-man:

but where will my clock go

[06:45:23]

k-man:

I might put it in the bottom left or right

[06:45:33]

justinh:

hmmm

[06:45:44]

k-man:

I'm thinking of oving the save/cancel buttons to be next to each other rather than on seperate sides of the screen

[06:46:01]

justinh:

see you've not left aligned the title & description either. that's another waste of space

[06:46:23]

k-man:

one of my goals is to have the clock on most screens

[06:46:27]

k-man:

justinh, oh, I will do eventually

[06:46:30]

k-man:

just haven't got there yet

[06:47:25]

justinh:

here's a tip for ya

[06:47:27]

k-man:

I think there is still something wrong with my theme code – check out http://flip.dyndns.org/images/myth-screenshot . . . 7-07.261.png

[06:47:37]

k-man:

see how the buttons have a very big border on them?

[06:47:43]

justinh:

you want a consistent look throughout the whole theme, right?

[06:47:55]

justinh:

use the same style throughout

[06:48:28]

justinh:

find one style which works well on one screen & carry it through (by that I mean copy&paste placements & everything) to everything else that uses the same information

[06:48:39]

justinh:

so fix one screen, you've essentially fixed them all

[06:49:09]

justinh:

even if it means playing with one screen for hours experimenting :)

[06:49:37]

justinh:

I took the video details window apart last night & toyed with all kinds of layouts

[06:51:06]

k-man:

thats what I'm more or less doing

[06:51:07]

justinh:

here's where I'm at right now with it. Seems the 'Done' button needs to have an outline

[06:51:12]

justinh:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15539509/mythvideodetails1.png

[06:52:36]

justinh:

k-man: looks like your buttonlist is too long :)

[06:53:11]

k-man:

nice screen

[06:53:24]

k-man:

currently, I'm just focusing on the schedule screen

[06:53:28]

k-man:

I want to get that right

[06:53:34]

k-man:

its a very important screen

[06:53:51]

justinh:

the kerning is totally screwed up with that font

[06:54:06]

justinh:

look at the capital 'm' of the title

[06:54:20]

justinh:

and the 'i' in 'Mundial'

[06:54:24]

k-man:

on yeah

[06:54:29]

k-man:

s/on/oh

[06:54:38]

justinh:

good god.. and in the buttons.. the 'S'

[06:54:38]

k-man:

grr...

[06:54:47]

justinh:

what font is that?

[06:54:52]

k-man:

S c

[06:54:58]

k-man:

your font!

[06:55:09]

k-man:

CartoGothic

[06:55:17]

justinh:

doesn't look like ass here#

[06:55:27]

justinh:

is that when it's running on a mac?

[06:56:40]

k-man:

thats on my linux box

[06:57:19]

k-man:

I didn't notice how bad the kerning was before – now I can't help see it!

[06:58:52]

justinh:

hahahaha

[06:59:24]

justinh:

right.. this is what I've done to get around the icky problem of having bounding boxes around everything and having a 'safe' area

[06:59:28]

justinh:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15539509/schedule800x600.png

[06:59:48]

k-man:

super wide buttons?

[06:59:50]

justinh:

the details are at the bottom, but details are at the bottom in every screen where there are details of stuff

[07:00:23]

justinh:

yeah. super wide buttons

[07:00:24]

k-man:

yes, looks very nice

[07:01:04]

justinh:

see, when you've not got much space to work with you need to maximise the space available to you

[07:01:17]

k-man:

I've been tempted to make the container more like a strip as you have done also

[07:01:39]

justinh:

having a bounding box realistically means that the outside of the box has to have space around it, and the contents have to be spaced apart from the box boundaries too

[07:01:55]

justinh:

it's all a waste where you don't really have the luxury of affording it

[07:02:15]

k-man:

yes, agreed

[07:02:33]

justinh:

I didn't really like having super-wide buttons but the alternative – skinnier buttons sitting in a big fat space...

