Quinto Black CT - New Winamp Modern skin

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by gaekwad2

Call me anal but the proportions of the jewel case are wrong ...

Yes, the dimensions in those cd bitmaps are slightly off. And the reason for this oddity is quite plausible: I used a 500x500 pixel-cd-reference-png and completely neglected the proper width and height of the cd case. Additional thought was the fact that 500x500 pixel size is a very common cover dimension on the internet, which I totally wanted to keep in order to avoid cutting, resizing, let alone cropping of the downloaded cover bitmaps.

So let us make some corrections here. According to Wikipedia:

- CD's dimension is 120 mm
- CD jewel's dimension is 142x125 mm
- CD cover's dimension is 121x120 mm

How do you like it now?

P.S. Someone please confirm, that those dimensions are (on a standard 96dpi monitor) approximately correct. I work on a FullHD laptop and all skin components are smaller.

[gaekwad2]

The booklet sits further to the left, as do the bits that hold it in place. Somewhat like this:

[PeterK.]

The upcoming version 2.3 of my skin is getting ready.

I am very happy to announce that I found a REPEAT A-B script on the forum made in the year 2007 (!) by Egor Petrov. THANK YOU! This feature will be part of the TRACK BOOKMARKS window. Another small change is the background color of inactive song in the Playlist Editor which is dark red now.

And I decided to use just CD jewel bitmap. I got problems while implementing both of them (jewel and sleeve) into the context menu and had to cut it short.

Stay tuned!

[PeterK.]

For those of you who would prefer a smaller version of the cd case you can use the window scaling option in the context menu. It works surprisingly well!

[ReeferMan]

Hi!

I can't believe that i didnt found this skin earlier! Seriously its the best skin i ever used.
But i have one or two suggestions/wishes for a upcoming release

1. For God sake can you please adde some, or at least one, not so virulent (not sure if this is the correct word) color to the Spectrum Analyzer?

2. Maybe im just too dumb or my English isnt so good as i thought but i took me about an hour to find out how to change the Colour of the VU Meter
Sure there is a "Scale" Button but for my understanding it means that i can resize something! And after i tried everything else to change the colour i finally clicked the Scale Button and BAZINGA i could change the colors

And the last Point: Is it possible to turn of the "New Title" message, that appears with every new Song, somewhere?

And thanks again for the great Skin
Have a nice Weekend

Greetings, ReeferMan

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ReeferMan

Seriously its the best skin i ever used.

I am happy to hear that!

Originally Posted by ReeferMan

1. For God sake can you please adde some, or at least one, not so virulent (not sure if this is the correct word) color to the Spectrum Analyzer? .

And which one would suit you? Black bars on black background? Switch to Classic, which is somehow subtle.

Originally Posted by ReeferMan

i finally clicked the Scale Button and BAZINGA i could change the colors

Ok, I could have put SCALE COLOR in there, but I knew that Winamp users are smart guys & gals, they would find out pretty fast what is behind the SCALE button.

Originally Posted by ReeferMan

And the last Point: Is it possible to turn of the "New Title" message, that appears with every new Song, somewhere?

Do you mean the Notifier? Look in Options -> Quinto Black CT -> Notifications -> Never Show.

Originally Posted by ReeferMan

Have a nice Weekend

Same here.

[ReeferMan]

And which one would suit you? Black bars on black background? Switch to Classic, which is somehow subtle.

Good Question
Something thats not so bright, maybe the green you use for the VU Meter Display

Ok, I could have put SCALE COLOR in there, but I knew that Winamp users are smart guys & gals, they would find out pretty fast what is behind the SCALE button.

Well im from Germany, maybe thats the problem
Im sure i will never forget it now after i found it

Do you mean the Notifier? Look in Options -> Quinto Black CT -> Notifications -> Never Show

.

That was it, thanks

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ReeferMan

Good Question
Something thats not so bright, maybe the green you use for the VU Meter Display

Please remember that I will never ever succeed in satisfying ALL OF YOU. And since you seem to be the only one complaining about it (all other wish bright colors!) I am going to keep it that way. Sorry.

