Fusion:Skin

Introduction

To avoid the risk of losing the corporate identity, when displaying a sequence of media items on the screen, it is required that all the media item share a similar style. Usually, creating consistent media is an expensive task that requires creative professionals.

To address this need, Fusion introduces the concept of Skin, which gives to the user the possibility to apply a master graphical layout, separated from the current running Program. This gives continuity and identity to the layout of the display even if the media items defined by the current Program are different from each other.

A Skin can be used to:

define the default background image (or animation);
define the default font and color to be used at all time, behind or on top of the current running program;
introduce permanent elements, such as: current time (watch), current date, crawling text with the latest news etc.;
offer to the user editable fields - for example the user can personalize the logo or the source of the RSS feeds used within the Skin.

Skin creation

Skins are SVG files that contain special syntax elements recognized by Fusion. For more details, see the full article on how to create a Fusion Skin.

You can also start with one of our many sample Skins from the Fusion: Download Skins page.
A Skin can also be created within a Style Pack.

Skins management

Manage Skins

Skins are managed from the Settings page, under the Skins tab - the following actions are available:

Upload new Skins.
Delete a Skin.
Activate a Skin.
Edit the currently selected Skin.
Select and edit another Skin.

Note: Only an user with "Administrator" role can upload and delete Skins, while the rest of the actions above are available to any user with "Creator" or "Administrator" role.

Skin upload into Fusion

To upload one or more Skins (either individually or as a Style pack), follow these steps:

Open the "Settings" menu and select the "Skins" tab.
Click on the Add button.
Browse to the location where you have saved the Skin(s) / Style pack archive file.
Choose your archive file and confirm the upload.

Once the upload has completed, a list of uploaded Skins will be shown on this page.

Skin activation

If no Skin is available / activated, Fusion will show the current program in full-screen. Once a Skin is activated, it will be used as a master layout to display the current program.

To activate a Skin within Fusion:

Open the "Settings" menu and select the "Skins" tab.
Select the Skin to be used by pressing the icon.
A new window will be opened, where you can edit the content of the Skin (see details below).
Click Save to finish editing the Skin.

Skin configuration

A Skin might offer different editable fields to the user - some fields allow the user to type text, others to drag & drop images, videos or hypermedia projects. Usually each editable field is described by a short comment and the user can preview the result.

To view the description of a field move the mouse on top of the field or, for text boxes, empty the text to see the field description.

To select a media simply drag and drop the media to the preview area or to the media icon on the list below the preview area.

The selected media will be shown in the list on the bottom right part of the screen.

Skin deletion

To delete an existing Skin, click on (the "Delete" button) corresponding to the Skin you want to delete.