bluecog skin

[danbee]

ok, i've finally got round to updating bluecog! new features include:

• working volume control
• close and minimize buttons
• desktop alpha transparency for beta 2 cold

please post your comments and feedback.

http://www.danbee.co.uk/download/skins/bluecogb2.wal

[cmisker]

Hey,

Attachment: screenshot of the skin.

Suggestions: when you change the volume, show the volume levels (percentage, I guess?). Also, in the line where it says how many KBPS it is and stuff, there's a comma behind the 44.. why? Doesn't really need to be there, I guess?

It looks nice though! Fun to just have on your screen, not really for every-day use.. (kinda to big for that..).

[mark e]

Wow, thanx... :)

[danbee]

Originally posted by cmisker
Hey,

Attachment: screenshot of the skin.

thanks for posting the screenshot. i nearly posted a link to the previous thread.

Suggestions: when you change the volume, show the volume levels (percentage, I guess?). Also, in the line where it says how many KBPS it is and stuff, there's a comma behind the 44.. why? Doesn't really need to be there, I guess?

i'm working on the volume control still, i've only just got it working right :D

as for the comma thing, that was probly due to a messed up character in the font.png file. i was using a truetype font before but beta 2 likes to make these seethrough when you enable desktop transparency. i'll probly go back to ttf when this bug is fixed.

It looks nice though! Fun to just have on your screen, not really for every-day use.. (kinda to big for that..).

hehe, that'll be what the winshade mode, that i haven't implemented yet, is for. it does scale pretty nicely to 75% though i've found.

on another note, i was thinking about possibly giving the skin a subtle brushed aluminium texture, what do you think?

[cmisker]

Originally posted by danbee

thanks for posting the screenshot. i nearly posted a link to the previous thread.

Sure! No problem. I figured you'd appreciate it and well, I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't get 100 people asking for the screenshot because they won't download skins without a screenshot. :P


hehe, that'll be what the winshade mode, that i haven't implemented yet, is for. it does scale pretty nicely to 75% though i've found.

When I scale down to 75%, the text gets a little bit fuzzy... just not clear enough.. I guess the little button for winshade will come between the Minimize and Close button?


on another note, i was thinking about possibly giving the skin a subtle brushed aluminium texture, what do you think?
Yes, maybe that'd look good. And if not, you can always go back to this. It'd probably look a little bit more... well, complex (?) with the brushed aluminium texture, since it looks kinda simple now (if you just have 1 look at, it looks like the main color is just one boring color, no nice light effects or anything...) when you look at it better, you do see there are some nice effects, but I guess it'd look better with a nice little texture. Also especially, because there probably won't be many people just having this skin as their default skin (talking about normal mode, not the winshade mode), more when they just have their computer on and want to change songs easily (since it's so big).. so it should look good. :-)

Alright, I have blah-blah-blahd enough. I like your skin! Nice and simple! I guess you'll do some playlist and media library skinning later?
Oh! Also, when you click on the Thinger button, well, like, it does like it's moving down a little bit (like a button should) but it's not really a button. I mean, like, the play button and stuff, they should move down, because they are really a button... but the Thinger button actually isn't really a button, so maybe just have it light up when you click on it and not move down? (Mmm, I hoe I made myself clear... it's kinda hard to explain... :D)

Good luck.

[danbee]

ok, i've done a shit load more work on this.

• thinger is done.
• nice brushed texture to the blue.
• more depth to the screen.
• the components (pl, ml, avs etc...) are skinned sortof (they're the right colour and work ok for now)

stuff still to do...

• winshade mode for main window.
• the equaliser
• the components need skinning properly.
• gamma groups setup so you can change the colour.

http://www.danbee.co.uk for a screenshot and download.

[cmisker]

Hey!

The skin just got better! :-)

I only just now noticed though that my computer is probably not fast enough for your skin (CPU Usuage is at 100%, same with the Probe-skin, but oh well. :P). I'll guess people are going to have to past a minimum and required system specifications thing for every skin... :P but then, we'll get this one guy who thinks that minimum specs are a bunch of crap... can't remember his name anymore, read it somewhere on the Winamp forum though...

Anyway, I did discover something weird.. not sure if it's just my computer:
http://www.chris.misker.nl/bluecogplaylist.png
You see? On the bottom, the text on the playlist... I've tried deleting studio.whatever, but it didn't work.

I like the metal brushed stuff! :-) It's still a little bit too big for me to use every day, but oh well, it's nice to just show off my Winamp 3 to other people. :)

Good luck!

[danbee]

glad you like it!

i noticed the cpu thing as well. doesn't seem to matter too much, and it's possible the alphablending code probably still needs optimising.

the text is something to do with the font files. the playlist, medialibrary etc, haven't had much love yet.

[lordkhan]

the cpu usage has got to do with beta2cold, not the skin. things should be better in upcoming betas.. for the meantime you might want to disable the vis. that usually frees up a lot of the cpu (mine jumps from ~75% to ~10%). hope this ables you to better enjoy the skin! :)

[thepyr0x]

Hey ya think u can make that main window a little more transparent? It is really nice and all, but too dense if u ask me

[Anonymous]

The bug in the playlist font easy to fix. Just change the first bitmapfont in studio-elements.xml to say

<bitmapfont id="studio.component.statusbar" file="player/font.png" charwidth="7" charheight="10" hspacing="0" vspacing="0"/>

Now it'll use the same font the player does. That wasn't really hard to figure out, but I thought I'd try and be helpful.

[Doggy Dog]

I loooooove this skin :D.

[Anonymous]

Are there any plans to do any more work on this skin, danbee?

[danbee]

the skin is currently about halfway through a complete overhaul. moving layers about and sorting the gamma groups so it can be re-coloured and stuff. i'm hoping to get some more work done on it this week. also, the components need finishing off, although they're nearly there :)

i've been very busy lately...

[Flynnz]

MMMmmmmmmm.. looks VERY nice danbee. ^^Can't wait for that new version! :D