HOW-TO:Estuary Modification: Difference between revisions

From Official Kodi Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
(Initial upload of page)
 
(Add Structure of Estuary heading)
Line 41: Line 41:




== Structure of Estuary ==
The default skin is very nicely laid out in actually quite a simple way. In our case on Windows, you can access the skin files in this folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Kodi\addons\skin.estuary\xml
Below are some explanations of the files you will see in the Estuary XML folder:
The file "Home.xml" is the basic home screen you see on first load of Kodi.
Files that start with "My" are the main sub windows from the main screen such as Music or TVShows.
Files that start with "Includes_" are all files that incorporate common elements that can be used all over the skin.
Files that start with "Dialogue_" are all popups you see in the use of Kodi
Files that start with "View_" are all the specific views you see in the skin, such as wide list or the Poster view for example.
Files that start with "Settings" are simply to detail the settings menu.
As you can probably tell, editing a skin is actually pretty logical and great effort has been made by the original developers to make it easy to understand.


== See also ==
== See also ==

Revision as of 20:14, 8 November 2017

Introduction

Estuary is Kodi's default skin, so it makes a good example of how to get start with editing a skin

Estuary-logo.png

Setting up a developer environment for skinning

First thing we need to do is setup a simple skin development environment:

To get the most out of it you'll need to either make a new keymap.xml or add this to your existing one.

<keymap>
   <global>
       <keyboard>
           <F5>XBMC.ReloadSkin()</F5>
           <F7>Notification(Testing 123,Hello world)</F7>
           <F8>Skin.ToggleDebug()</F8>
       </keyboard>
   </global>
</keymap>

Keymap xml.jpg

You will need to copy this keymap.xml file into the Kodi userdata folder. In our example, we are using windows so I have copied this file into the C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\keymaps folder.

Now we need a text editor to actually edit the files. Any text editor will work but we recommend something that can open multiple files at once such as Sublime Text or Notepad++

Testing your enviroment

Lets launch Kodi and try out our new skinners keymap features.

The following keys will then activate the corresponding action:


F5 - Reload skin (used to see any changes instantly without restarting XBMC)
F7 - Activated the KaiDialogToast.xml (used to display the notification dialog)
F8 - Show/Hide the Debug Info (used to display the currently active windows or dialogs)

As you can see all these features are incredibly important to a skinner.

Skinners keymap kodi.jpg


Structure of Estuary

The default skin is very nicely laid out in actually quite a simple way. In our case on Windows, you can access the skin files in this folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Kodi\addons\skin.estuary\xml

Below are some explanations of the files you will see in the Estuary XML folder:

The file "Home.xml" is the basic home screen you see on first load of Kodi.

Files that start with "My" are the main sub windows from the main screen such as Music or TVShows.

Files that start with "Includes_" are all files that incorporate common elements that can be used all over the skin.

Files that start with "Dialogue_" are all popups you see in the use of Kodi

Files that start with "View_" are all the specific views you see in the skin, such as wide list or the Poster view for example.

Files that start with "Settings" are simply to detail the settings menu.

As you can probably tell, editing a skin is actually pretty logical and great effort has been made by the original developers to make it easy to understand.

See also

Development: