Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

Creating your Own Kodi build Part Two

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

Welcome to Creating your own Kodi build Part Two. Part One of this series can be found HERE

 

So here we are Creating your own Kodi build Part Two , the next step in the process of the build and it’s all about the main menu bar.

The first this to do is to decide how many, and what menu categories would be a good starting point. It would be easy to get carried away at this point so I have tried to limit myself for the sake of simplicity. There may be more but I can always add them at a later date.

 

Here is my initial list of the menu categories that I have decided on for the build.

MOVIES

GENESIS

PHOENIX

SYSTEM 

SERVICE

SPORTS

LIVE TV

VOD

 

I know these are pretty generic but as we get further down the line we can be more specific.

We have 8 Menu items to work with so that should keep me busy for a while.  Sub menus will be covered in a future blog, but for now let’s just concentrate on the main menu bar.

 

OK, let’s take our first venture deeper into the settings and see what happens.

Now the Aeon Nox skin we have loaded has already given us some menu items, some already match my choices, and some don’t.

Scroll along to System and click on Skin Settings.

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

Now click on Setup the Aeon Nox main menu.

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

On the left of the screen no we can see all of the menu choices that the Aeon Nox skin has given us. You will see there are quite a few already there and the top line on the right shows us if that particular menu item is enabled. If it’s not enabled then it won’t show up in the build.

With the cursor on the menu item in the left hand column you can move up or down through the various ones. While doing this we can take a quick look on the right at which ones are enabled, they are the ones already in our basic skin.

So, what we can do now is “disable” the ones we don’t need. I did find this can be a bit tricky with the mouse and is much easier doing it with the keyboard cursor.

What you need to do is once the cursor is on the menu item on left, move the cursor to the right to access that items settings. You can then simply change the status of the enable/disable tab. What I found doing this with the mouse is that when you slide over to the settings in the right, I was no longer in the correct menu item on the left, so be careful and always keep a check on this.

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

OK, once we have enabled the items we want to keep and disabled the ones we don’t, we need to add a few of our own. I found this much easier than it may seem. All you need to do is move to any menu item that you are not using, move over to the settings and click on “Edit Label”. You can see in the example below, I am changing “Pictures” to “Genesis”.

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

You don’t have to keep it in capital letters if you don’t want. When you click on done, you will see it change on the left. If you want to back of the settings at this point to check the main kodi screen, then do. At this point I was quite chuffed to see the change!

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

At this point we will ignore all of the other settings for each menu item, but don’t worry we will be back to them soon enough. Also as mentioned earlier we will not be dealing with sub-menu items just yet. Let’s stay on the main menu items and have a bit more fun.

We can and will in later blogs look into changing the actual font on the menu bar but for now let’s just get it built and also add a bit of colour.

Did I say colour ? OK let’s give it a go!

 

I got the basics of this from fellow BestforKodi team member Megamind.

 

We are going to put some commands in brackets to tell Kodi what colours we want use. The brackets we will be using for these colour commands are the “[  ]” square type. So, let’s try one and see what it does.

 

We will change the main menu item “SPORTS” to red.

Do exactly the same as we did before in order to change the name of the main menu item, but you will see this time this time I have added a few commands.

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

I have added [COLORred] before the menu item name and[/COLOR] after it. When you click on done you will see the colour change on the settings page

 

What have we done?

By stating the command [COLORred] we have said, from now on, make the letters red.

This is very important – We must use the command [/COLOR] to say we have finished changing colours now.

 

And look what it has done to our main kodi screen !! – even more chuffed now!

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

So, feeling confident now, let’s see what we can do with this.

Of course we are not limited to just one colour change, we can do multiples. Here’s what I tried next.

A change of colour for each letter! I just had to make sure when finished, I ended up with [/COLOR] .

So in case it’s not clear in the screen shot, here is what I typed.

 

[COLORred]S[COLORnavy]P[COLORred]O[COLORnavy]R[COLORred]T[COLORnavy]S[/COLOR]

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

Look what it did!

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

I love RED & BLUE, but that’s another story.

 

So now we can have some fun playing with the colours of the other menu items.

 

I’m sure there must be a list somewhere of the colours that are available, but I used Pink, Blue, Navy, White, Green, Yellow, Orange and Magenta and they all worked.

 

I’m not saying that what I have done here will be my final choice of colours but it will do for now.

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

What I think is a help to me is to make the “SYSTEM” menu item red. That way it’s easy for me to find when scrolling quickly through the items.

 

For more information on colours, take a look at the great “Back 2 Basics” blog from Ezzerman.

 

OK, one more quick edit and we will be done for this step.

Go back to settings on the main screen and click on skin settings again.

Now select Aeon Nox main menu layout.

You will see each time you click on it you get a different option of how many items are shown on the main menu bar.

 

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

I must admit, I quite like the 3 item menu as opposed to the 5 item menu, it just looks a bit neater, so I will stay with it.

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

There is also an option to show the menu bar items as Icons, but I have to say that’s not for me.

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

 

The next step in the build process will be to add some background images to our menu sections. In the meantime I am going to start searching for some images or photos that I can use (and probably mess with these colours a bit more!)

 

Any questions please contact me on Twitter @Grendel1905 or @Bestforkodi

 

Keep dabbling.

 

Creating your own Kodi build Part Two

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