[07:03:00]

k-man:

yes, its hard to know what to do

[07:03:09]

k-man:

super wide is good in that it works for everything

[07:03:15]

justinh:

try different things, see what works for *you* :)

[07:03:31]

justinh:

it's spooky how much this is ending up looking like the Sky+ UI

[07:03:43]

justinh:

definitely not intentional

[07:05:03]

justinh:

mind, a hell of a lot of people like that UI, and it seems they spent a lot of time & money researching & developing it

[07:05:32]

justinh:

though why they ever decided to put recorded stuff in the 'planner view' I'll never figure out

[07:05:38]

k-man:

I haven't seen it

[07:05:45]

justinh:

just doesn't ring with my logic, that

[07:07:43]

justinh:

http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/wp-content/upl . . . rd-event.jpg

[07:07:50]

justinh:

hahahaha maybe not then

[07:08:43]

justinh:

and bleugh http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9IADUZCz7hc/R8MlFkQ . . . -lg1.jpg.png

[07:10:44]

justinh:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/File:Skypvr.jpg

[07:10:59]

justinh:

so er.. no... maybe just a *hint* of Sky+ in my theme now. Phew

[07:11:03]

k-man:

I wonder if there is a PVR ui mueseum

[07:12:18]

justinh:

dunno, but SageTV's UI looks like it should be in a museum

[07:12:26]

justinh:

with Sky's

[07:12:45]

justinh:

and VDR's

[07:13:03]

justinh:

infact all the other PVR UIs except maybe MediaPortal

[07:16:29]

justinh:

good god mediaportal promo video guys – give the motion graphics a rest! Show us the UI, now your AfterEffects chops

[07:17:56]

k-man:

what is mediaportal?

[07:19:09]

k-man:

oh, I see whre MythCenter's green buttons came from now :)

[07:19:27]

justinh:

MCE

[07:21:27]

k-man:

ah, I see

[07:21:48]

k-man:

I'm hopelessly ignorant about windowsy PVR software

[07:22:51]

justinh:

know thine enemy ;-)

[07:23:29]

justinh:

or thy enemy, even

[07:25:17]

** justinh suddenly remembers all this theming stuff is really GreyFoxx's fault **

[07:25:34]

k-man:

why?

[07:25:48]

justinh:

if it wasn't for him showing me a screenshot of an XBMC skin port to one bit of mythvideo.....

[07:26:41]

k-man:

oh right

[07:27:19]

justinh:

arghhH! What is this abomination? http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15539509/Screenshot-U . . . 20Window.png

[07:27:39]

justinh:

is that seriously still the default mythmusic theme screen? EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW

[07:28:32]

justinh:

I'm not even gonna go there

[07:30:11]

k-man:

http://www.icetv.com.au/

[07:30:15]

k-man:

have you seen this?

[07:30:18]

k-man:

that

[07:32:35]

justinh:

looks like they nicked a load of open source DVR code from somewhere

[07:33:03]

k-man:

no,

[07:33:07]

justinh:

crappy promo video again too.

[07:33:13]

justinh:

not enough UI views

[07:33:22]

k-man:

I think its the standard device ui, but they provide a good data feed for the guide data

[07:33:30]

k-man:

which is hard to come by in Aus.

[07:33:30]

justinh:

lovely looking web interface though

[07:33:34]

justinh:

so they pay for it

[07:33:42]

justinh:

er.. YOU pay for it

[07:33:45]

k-man:

I believe so

[07:34:10]

k-man:

I think they actually collate the data manually themselves, but you pay for the feed

[07:35:44]

k-man:

they have a live chat

[07:35:52]

k-man:

its hard to get useful info from them though

[07:36:01]

k-man:

I think I'm goign to get it for my mum

[07:36:05]

k-man:

who wants mythtv

[07:39:05]

justinh:

heh

[07:39:24]

justinh:

when my parents come I let my dad loose on myth & he always manages to crash it horribly somehow

[07:39:34]

k-man:

so apparantly the PVRs have some feature in them where they poll a remote website which has a list of shows the user wants to record

[07:39:46]

justinh:

we obviously don't do that much heavy button mashing testing during playback

[07:40:01]

justinh:

k-man: for your convenience!

