[Feature] Load Widgets based on selection of another main widget item

[Mr-7mdan]

Skin section

Home Widgets

Feature description

Hi, the idea is to have a sub layer in the home menu that behaves very similar to the main menu.

Lets imagine the following: Main menu items : Movies, Trakt, TV Shows Main Widget in Movies menu item: Genres Each genre has (Latest, and Trending widgets)

Currently; When user selects Movies, the widgets respond/load to his selection and the home screen loads only The Movies widgets.

Proposed: After user selects movies, he goes down to the main widget and highlights/or clicks one of genres lets say Kids. Now, the proposed behavior, is to load sub-widgets for the selected genre (Latest Cartoon, Trending Anime, etc).

I imagine that we need to create another Home dialog without the menu items. And move back the genres main widget up the screen to same location of the menu items in the Home Dialog. Then load the sub-widgets like you would load them in the current implementation.

I think we can do it without another dialog, if we reload the sub-widgets based on the selection in the main widget. Similar to what drinfernoo did in (Next Path and refresh single widget in his addon)

Also, the VideoInfoDialog can be used, to load a new sub-dialog thats display the said sub-widgets.

i understand that this means, that the main widget should have a different type that regular widgets.

Why is this feature needed? Please justify and explain.

It expands the functionality of this skin, and enables the user to enjoy navigating the menus in a less restricted mannar.

This skin is shaping to be the best skin ever created for kodi. Adding new innovative features like this would set a new benchmark in the community.

Screenshots and Additional Info

No response

Checklist

• [X] I have searched the issues and this feature has not been requested.
• [X] I am using the most recent skin version.

[jurialmunkey]

This sounds very similar to a planned feature I have for "hub" windows.

Basically the hub windows will be a separate window with a fullscreen widget and set of widgets underneath. So you could make eg one hub for anime, another for kids and so on.

Then in your submenu on the homescreen you would add a shortcut to that hub. When you click the shortcut it takes you to that hub window.

It would be nicer all on the homescreen like you're suggesting but separating it into a separate hub window helps loading. Every extra widget section we add on the home screen makes loading slower because Kodi tries to load all the widgets in the window at the same time. Whereas if these sections are separated into another window as a hub then Kodi will only load those widgets when that particular window is activated

[Mr-7mdan]

@jurialmunkey , this sounds amazing. I am super excited to try it out. Hubs sound like what i described as main widget. The behavior of the hubs while in focus or clicked would change the whole experience.

I will try to visually demonstrate the concept I have in my mind. We might get more ideas regarding the final implementation & the options available.

[Mr-7mdan]

I do agree to have it as window, to save load time, You can make it load in the background when the hub is in focus by setting the visibility of the dialog to false, and if clicked, the visibility is changed to true.

When selecting a "Action" Genre hub:

When selecting "Horror" Genre hub:

The pictures doesn’t look as good, pls forgive my photoshop skills. But the idea is to give the user a visual indication that the widgets which appeared beneath the hubs row are related to the selected hub.

Although we don’t want this to be part of the home screen widgets (to reduce load time) but we can make this window imitate whats on the home screen in terms of main menu location and current selected menu item. This will deceive the user into thinking that he is still on the home screen rather than a new window especially if the rest of hubs and the above section of the screen is blurred making a visual focus on the selected hub and the hub’s widgets shown beneath it.

After a 2nd thought, I think you've already done something very similar in the keywords section of the VideoInfoDialog, the widget responds to the user selection and changes as the user changes his selection.

Best of luck my friend

[Liquidrag]

I'm also looking forward to hubs. Would be great to have hubs for my favorite genres with widgets pointed to many trakt lists.