Satin Port v1.1 cPro skin

[Aminifu]

Hi Victor,

I could not find a thread to discuss your fabulous skin and as you know the review ability on the main site is not working, so I started this thread.

Last time I looked there were 147,455 downloads. Great start!

Can you tell me the difference between Satin and Satin Carbon? Unable to find a description. From what I can see, the only thing seems to be the handling of the play/pause button.

[Victhor]

Ey hello! Thanks for the thread started, I was thinking about doing it but felt it was too late, now you save me the hard decision! =). I´m glad you´re so impressed with the skin.

As for the skin itself, the only difference is the Play button as you said, it´s just a "tribute" to the original skin, just that. In Deviantart I packaged the two skins into one zip file but here at winamp.com that is not aloud so I decide to upload each as a totallly different skin.

One last note; I answered you at skinconsortium, check it whenever you can (http://forums.skinconsortium.com/ind...&threadID=1703)

[Victhor]

PS: I´m victhor, I don´t like this forum account with my full name but it´s my first old account, so I´m just using it to let everybody see how long I´ve been here =D.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by victorbrocaz

PS: I´m victhor, I don´t like this forum account with my full name but it´s my first old account, so I´m just using it to let everybody see how long I´ve been here =D.

Hi victhor,

Drop a PM to one of the forum moderators. I think it's possible to have the account name changed and the rest of the account info maintained.

The notification timing option(s) I mentioned on skinconsortium would be a nice feature for your next version (along with any fixes for those unnoticeable things you mentioned).

I also found an alternate (better, imo) way to handle the skin's 'open and close' feature. The cPro engine lets two function keys (F9 and F10) be assigned to a skin's display. Simply adjust the skin to a size, tab view, and/or position then press "Shift + F9" to save it. Then change the size, tab view and/or position and press "Shift + F10" to save the new display. Then you can use these function keys to toggle back and forth when the focus is on the skin.

These function keys were explained to a user of another skin who wanted an easier way to switch to full screen when using the media library tab. I think it would be a nice user selectable option to provide auto-switching to full screen when the media library tab is selected. It would be a good option for all the tabs, except maybe the now playing tab.

[DrO]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

Drop a PM to one of the forum moderators. I think it's possible to have the account name changed and the rest of the account info maintained.

accounts can be merged / renamed as needed, just pm me what you want the account name to be and if you have any other accounts you want merged, etc.

-daz

[Victhor]

Excellent! Now we´re talking! =D

Thanks!!

[Aminifu]

Hi Victhor,

What do you think of my idea for an option for auto-fullscreening some or all skin views?

[Victhor]

Mmm.. I´m not sure of what you mean. Anyway, it sounds like something the engine should do (ergo, a coder), as a skinner I´m not really adding any function to Winamp, I´m just using the already prepared engine (cPro).

[Aminifu]

Hi Victhor,

I noticed a new post on the skinconsortium site. Is this a skin update or just a new image of the skin (the version stated is the same as the last update)?

[Victhor]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

Hi Victhor,

I noticed a new post on the skinconsortium site. Is this a skin update or just a new image of the skin (the version stated is the same as the last update)?

No no, it´s the same I published here. I forgot to publish the update in skinconsortium but now I remembered (and had the time) so I repare my mistake .

[Aminifu]

Good. I don't want to miss any improvements. I don't really see what more you can do, but I'm waiting for you to surprise me. The downloads from here are still rising!

[Aminifu]

Hi Victhor,

The options for the "Analyzer Coloring" do not work on my system. Any advise?

Also, when the skin is open it is kinda redundant to show album art in the main player window and other windows (especially when the Now Playing window is selected). How about using that space for something else or expanding the width of the other 2 panels?

[Victhor]

Mmm.. what you say is that there is no difference between one state and the other? Well.. that´s kinda on purpourse (it´s a bit "technical"..).

About the covert art, is true, it is redundant, but it´s how the original skin have it and even if I wanted to changed it I don´t know how! haha. I would like to have an option to make the cover art disappear of the main display if it is shown on the bottom part, but I don´t know if that´s possible..

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by Victhor

Mmm.. what you say is that there is no difference between one state and the other? Well.. that´s kinda on purpourse (it´s a bit "technical"..).

