customizing Front Row

I've read of a way to change the theme of Front Row, which i am going to try. What i would really like to change in Front Row the number of folders. I just want the movie icon to lead me to my movies folder, i don't need those subcategories like "Shared Videos" and "Theatrical Trailers", so is there a way to get rid of them?
Thx. :black:

::BUMP::

I successfully changed the theme, but i still haven't found anything about how to change the folders.

There is a file in your FrontRow.app package that is called Info.strings (I believe).

It's a text file that you should back up before you make changes to it.

Anywho, if you open it with TextEdit, you'll be able to do a search for "Trailers", "Shared Videos", etc. (the ones you don't want). Simply delete every instance of them and they won't show up in Front Row.

Thx surfwax, somehow i missed your post until now. :black: Could it possibly be the file called localizable.strings in the english folder? That's the closest thing i can find to that.

Yep, that's the one.

You'll find all of the text in that file.

Here's my workflow when working on system files:

Option+drag a copy to the desktop (copies it).
Right click (ctrl+click) that file and click "Archive".
Work on the file that you copied.
After you make sure everything is the way you want it, drag it to the folder where the original was, then drop. Type in your user password.
Log out.
Log in.
Test Front Row.

I learned this back when I was modding my Login window and accidentally destroyed the entire window. I couldn't just reinstall, so I had to go in through the command line and move everything back into place...a very valuable learning session that I don't want to do again.

Yeah... the first time I worked with Linux intensively I sued Vi in the commad line to configure my drives in /etc/fstab and Vi funnily enough has an autosave function (being the cruddy command-line editor it is). So I removed some drive name, got called away from the computer, came back, closed the file without saving my changes, not realising they had already been saved.

Next bootup failed and my system was messed up. Square One.

surfwax95 said:

Yep, that's the one.

You'll find all of the text in that file.

Here's my workflow when working on system files:

Option+drag a copy to the desktop (copies it).
Right click (ctrl+click) that file and click "Archive".
Work on the file that you copied.
After you make sure everything is the way you want it, drag it to the folder where the original was, then drop. Type in your user password.
Log out.
Log in.
Test Front Row.

Click to expand...

That's the same way i was doing it :black: Which is good because i'm having trouble finding exactly which bit of text it is. Last night i screwed up all the initial menu titles and had to restore the backup. I'll find it eventually Thx for your help

Anyone managed to figure this out yet? It would be nice to have some clearer instructions on exactly what to edit. I have managed to get the subtitles I want to disappear, but the space where they used to be still remains. If I then go and edit further, deleting the lines that the subtitles used to be on, when back in front row, the menus include all the text from the localizable.strings file. Also I dont ever use iPhoto, I'm a photographer and use other programs for editing photos, but it would be nice to have a photo viewer in front row, just a nice simple way to view photos that are in folders maybe, but not using iPhoto. I'm gonna have a go at changing the icons next, hopefully this goes a bit smoother.

MacBurg said:

Anyone managed to figure this out yet? It would be nice to have some clearer instructions on exactly what to edit. I have managed to get the subtitles I want to disappear, but the space where they used to be still remains. If I then go and edit further, deleting the lines that the subtitles used to be on, when back in front row, the menus include all the text from the localizable.strings file.

Click to expand...

That is exactly the problem i keep running into. I worked on it trying different things for an hour last night and NOTHING would work, it's driving me crazy so i think i'm gonna give up!

I guess we'll just have to bump this one every now and then, someone is sure to figure it out or see an article elsewhere. Its a pity because everything else on the mac is so customizable, and thats what I really enjoy, infact it takes up more of my time than it should. I'm purchasing an airport express in the next week, so will probably get more use out of Frontrow, using it to stream music, I'll just have to keep looking for a way to get Frontrow the way I want it.

Wait, what are you guys trying to do exactly?

Trying to customize the menus in Frontrow. Currently under "Videos" you have the subtitles -

Shared Videos
Theatrical Trailers
Videos
Music Videos
TV Shows
Video Podcasts

I am no longer a teenager, and use my MBP as a personal business machine, under the "Videos" menu I have no need for the above subtitles other than Videos itself, so I am trying to remove these unwanted subtitles. Pretty much the same under "Music" and "Photos" aswell, I only ever select music using "Artist" "Genre" or "Playlist" and I would like to have just a simple slideshow/image viewer instead iPhoto under "Photos".

Looking at the Localizable.strings file using Textedit, its seems simple enough, I just dont understand enough about scripting to edit it properly, so any help would be appreciated.

cherry how did you change the theme?

I'll check tonight, but it's probably in the Info.plist file as an array for the menu. Deleting the items in the array would probably get you where you're wanting to go.

Yes help would be much appreciated. I am trying to do something similar to MacBurg. When i select videos and get to the next menu it says:

Shared Videos
Theatrical Trailers
Movies
Music Videos
TV Shows
Video Podcasts


So i searched and i found these items in the localizable.strings text. All i want to appear on this menu is one thing - "movies", so i deleted everything except for the movies string. After restarting and loading front row again it then said something like:

MenuItemSharedVideos
MenuItemTheatricalTrailers
Movies
MenuItemMusicVideos
MenuItemTVShows
MenuItemVideoPodcasts


It was all screwed up. Even though i had deleted the entire string it still knew that there was supposed to be menu items there. UGH so annoying. Nothing i've tried will work so i just restored all the code and edited the titles i found in the quotes, so now the menu reads:

-
-
Movies
-
-
-


It looks retarded but it's all i can do for now. In other words, HELP

Jchavoush said:

cherry how did you change the theme?

Click to expand...

Here is the package i used to change my theme:


http://waambat.com/host/Front_Row_1_3_Realistic_Skin_by_MugenB16.zip

Instructions are in the text file.

The code references the plist file to see the menu items, it only references the strings file when it needs to know the value of the menu item.

Oh i see. I'm just clueless what to do with the plist then. I'm gonna experiment summore and check back later.

Just make sure you back up that file!

Plists can be opened with TextEdit, but I'd recommend downloading a free Plist editor from MacUpdate.