LinuxMCE Forums
General => Users => Topic started by: toniperoni on April 14, 2010, 11:03:03 am
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Is there a way to skin the user interface ? because the original is ugly to be honest.
What are the solutions for this problem ? Are there options to change colour, etc...
sorry to be so blunt, but it needs a "makeover" !
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What a first post.....
I sincerely hope you're talking about the basic UI1 skin? UI2 is quite pretty in my humble opinion. I think that UI1 is functional, which is more important, not that it looks bad at all.
There is a way to skin it anyway, I believe there are pre-defined skins in webadmin, or you can make your own. Fearingsept has produced this fantastic LCARS skin http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=6997.0
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Search out Thom's screencasts on designer. They're on the forum somewhere, and I believe they're on the wiki too.
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Is there a way to skin the user interface ? because the original is ugly to be honest.
What are the solutions for this problem ? Are there options to change colour, etc...
sorry to be so blunt, but it needs a "makeover" !
Main Entry: tact
Pronunciation: \ˈtakt\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, sense of touch, from Latin tactus, from tangere to touch — more at tangent
Date: 1797
1 : sensitive mental or aesthetic perception <converted the novel into a play with remarkable skill and tact>
2 : a keen sense of what to do or say in order to maintain good relations with others or avoid offense
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I don't want to hurt anybody's feeling!
And I very much respect all the people that worked on this project. There hard passionate work is very much appreciated by me.
but.
With this interface you are not going to appeal to a great big audience. Which is sad because of all the hard work put in to it.
I now understand there are abilities to skin the UI. thanks for the tip. I'll look into it.
anyway
the colours don't match, for example
(http://wiki.linuxmce.org/images/e/e8/FileBrowserUI1-small.jpg)
text is more than the buttons can handle, colour don't match
(http://wiki.linuxmce.ru/images/UI1-main.jpg)
anyway, i don't want to look like i'm an xxxhole but I guess i am much more sensitive for the way the UI looks than other people. And in my point of view at this moment its not good, it's holding the product down.
The LinuxMCE is such a beautiful product , it hurts that the look of the system doesn't make a user feel that he/she is using a great program.
Most of the people using these programs are not looking beyond this...and never take account of the work and effort put into it.
They will have even less tact!!
Is there a group focusing on the UI ? I would like to join because my profession is industrial designer.
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Hi Tony,
I'm an Italian boy (I am writing because of your nickname I guess it is too), and another friend have tried to create a different version of UI1.
Of course we are not professionals but if you have a look www.linuxmce-it.com, if we can help you or work together.
Emanuele
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Is there a group focusing on the UI ? I would like to join because my profession is industrial designer.
toniperoni I agree to some degree about your suggestions ( particularially the text being more than the buttons can handle)
However your screen shots seem to all show the basic UI....have you tried the others? UI2 for example?
They are more graphically insensive interfaces but offer a much more astetically pleasing interface.
My profession is applications engineer and design and program high end products and find that the interface
is very nice and easy to use..(granted there are some flaws like not being able to choose your own default view for media and the
text on some buttons is too much) but all in all it is a great interface that is not too complex but yet allows you to acomplish
everything the software has to offer with as little button clicks as possible.
just giving my 2cents!
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Do you realised there is a very extensive wiki?
Info for skinning is here: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Developers_Guide#9.3_Skinning_and_User_Interface
Also the sticky at the top of the developers section on the forums http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=5732.0
I presume you actually have the system up and running? There are some other skins already selectable via web admin - orbiters.
Would be cool if someone such as yourself came up with a great skin and I'm sure the developers would be more than happy to include it.
IMHO yes UI1 could be a little nicer but it is very easy to navigate and to showcase LinuxMCE the UI2 looks great http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/UI
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Hi. I am one of the core developers.
Also keep in mind, that this skin is no longer presented by default, and has been replaced by Titanium, in the interim.
I want to replace Orbiter as part of a massive code rewrite, but I have not been able to dedicate time to this yet. I estimate this part alone will take the next two years of my life to employ all of my skills to both design the new UI, and to implement it. This alongside doing a massive port of the entire stack to MeeGo.