I'm asking about the options that say "Normal", "Fire", and "Line". What is point of having them if they do nothing? Other skins I have used add color options so that the peak indications are easiler to see. Varying the peak falloff speed helps, but a different color for the peaks enhances the effect.

Originally Posted by Victhor

I would like to have an option to make the cover art disappear of the main display if it is shown on the bottom part, but I don´t know if that´s possible..

I'm sure it is possible, but would not be easy to do.

However, it should be simple to just remove the artwork from the main player, but the hole left behind may look strange. Do I have your permission to try? What do you use to expand and compress the "wal" file.

[Victhor]

Sure you can, go ahead. But I warn you.. You are entering deep waters.. Here you have a couple of links to solve some questions : forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=345708. The first step is to rename the file as .zip, then unzip to a new folder and start digging from there. good luck!

[Aminifu]

Hi Victhor,

I don't know the first thing about making a WA skin, but I did spend over 25 years writing software. So I do know how to poke around and hack stuff. It does look complicated, but maybe I'll take a few months and try to learn the basics of WA skin coding.

Anyway, I was right. It is simple to remove the album art from the main player. Telling me I could rename the .wal to .zip was the key information and made it very easy. There is no need to rename the skin archive file. I used an archiving app called "7-Zip". It lets you look at and edit files within an archive without having to unzip the whole archive. It expands a selected text file to a text editor (or a selected image to an image editor) and if you make any changes it re-compresses the file and puts it back in the archive, replacing the original file. You can also expand a compiled program file within the archive to a hex editor for making changes, but that is 'very, very deep water' and I'm glad I did not have to do that!

After a little poking around, I saw that the file I needed to change was "groups.xml". It contains the " <groupdef id="cpro.normal.overlay"> " which controls what elements the main player contains. Removing the line " <albumart x="112" y="24" w="57" h="57" relatx="0" stretched="1" notfoundImage="cover.notfound" sysregion="1"/> " from this group definition removes the album art image from the main player, without affecting the other windows where album art is displayed.

While there is no hole where the image was, I was also right that the result looks a little strange. You can quickly do this yourself to see what I mean. I think I need to replace the album art image with a graphic or figure out how to get the left side panel (that contains the clock, spectrum analyzer, etc) to expand a little to the right. You're the graphic artist, what do you think?

In time, I may even figure out how to get the spectrum analyzer's fire color option to work. Having the spectrum analyzer look like dancing fire would be a nice effect.

The feature you would like, only having the album art in the main player when it is not being shown elsewhere, would require 2 overlay definitions (1 with and 1 without the album art) and the logic needed (a few carefully placed flags) to know when to switch between them. This would take me awhile to figure out, but the guys at cPro should be able to do it with no problem. But, I have no idea what it would take to get one of them to do this.

[Aminifu]

Hi Victhor,

Update on the main player modification.

I have not figured out how to increase the width of the left side panel (need to do the research, thanx for those links). So I decided to use the "art_notfound.png" graphic to replace the album art for now. The original image is too dark, so I replaced it with the corresponding one from the Big Bento skin that looks like a llama profile ("notfoundXXL.png").

To get this to work, I renamed the Bento image to "art_notfound.png" and added " <layer x="112" y="24" w="57" h="57" relatx="0" stretched="1" regionop="1" image="cover.notfound"/> " to the cpro normal overlay group definition. This modified syntax of the original albumart element is probably not completely correct, but it mostly works.

There are 2 problems. The border around the llama is not right. The left and top are much thicker than the right and bottom. This may be some kind of scaling artifact. The other problem is the lines (made of dots) above and below the track and album names are visible extending almost half way into the right side of the image. I guess the image is semitransparent, letting this background artifact from the right side panel show thru. Or maybe these lines are displayed on top of the image, its impossible to tell from just looking. Anyway, I think it looks pretty good (for a first draft) and it changes color with the color themes, which is very cool.

I may not be able to use this graphic anyway, if there are WA copyright issues. So this is just to show the concept. If you like what I've done, feel free to use the idea.

[Victhor]

One thing about the classic vis, now I remember the color definition I used wont let you change it from the code, it's a piece of graphic defined in "mainframe.png" what controls that. You can make it as a gradient, I did it flat cause it suits the LCD style of the skin. See the cPro tuts, it's easy to change.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by Victhor

One thing about the classic vis, now I remember the color definition I used wont let you change it from the code, it's a piece of graphic defined in "mainframe.png" what controls that. You can make it as a gradient, I did it flat cause it suits the LCD style of the skin. See the cPro tuts, it's easy to change.

