XBMC Eden Skinning Changes
That's smooth skin!
Confluence has been XBMC’s default skin for approximately 2 years now. In software dev terms, that makes it practically ancient. Fortunately, XBMC’s Jezz_X has been on the case to update Confluence so that it might better take advantage of a bushel bag of new tricks.
Some Background
On August 8th, 2008, an XBMC skinning group that came to be known as Team Razorfish presented a skin called MediaStream to the world. While most XBMC users would typically point to Aeon or an Aeon derivative as their favorite skin, it is undeniably true that MediaStream and its derivatives are the most downloaded skins among all the XBMC and XBMC derivative projects, because they’re the defaults.
When Plex broke off, that team made MediaStream_Redux their default. Similarly, when Team XBMC decided to move on from Project Mayhem 3 HD, we tasked our in-house skinner Jezz_X to make something awesome, and Jezz_X started with the MediaStream base.
On Oct 10, 2009, Team XBMC’s in-house skinner Jezz_X presented the Team with a first look at his, as yet unnamed, new skin. Obviously, we liked it a lot. Over the next month, we threw dozens of requests, bugs, and suggestions his way, and he handled them all brilliantly.
When it came time to name this new creation, the team agreed that we wanted something that was completely the opposite of Mayhem, like Serenity or Elegance or Fluidity. Many wanted to push the smooth, fluid way in which the skin seemed to breeze around. Additionally, XBMC 9.11 Camelot, the skin’s new home, marked the first time all of the many amazing qualities of XBMC were truly going to combine without a drop of Xbox input. And so “Confluence,” the flowing together of many streams, was adopted. XBMC Camelot was released with Confluence on December 24, 2009, just in time for Christmas, and the devs were already hard at work on Dharma.
Perhaps the greatest change from Camelot to Dharma was the shift from a hodge-podge DIY addon system to the integrated addon system we all know today. Such a system has been a real learning experience for the team, both in terms of maintaining a repository, handling breaking addons, and, of course, designing ways to display these addons in our skinning engine.
It became clear fairly early after the release of Dharma, and even before, that XBMC addons were going to be pretty popular, but the Dharma release barely addressed how to access these addons. At the time, the Team was pleased to be able to include them at all.
Aside from handling addons, the other major frustration of the Dharma Confluence skin was the way links to TV Shows and Movies were handled. People didn’t like having to click over to get to those links. Jezz_X had to include a method of displaying those crucial links on the main list, because it was in no way obvious that the links could be brought up through a simple click to the right.
The fact that I added movies is not especially clear.
XBMC Eden’s Home Screen
To resolve the issue, Jezz_X did one simple little thing that resolved both problems at once. He tilted the navigation bar horizontally.
As you can see, just about everything is visible now without clicking, and EVERYTHING has changed.
With this simple trick, Movies and TV Shows became automatically visible without requiring a single additional click. particularly useful addons could be accessed directly from the home page, and additional addons could be easily accessed through the visible “Addons” link. Jezz_X further confirms that, while Confluence limits skinners to a mere five favorite addons for Videos, five for Music, five for Pictures, etc. for a total of twenty visible addons on the home screen, the skinning engine allows for an enterprising skinner to devote the entire screen to addons, similar to the current Android and iOS browser methods of listing apps.
Finally, one of the most popular links on the home screen was the “recently added” link. Now, that link has been made mildly redundant by simply listing all recently added content in the space above the bar on the screen.
Four recently added episodes and five recently added movies are all visible now.
For those of you concerned, these changes haven’t upset your preferences too much. If you prefer to keep TV Shows or Movies in the main menu, Confluence naturally has options to pull those items out of the Videos submenu and onto the main menu.
Other Eden Visual Changes
With luck, most of the remaining changes to Confluence will be so clean and natural that a typical user won’t even notice them. Display styles have been made more uniform. Hidden options were either removed or made visible. The side menu in the media window is more visibly accessible. 15 thumbnails, rather than 10, are now visible at a time. Flags have been updated. Dozens of similar changes have occurred that won’t be immediately obvious, but will all make navigation just a little easier.
The Eden Library view wastes much less space and is far easier to navigate.
The On Screen Display (OSD)
Finally, we turn to the OSD. Before detailing it though, it may be worth going back and looking at one last story. As you know by now, about a month after Dharma was released, Team XBMC was proud to announce XBMC for iOS. At the time, this made perfect sense for the Apple TV 2. An XBMC box for sub-$100? Sign me up! Unfortunately, it made far less sense for the iPad and, even worse, the iPhone. Confluence was designed with a giant TV and a remote control in mind. Touchscreen support was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind when it was developed back in autumn 2009.
Fortunately, thanks to the generous contributions of our fans, the Foundation was able to provide Jezz_X with an iPad to turn Confluence into a lean, mean, touchscreen… skin.
We’ll discuss this in greater depth in a later article, but for now the take away is that Confluence is one of the rare skins that is navigable both by remote and by touch. Which brings us to the OSD.