-Thom
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I tend to agree with the OP - the GUI could use some work and changing it requires a decent investment in time to learn it. Well, a re-skin isn't so bad (just changing the graphics for buttons and such), but changing the layout isn't as easy. I guess it's one of those things you sorta get used to after a while, then you see screenshots of other products and remember.. I made a go at making it look better, but quickly realized I just didn't have the time and graphic design skills to make a significant improvement so I gave up. A quick comparison between between the LinuxMCE video screen and, for example, the MythTV video screen really shows how LMCE could use improvements.
I'm sure Thom could explain the technical details why new gui design with the existing system is so cumbersome, but for now just accept it the way it is. This is the first time I've heard Thom is planning to change the orbiter, this is great news. Just for clarification for toniperoni, the gui you see is the "on screen orbiter" in LinuxMCE terms. Thom, and the other devs, have done great work in the past and I'm confident that a rewrite of the orbiter will lead to all kinds of improvements including what you see on screen.
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However, we are not going in the direction of MythTV at all.
The biggest improvement that UI2 showed, (5 Years ahead of everyone else, mind you!) was that the media is the most important aspect, where the UI is gently overlaid, and does NOT overpower what is being played.
It seems virtually every open source media center is ignoring this... to their peril.. Sorry fellas, to me, innovation is not XBMC, or MythTV, or FreeVo, or Boxee... It's the blonde at a party, skin deep, no substance.
-Thom
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I agree, and disagree. I'm not saying LinuxMCE should go the way of MythTV, but the whole UI gently overlaid is certainly not true either. I really like the way the main menu doesn't block the other stuff when media is playing, but go into the video menu, or audio, etc. and it blocks everything (or blends with the background).
(http://wiki.linuxmce.org/images/0/0e/FileBrowserUI2M-small.jpg)
If you want coverart and enough movies per screen it kinda has to.
Start a movie that you were previously watching and the entire screen is covered while asking to continue or not. There are plenty of places where LinuxMCE blocks whatever on-screen media is playing, some make perfect sense while others do not. While I agree that trying to copy MythTV or any of the other eye-candy UIs is not the way LinuxMCE should go, I do think there are a few areas where using at least the bulk of the screen makes sense. Possibly scaling the media to a PIP type box.
Just to be clear, I like the way LinuxMCE works. I still only use it for media, no HA stuff yet, and I'm still using LinuxMCe with no plans to switch. I'm also happy to hear you are working on re-writing the orbiter.
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let's make it perfectly clear. I will _NOT_ scale the media to a PIP style box. _ever_
-Thom
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So you will be removing the PIP type box from ui1, or whatever replaces it then?
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There will be no UI1.
As I said, Orbiter is being drastically rewritten to take advantage of new hardware. Especially since..such new hardware is incredibly cheap these days with the Atom and Ion based machines.
-Thom
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I think there are probably some people that would want a PIP feature (real PIP for having two video feeds on screen at once such as keeping track of two games at the same time), but I've never used PIP so it makes no difference to me. I'm looking forward to the new orbiter even though it's a couple years away, so quit answering my stupid posts! :)
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We're in agreement that the way we design/build UI's for LinuxMCE currently is far from ideal... and if you look back through archives of the Forum you will see that I have voiced that view many times. I also think that the current UI implementations suffer from the very limited tools we have at our disposal. Now Thom & I do not see 100% eye to eye on this...but we are in general agreement I think that something needs to be done to re-engineer the Orbiter and how UI's are built for it.
We are currently in the early stages of re-engineering the Orbiter so that we can un-entangle the substantial parts of it that are hard coded and so that we can make UI design something that can be carried out with simple and standardised tools. The objective would be to make it possible to retarget the UI to pretty much any device...even to the extent you could create an orbiter UI for an text only display for example. If you like PIP type interfaces then building one should be easy...we're designing the tools not what you do with them.
When we have this scoped out our intention is to make it available in an early form to the community here so that it can be looked over and played with by anyone who's interested. All of the code will be GPL and hopefully if the community like it they'll not only be able to easily create new UI's but also improve and extend the code with relative ease to.
Working on this side of the system is the next major task we have on our schedule so I would expect us to have some working code in not too distant future.
All the best
Andrew