Do you mean it is easy to change to another fixed representation or to enable the listed options of "Normal", "Fire", and "Line"? Also, if you're talking about changing an image, I'll pass. Code mods I can do, but I have no artistic skills.

Anyway, I found a free, non-copyrighted, graphic online of the diamond with lightning bolt image that WA uses. I'm currently using it to replace the album art in the main player window. It looks pretty good, a bit of jaggedness on 1 edge due to it being re-sized. I don't know how, but it's dominant colors (brown and gold) also change with the selected color scheme (dark and light shades of the dominant main player color). The extended dotted lines from the main player's right-side panel do not detract from the appearance of this graphic.

Downloads of Satin Port from the main site are up to 289,332. And its still the first skin listed when browsing skins (how did you manage that ).

[Victhor]

For those having trouble using the skin ("guru errors" when refreshing or docking the player), I re uploaded it with a temporary fix (removed the skin shadow that was causing the problem):

(Regular version)
(Carbon version)

[Aminifu]

Hi Victhor,

I don't think I'm getting any "guru errors", what are they?

There is 1 negative consequence of the mod I made to show a static image in the main player instead of the track's artwork. Sometimes the artwork reflection on the 'Now Playing' tab is doubled. 2 reflections are squeezed in side by side below the main image. Skipping the track and returning to it corrects this error. It mostly happens when first starting a Winamp session or with the first track of a new playlist. Any ideas on why this is happening? I don't see any oblivious connection between the 2 sections of code. Minor thing, but hopefully it will not occur with cPro 2.0.

[pjn123]

@Aminifu
Haven't used the Now Playing tab so much lately but saw what your talking about. The albumart used to freeze Winamp until it was loaded a few versions back (in all skins). Luckily that was fixed but I think that broke NP a bit. When the cover isn't loaded quick enough the reflection is broken. That's because the reflection is updated on track change.

But I think this is now fixed thanks to the .onAlbumArtLoaded(boolean success) function where the reflection will now refresh.

If you want you can test it with the updated scripts in the attachment.
Just copy to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp\Plugins\ClassicPro\engine\widgets\Data\NowPlaying

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by pjn123

But I think this is now fixed thanks to the .onAlbumArtLoaded(boolean success) function where the reflection will now refresh.

If you want you can test it with the updated scripts in the attachment.

Hi pjn123,

Thank you very much. Those scripts seem to have fixed the reflection problem.

[Victhor]

Now that we´re talking about the Now playing, there is a "bug" that nobody seems to have noticed and I was about to ask someone (cough cough PJN cough..) at some time after the release; when you have NP open and you shrink the skin down to the minimum, somehow it overpass my setting and goes to the normal minimum (I don´t know where does it takes that number, cause all the other windows works fine), breaking my design (which needs to have that changed, modified width).

Any ideas why?

[Aminifu]

Hi Victhor,

In what way is the design broken? The smallest I've made the skin is that which still lets me see over half of my widest song titles in the playlist window and everything seems to work ok.

On the general topic of skin sizing, I think the best way to work with the media library window is with it maximized. I hope cPro 2.0 will include an option to automatically maximize when switching to that window and returning to the skin's previous size when switching away from it.

[pjn123]

Originally Posted by Victhor

Now that we´re talking about the Now playing, there is a "bug" that nobody seems to have noticed and I was about to ask someone (cough cough PJN cough..) at some time after the release; when you have NP open and you shrink the skin down to the minimum, somehow it overpass my setting and goes to the normal minimum (I don´t know where does it takes that number, cause all the other windows works fine), breaking my design (which needs to have that changed, modified width).

Any ideas why?

Don't understand/see what your talking about. Maybe a picture?

Originally Posted by Aminifu

On the general topic of skin sizing, I think the best way to work with the media library window is with it maximized. I hope cPro 2.0 will include an option to automatically maximize when switching to that window and returning to the skin's previous size when switching away from it.

Good idea!

[pjn123]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

On the general topic of skin sizing, I think the best way to work with the media library window is with it maximized. I hope cPro 2.0 will include an option to automatically maximize when switching to that window and returning to the skin's previous size when switching away from it.

What would be the best way to do this?

