Controls

NOTE: The control definitions here can be become out of date. The latest xml behavior can be found in the Git cpp code

Available controls

 * Group Control : used to group controls together.
 * Group List Control : special case of the group control that forms a scrolling list of controls.
 * Label Control : used to show some lines of text.
 * Fade Label Control : used to show multiple pieces of text in the same position, by fading from one to the other.
 * Image Control : used to show an image.
 * Large Image Control : background loading version of the image control, for larger images.
 * MultiImage Control : used to show a slideshow of images.
 * Button control : a standard push button control.
 * Radio button control : a radio button control (as used for on/off settings).
 * Select button control : a select button control (allows multiple selections from a single button)
 * Toggle button control : a toggle on/off button that can take 2 different states.
 * Multiselect control : a piece of text with multiple selectable "button" components.
 * Spin Control : used for cycling up/down controls.
 * Settings Spin Control : used for cycling up/down controls in the settings menus.
 * Slider Control : used for a volume slider.
 * Scroll Bar Control : used for a implementing a scroll bar.
 * Settings Slider Control : used for a slider control in the settings menus.
 * Progress Control : Used to show the progress of a particular operation.
 * List Container : used for a scrolling lists of items. Replaces the list control.
 * Wrap List Container : used for a wrapping list of items with fixed focus.
 * Fixed List Container : used for a list of items with a fixed focus. Same as the Wrap List Container except it doesn't wrap.
 * Panel Container : used for a scrolling panel of items. Replaces the thumbnail panel.
 * Text Box : used to show a multi-page piece of text.
 * RSS feed Control : used to display scrolling RSS feeds.
 * Visualisation Control : used to display a visualisation while music is playing.
 * Video Control : used to display the currently playing video whilst in the GUI.


 * Mover Control : used in the calibration screens.
 * Resize Control : used to set the pixel ratio in Video Calibration.

Depreciated controls
These controls are not recommended to be used inside skins and will be removed from the skinning engine at some point. Or may not work at all


 * Buttonscrollers : used for multiple buttons in a scrollable list.
 * List Control : used for lists of items.
 * Thumbnail Panel : used to show a panel of thumbnails.
 * Recently Added Media Control : used to display the last few items added to the video database.
 * Console Control : used as a multi-coloured text display (XLink Kai window).
 * Checkmark Control : Used on the XLink Kai Host Dialog. Similar to Radio Button but does not have the button texture, and the check-mark is on the left.
 * Extended List Control : used in the XLink Kai window.

Rarely used controls

 * Edit Control : used as an input control for a USB keyboard (XLink Kai window).

Built in controls
A list of built in controls can be found here.

XML tags that affect all control types
The XML tags that affect all control types can be found here.

Filling controls and dictating how they respond from the skin
Most of the controls' contents are filled at runtime by the XBMC source codebase, but for controls such as buttons, labels and images, the Skinner has full control over what the button does or what the label and images look like, if they so desire. This is done via the use of conditional &lt;visible&gt; tags, built in &lt;execute&gt; functions, and &lt;info&gt; information tags. See the following links for more information.


 * Conditional Visibility : Defining when to display and hide a control, and how to animate the effect.
 * Animating Your Skin : Breathing life into controls by having defining how they move and respond to actions.
 * Built In Functions : Defining what a button or list does when clicked or focused.
 * Specifying Labels : Defining what a label control or image control's contents should be.