1.3.0 (Alpha) and Extensions

In MediaPortal 1.3.0 we introduce many new features which will greatly enrich your MediaPortal experience.

Such enhancements always come with a price. In our case it's the Extension compatibility.

Skins:

In 1.3.0 we introduce many new features that give our skin designers more freedom when designing skins. With the new support for "Themes", a designer can now easily distribute many differently styled versions as themes - and more importantly, users will be able easily to switch between them. This will greatly increase the user base of single skins because now the skinner is able to offer a selection of different moods (dark, light, etc.).

Which new features are available to skin designers, and what is required to make existing skins 1.3.0 (Alpha) compatible is described in our wiki.

Plugins:

Introducing new features like those in our skin engine did have a few consequences for plugins as well. We tried our best to keep the required changes to a minimum, but users will still find a few plugins listed as "incompatible" after performing an upgrade installation to 1.3.0 (Alpha).

We have listed the required changes to achieve plugin compatibility for plugin developers in our related wiki pages.

In case that your plugin includes files for MediaPortal's Default skin, you should also have a look at the skin related changes in our wiki.

Release Date of 1.3.0 Alpha:

During the last few weeks we have been working hard to minimize the amount of breaking changes for Extensions (plugins). Right now we are in the process of testing these reworks. We apologize for delaying the release of 1.3.0 alpha, but felt it was worth it to enable extension developers to make their extensions compatible quickly and easily.

With this news we want to give our great Plugin Developers and Skin Designers a head start, to work on their 1.3.0 Extension compatibility.

The release of 1.3.0 Alpha is very close.