[07:40:03]

k-man:

so you go to icetv and mark shows you want to record on there, then the pvr gets that list and records it

[07:40:09]

justinh:

Sky do that

[07:40:20]

k-man:

justinh, yeah – well, its convenient for my mum

[07:40:27]

k-man:

it also lets you remote schedule using an iphone app

[07:40:29]

k-man:

not a bad ide

[07:40:30]

justinh:

good for collecting data too

[07:40:31]

k-man:

a

[07:40:36]

justinh:

Sky also do that

[07:40:49]

k-man:

right

[07:41:09]

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[07:41:20]

justinh:

the problem with 'people' is that they just want to watch TV

[07:41:25]

k-man:

yeah

[07:41:43]

k-man:

channel surfing

[07:41:44]

justinh:

btw hacks to enable remote web recording have been available for the likes of the topfield PVR for a long time now

[07:41:57]

k-man:

yeah I know

[07:42:08]

justinh:

or the 'toppy' as people sickeningly call it

[07:42:19]

justinh:

I bought one. took it back within a day

[07:42:26]

justinh:

it was FRICKEN AWFUL

[07:42:27]

k-man:

my cousin has a topfield in the UK – and apparantly there are hacks where you repurpose a WRT54GL (or similar) router to control it

[07:43:07]

justinh:

there was a point where mythtv had been a bit naughty & I couldn't take anymore, so I went out & bought a standalone box

[07:43:18]

justinh:

ended up with the Topfield, which went back in hours...

[07:43:36]

justinh:

then had another one from Humax.. near top of the range. that went back even quicker

[07:44:28]

justinh:

even neglecting the fact they don't do networked video playback, music listening, picture viewing or trick playback features THEY SUCK

[07:44:41]

justinh:

they are basically, little more than a VCR

[07:45:56]

justinh:

whee mythvideo list view: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15539509/mythvideolistview.png

[07:49:56]

k-man:

anyway, gtg

[07:49:58]

k-man:

ttyl

[07:50:01]

justinh:

yup

[07:50:37]

k-man:

nice – but imho, I think its hard to read with the image background

[07:58:17]

justinh:

if you think *that* is hard to read you wannt try mythbuntu. sheesh ;-)

[07:58:27]

justinh:

I have half as much transparency

[08:08:21]

justinh:

or not.. looks like they fixed it

[08:09:13]

justinh:

still, one line to change to fix it all :-)

[08:11:01]

justinh:

changed from an alpha of 150 to 180.. big difference

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[13:13:20]

k-man:

justinh, I just tried making the bounding box a strip, much like you have done in your theme

[13:13:26]

k-man:

I think it looks very smart

[13:13:40]

k-man:

much improved over the bounding box look

[13:14:45]

justinh:

heh

[13:15:03]

justinh:

now see you're making a departure from mythcenter proper. :-D

[13:15:37]

justinh:

but FWIW I don't think any of the most popular themes in recent years have used bounding boxes like that

[13:16:14]

k-man:

justinh, yeah

[13:16:19]

k-man:

its a good move

[13:16:35]

k-man:

bad for my initial goal of making the least changes possible

[13:17:05]

k-man:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1774741/Screen%20Shot . . . .33%20PM.png

[13:19:56]

k-man:

anyway, off to bed, night

[13:27:31]

justinh:

IMHO it doesn't matter how many changes you make. it takes as long as it takes

[13:27:50]

justinh:

see, that looks *miles* better

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[13:34:09]

simonckenyon:

justinh: that second screenshot is very nice

[13:35:56]

justinh:

which one?

[15:08:27]

simonckenyon:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1774741/Screen%20Shot . . . .33%20PM.png

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[18:41:26]

justinh:

simonckenyon: ahh. k-man is doing that one not me :-) But I think that doing away with bounding containers like the old screen had is the way forward where there's little screen space already

[18:42:11]

justinh:

k-man: btw on that shot the kerning doesn't look messed up at all

[18:42:40]

justinh:

and I dunno if it's just me, but the really subtle effect the alpha of the buttons etc has on top of the background is lovely

[18:43:10]

justinh:

somehow it just looks more friendly

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[23:16:18]

k-man:

justinh, yeah, that was from my mac

[23:18:09]

k-man:

I agree, amazing how much better it looks

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