As you should see, the menu obscures much less of the video than it did in Dharma. It is now possible to return to the menu while the video is still playing by hitting the X in the top right corner. Knowledge of special buttons is no longer required. Also, you can use your mouse or finger to seek using the slider.
Overall, the view is simpler and less invasive, like every skin should be.
Conclusion
While there are many more changes to Confluence than have been highlighted here, it seems reasonable to stop now, before we go overboard in discussing them. Instead, if you are especially eager to check them out, feel free to download a nightly. Be prepared to bump into a few bugs, if you do. Otherwise, keep an eye out for release announcements in the near future and keep following the blog as we look at other big changes to XBMC Eden.
I don’t know why everyone likes Aeon so much, give me the clean looks and customisability of Transparency any day
Good work Jezz_X!
Hi there,
I’m using new skin for a week now and I have to say I was really surprised by it. The ability to add plugins to the main screen is great, latest movies are nicer then in previous version.
It’s definitely the best skin I’ve ever had, thank you for your hard work!
One thing I miss in this skin is the movie wall for movies (I mean this: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3309/3591814295_e063d7020f.jpg)
@Martin
Posting the link one more time: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3309/3591814295_e063d7020f.jpg
You are doing great and its like you have read my mind
it all looks pretty but there is one thing that hit my eyes since first look, i’m talking about osd bar. Title seems not to be exposed enough, i would personally prefer to adjust icons (1080, aac, 5.1, mp3, etc.) to the right leaving more space around title which is main information and should not be messing with other less important things, maybe bold would be better too, maybe a little bigger font… anyway that how it now looks is too messy. ….but still beauty
best regards
Cant wait for Eden to be released.
Love these articles. Thanks all your hard work.
Hi guys!
I’ve been exploring new skins in Eden and noticed a lot of changes on Confluence. Most of them are not that obvious, at first glance. But they do make sense, that’s for sure.
Excellent work.
BR,
hudo
So i’m wondering if this this is a true upgrade or a side step to cater to AppleTV a little better. I’m not knocking it but honestly was hoping for better database management over networked boxes.
At any rate, keep up the good work.
Nice, looks just like Aeon on the main screen, I assume that was a big influence?
The Transparency skin looks much better
I like the changes. Running nightly builds on my laptop now while the main HTPC is still on Dharma. I will most likely upgrade my HTPC without waiting for official release.
It would be very nice to have a “BIG” version of this theme. As it is right now, I cannot use it at my current sofa to tv distance. Looks nice though.
I’d like to test this new skin in my current Dharma 10.1 with Live TV setup on Linux (still Element OS 1.4). How to do it?
Looks really good!
I’ve been usung this Eden build with this skin for some days and I have to say its really GOOD job guys what u did ;)
Its really clean, simple to use and it looks NICE ;)
Well done to every1 behind this and XBMC
:cool:
Just had a play with the Oct 7 nightly on my Windows machine.
If you’re looking for feedback: (ignore if not!)
The big issue – probably already known – is that in Videos ‘Add Source’ is missing (for me) – I have it in Music, but not in videos (this is on a clean install with no older profiler etc). If there are no sources at all, shouldn’t it prompt for them, or at the least show the add sources button?
The skin changes are generally very good and horizontal works well for sure – you can really tell usability is at the forefront.
I think the bright blue selection box (e.g. when you go from Videos->Files) – is a bit odd and inconsistent – why not just the blue ghosting effect used everywhere else? It stands out rather at the moment.
And why is ‘boost volume on downmix’ now in the videos sidebar thingy – all the other playback stuff is in the settings, this seems quite out of place.
The new OSD is more compact and on its way but doesn’t feel all the way there visually yet – yellow text is new and I’m not sure about it – and the audio/video icons would be nicer if they were clear overlays rather than blocks. Any chance of squeezing *remaining time* in there somewhere??
As ever, great work – it’s shaping up to be very polished and usable at the front end for sure.
I’m sure I am missing something obvious about that Video souces thing…but no amount of mouse/keyboard seems to get me to an add sources option. It’s always been there before!
I’ve been using the nightly builds for months (Linux), but have never seen ‘recently added’ movies and tvshows appear above the bar on the main screen. It looks cool. How do we turn this on!
Thanks for the article Nate!
Cheers for the skin Jezz_X
I’ve been a user of XBMC since the xbox days and always been a big fan. This post made me take a look at the nightly build for Eden and I must say I’m impressed. The new skin is just super-awesome, it’s hard to put into words how much I love the work you guys have done. I hope this praise results in you having a good weekend, keep up the awesome work :)
Feature request : Please include a “back” button to Confluence interface
I am a big fan of XBMC since Xbox, but now i am using Boxee because XBMC is not very user friendly, it´s very dificult to configurate, i dont know why you guys dont make it easy to configurate like Boxee?! I and many more are waiting for this day!!! Thanks you and keep the good work, and dont forget “Keep it Simple”
I love the change, the skin is pretty clean and easy to use. keep up the good work Jezz_X!
Hi, those articles are informative and nice.
i like them.
keep us users, which never read in the forum, informed :-)
big thanks to all the xbmc-stuff for all the years of good work!