1) Include an option on tab right click: "Automatically view tab in fullscreen"

2) Toggle the fullscreen mode if the user open a tab by double clicking on a tab.


I like #2 because even though I will find #1 useful, I know that I will be annoyed if it does this all the time .
O.. and the easiest to implement hehe
If the tab opens by itself (video playing) this wont be helpful though.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by pjn123

What would be the best way to do this?

1) Include an option on tab right click: "Automatically view tab in fullscreen"

2) Toggle the fullscreen mode if the user open a tab by double clicking on a tab.


I like #2 because even though I will find #1 useful, I know that I will be annoyed if it does this all the time .
O.. and the easiest to implement hehe
If the tab opens by itself (video playing) this wont be helpful though.

I was only considering the media library window because I always have to maximize it (so much stuff in there) to use it. I suppose an auto-maximize option would be useful for some of the other windows also. Anyway, I like #1 because the ML, PL, and NP tabs are the only ones I leave visible, the others I set to auto close (since they open by themselves when needed).

However it is implemented, this addition would be an improvement over having to use the maximize control when switching to a window that is mostly used (or viewed) at a fullscreen size.

[Victhor]

Picture note.

I would really like to solve this because it also happens in the cpro skin I´m working on right now (but in there it happens with the "minimum_h"!!).

[pjn123]

@Victhor - Mmm strange. Looks like a Winamp bug. Winamp just ignores the minimum_w value and if it wasn't for the resizer stopping at 317 it would go smaller to zero. Anyway, the script that does the resizing will now check what the minimum_w is on start rather that just assume that it is 317.
PS: Think your Satin Port skin can get an award for the most modded cpro skin :P
Easiest way to find out if I broken something with edits to cpro1's engine is just to run your skin hehe
EDIT: The bug happens on any widget tab. So probably using something that temporary breaks the minimum_w feature.

@Aminifu - I'm afraid that #2 will have to do for now. Planning on releasing a xui object that people can just use like any other xml object in their skin for just the sui part of cpro2. For #2 the sui just shouts that it would like to toggle the fs mode. The player part then does the rest. But if noone wants to do the toggle/resize everything is still fine (so the skinner doesn't have to have a fullscreen button).

For #1 to work I'll have to check the current fullscreen state and then make a decision if the player should resize or not. So too much trouble for now(close to release) - maybe later

#2 is working now though

[Victhor]

Originally Posted by pjn123

PS: Think your Satin Port skin can get an award for the most modded cpro skin :P
Easiest way to find out if I broken something with edits to cpro1's engine is just to run your skin hehe

You still haven´t seen the most modded..

The truth is I based Satin on cPro Minimal because I coudn´t implement properly the play-pause script, that´s when I discovered another world.. I saw iron2000 is around again, I should thank him again =).

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by pjn123

For #1 to work I'll have to check the current fullscreen state and then make a decision if the player should resize or not. So too much trouble for now(close to release) - maybe later

#2 is working now though

Ok, good!

So, for example; I'm using the playlist editor window with a less than full screen size. I double click on the ML tab and the ML window opens in a full screen size (single click and it opens in the same size window as the PL editor). Then I single click on the PL tab and the playlist editor window opens back in the smaller window size it was before. If I double click on the PL tab instead, the playlist editor window opens in a full screen size. Then if I single click on the PL tab, the playlist editor window shrinks back to the smaller window size it was before.

Is that how things are working in the cPro 2.0 pre-release?

I'm being to see why you like this method better than #1. It is more convenient than a fixed option that would have to be changed to change functionality. Even for closed tabs, when they become visible, it is easier to double click them than use the standard maximize/restore toggle in the upper right corner of the overall skin.

[pjn123]

Double clicking the tab just toggles to fullscreen mode. So in your example when your ML is fullscreen and you single click the playlist it will stay fs. If you double clicked the PL tab it will go back to the original size.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by pjn123

Double clicking the tab just toggles to fullscreen mode. So in your example when your ML is fullscreen and you single click the playlist it will stay fs. If you double clicked the PL tab it will go back to the original size.

Ok, I understand. Thank you for putting this in.

[AngelaXXX]

Here we go with the DarkPink-skin

Hm did I say "easy as pie"? I didnt have in mind that the Buttons had to be altered too...

Btw on these supercool AMOLED Displays even pink looks great