Overview

How to skin the Detail view in MyFilmsDetail.xml, including virtual views for Overview, Description, Comment, Actors Technical Info and the Full Fanart.

Detail View

The Detail View offers the user the option to view all details of a film in their database. Users may browse their film catalog or database, using this view via up/down arrow keys to change virtual views, or page up/down keys to view the previous or next film in the list. 

Please refer to the Default/wide

MyFilmsDetail.xml

for reference.

Virtual Views

The Detail screen offers several 'virtual' views to display all the contents of the database:

• Overview - displays the main database fields and all user defined display fields (user.item1>5)
• Description - displays the full description for easy reading
• Comments - displays whatever comments the user has chosen to add via their grabber script so it may include notes, taglines, certification, etc depending on the catalog type and grabber script used.
• Actors - displays full list of actors - some grabber scripts can display all actors
• Technical  Info - displays all the details about the movie file(s) as stored in the database

Each Virtual View is controlled by a button (see Skin Properties). The contents of the view display is determined by visibility conditions linked to these buttons, (based on which button is in focus)

Users may navigate to the next/previous virtual view using up/down arrow keys as defined in the skin by navigation tags (onup/down/right/left) for each button.

The Full Fanart view is accessible via the onright navigation tag in each button.

Details Menu

The Details menu, which displays beneath the large cover image in Default\wide, uses button controls without textures.

Two new media files are provided: ledon.png and ledoff.png to highlight the currently selected button, using visibility conditions to display only when the button is in focus.

Navigation controls (i.e. ondown tag) are used to move to the next button.  Related fields are displayed according to the visibility conditions when that button is in focus.

The Play Button

The most important button is the play button (ID>10000) it is the default control for the MyFilmsDetail.xml. The plugin enables the user to  to play the film by pressing OK/Enter regardless of what Virtual View button is in focus.  It also 'doubles' as the Overview Virtual View button.

Visibility Conditions and Animations

Play Button

The Play button must use:       

<visible allowhiddenfocus="true">!Control.HasFocus(10099)</visible>

This enables it to 'regain' focus after viewing the full fanart view.

Labels and Values

If you combine labels and values in the same control, you may use visibility to only display the label when the value contains data e.g.:

<visible>string.equals(#myfilms.db.property.value)</visible>

Where property is the name of the database or user property.

Virtual Views

To display only specific fields or skin controls for each virtual view, set the visibility to the related button ID, e.g. to display the description when the Description button is focused:

<visible>Control.HasFocus(10001)</visible>

where 10001 is the control ID of the Description button.

Full Fanart View

In the same way you can control what displays on the Full Fanart View.  You may even choose to display skin properties in one style/format for the virtual views, and a different position/style and format in the Full Fanart View.

<visible>Control.HasFocus(10099)</visible>

Conversely, to ensure that controls do NOT display on the Full Fanart view, use:

<visible>!Control.HasFocus(10099)</visible>

Related

• Skinning My Films