Great work! Like the way the home window now acts more like a dashboard/lanchpad (by including add-ons).
One note though, dont like the way “media info 2″ is now split into two windows. It feels more like a filebrowser than a library view.
Keep up the good work! :D
Using nightly builds here too. I’ve been wondering how I can display “recently added’ also. @Anonymous
Can the new confluence support extrafanart and ‘Cinema Play’?
@Zaphod0
System -> Skin -> Home Window Options -> “Show recently added videos”
Good work Jezz_X Thankx
@james Dewitt
Hi James thanks for your insightful comment. Your thoughts matter
Transparency! its definately the only reason i use XBMC everyday @james Dewitt
Some things I hope change before the release.
The On Screen Display (OSD).
Would like the OSD controllers back to the top of the screen again. It’s getting very messy/ hard to see the controllers when the movie has subtitles. Most of my movies have subtitles.
The X in the top right corner. I hope it will be possible to remove it. Okay if it’s there as default. But I would like an option to hide it.
Finally, for movies and TV shows I use “Media info 2” Sad to see that the new media info 2 is so different. The old style was more seamless.
Otherwise it looks great! =)
i’m having a problem runing xbmc on my pc, it keeps on telling me its a network problem. my cables are connected properley i dont seem to see the problem, i’m using a windows 7 professional…. ???please help???
@Mr O.
Check your firewall settings??
It’s a tricky balancing act when it comes to versatility vs simplicity, especially when you have a strong user base established. Best to stick with minor tweaks and not fix what isn’t broken. Boxee ignored that fact and ignored the majority of loyal users in attempts to please content providers, which cost them dearly. It’s unfortunate, but I doubt Boxee will recover.
I’ve been using the new skin for about a week and I must say there are some areas in which I miss the old version. Especially the new borders (lines) around every list and other bigger UI elements does not look very well – IMHO the borderless version looked better. Also there seems to be less transparency which made previous version look very nice.
Also the usability of OSD for remote control users is worse now – because of OSD layout changes it is now much more arrow button presses to get to buttons for picture settings, audio settings, subtitles etc.
Hi.
I’ve started using XBMC about the time Dharma got DirectShow player which enabled DXVA under Windows (was it a beta then?). After that I’ve been using it 99% of time I watch something thanks to its great features (like movies and tv series library) and quality (it gets better and better :)). Only sometimes I use Media Player Classic HC to play some single files, but mainly for quick preview.
I’ve tried many times to use skins other than Confluence and they didn’t last longer than a day or two and I’ve always returned to Confluence as it is the best skin I’ve seen (and I’ve tried all available in repository). All my friends which come by to watch some movies together on a projector and they are always amazed (especially those who are coming for the first time) at how good it looks and works.
I’m using Eden for some time now and I think changes to the Confluence go in good direction. Especially, I like that during the pause on the video playback and when you skip forward or backward, the panel which shows current/total time is moved to upper edge because it doesn’t cover subtitles anymore.
But there is one regression in my opinion. I’m using XBMC with mouse support switched off and I use a remote or a keyboard depending whether I watch something on projector or on monitor. In Dharma, to download subtitles I only had to press 4 buttons (enter, right, up, enter) to get to Subtitle module. But right now, when subtitle button moved to lower edge of the screen, it now requires 6 presses (enter, 4x right, enter). On keyboard it is not that bad, but on remote it could be better. Maybe you could rethink the button layout of the lower edge panel to allow faster access to any of the buttons. Maybe shorten the timeline and move buttons from the right to empty (after shortening the timeline) space above play/stop/etc buttons? Then there wouldn’t be need for upper edge button panel and still the buttons would be accessed faster with the up key.
Anyway, thanks to the whole XBMC team for great work and I’m sorry for this lenghty comment :) (and my english, I hope you’ll understand everything :P).
Brilliant decision to use a Aeon-style skin as default. It was already my favorite.
Taste is different but most of the users will be hightly pleased as i am.
I use media info 2, and it would be great to include the movie length and rating info. in this mode.
the major thing lacking in all skins is a way to display a large music library collection of albums.
an album “tree wall” with art for an artist displayed and then art for that artists albums in the library and then a “misc” section for their singles or incomplete albums or songs from compilation albums would be ideal.
@nim
I second that. Most skins handle music libraries badly as their views are adapted for movies and TV Shows which normally contains fewer items. The Music Library generally contains many Artists with one or few albums per artist. But there is still a lot of eye candy possible in a music library (artist thumbs, fanart, album covers, CDArt etc.).
Been playing with this in the nightlies for months now and it just keeps getting better and better… It’s truly a massive improvement over that in Dharma; far more intuitive and integrated. I think you guys have accomplished what you were trying to active in terms of simplicity; my friends no longer have to ask me what’s going on when using my HTPC; it all just follows relatively naturally.
Fantastic job, Jezz_X!
Is the chick on the ‘Smooth Skin’ picture the girl from PMIII? looks alot like her! :o) the ginger lass!