[ReeferMan]

No need to say sorry, im more than happy with that Skin.
Thanks for your fast Answers

CU, ReeferMan

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

Now this is going to be tough! As if it was not enough that I lost my playlist and Media Library content after adding alphabackground, also Video- and Vis- windows are empty.

Further more, the skin clearOne seems to be buggy and I cannot understand/follow how the trick is done (=synchronization). The same approach on Ebonite is, on the other hand, awfully complex...

Then you might want to check out R C G by yOnez: it is less complex than Ebonite and less buggy than clearOne.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Then you might want to check out R C G by yOnez: it is less complex than Ebonite and less buggy than clearOne.

Thank you for your suggestion Ariszló, I do remember having this skin on my XP laptop years ago. Too bad that moving the Playlist Editor around the desktop shows empty areas which are caused by the synchronization process as already seen in Ebonite:



I made yesterday a request to the developer team to make Winamp's standard windows "alphabackground-compatible". If we are lucky, we might get it with the upcoming 5.8+ update and adding shadows or creating transparent frame would be a piece of cake. For the time being I am going to postpone altering the standard windows in order to have shadows.

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

Too bad that moving the Playlist Editor around the desktop shows empty areas which are caused by the synchronization process as already seen in Ebonite...

That might be a graphics driver issue. I tried to repeat the issue in both Windows 10 and XP (the latter in VMware) but I didn't have those white stripes.

Originally Posted by PeterK.

I made yesterday a request to the developer team to make Winamp's standard windows "alphabackground-compatible". If we are lucky, we might get it with the upcoming 5.8+ update and adding shadows or creating transparent frame would be a piece of cake.

I'm not that optimistic. "This version is not an ongoing project" and Radionomy's CEO, Alexandre Saboundjian says that on desktop, "the war is over".

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

... I'm not that optimistic...

Let us hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

[ariszlo]

That's a wise adage.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

that's a wise adage.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ariszlo]

Hello Peter,
Now that Winamp 5.8 plays videos, I have just noticed that VID_Info is not displayed in Quinto's Video window. Compare the "MPEG-4 AAC LC, H.264 Main@3 640x360" text in Bento and the lack of it in Quinto.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

... VID_Info is not displayed in Quinto's Video window ...

This is weird because both skins use exactly the same display tag, namely:

PHP Code:

display="VID_Info" 


Would you please upload the movie file on, say, sendspace and send me the download link via PM or mail, if the file is not too big?

[ariszlo]

Maybe, some layer is covering it?

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Maybe, some layer is covering it?

Well, on my machine I do see the Vid_Info line ...

[ariszlo]

OK, it is not a Quinto bug but a Winamp bug. This is how it happened: I started to play the video in Bento then switched to Quinto and VID_Info disappeared.

Now I launched up Winamp with the Quinto skin, started to play the video and VID_Info was there. Switched to Bento and VID_Info disappeared. So it is skin switching that breaks VID_Info.

Off: the background color of your statusbar matches Mouth's hat.

[PeterK.]

A case for this thread?

[PeterK.]

While making some polishing on Track Bookmarks- and Playlist Editor2-feature for the upcoming update I decided to get rid of FRAME button on the Color Themes window, which means there is now only frame: the standard one. Also it is not resizable anymore. I think the minimum width and height, which I set, should satisfy most of you. You still can use the scrollbar or move your mouse wheel, in order to rush through the list.

[PeterK.]

I would like to add a set of new cursors to my skin. In case you have some awesome ideas, please let me know.

[PeterK.]

While browsing the forum I found an interesting work-in-progress-skin made by pjn123. It is not even an entire skin, it is basically just a new Playlist Editor window created using the plDir.mi library. The intention was to have a playlist and cover pictures in one window, I suppose. I changed some stuff and updated this approach and would like to show you how it looks like:




Two limitations must be noted:

1) there is no Mouse-Scroll-Wheel-Functionality so we must grab the slider thumb for scrolling.

2) Double-Click on an entry does not work.

I am wondering if it was possible to add those two points via script to this component, since I find it a nice gimmick.

[PeterK.]

Despite these limitations I pointed to in my last post there is a very nice side effect of such list. Just change the orientation from "vertical" to "horizontal" and ... tada! We have a very nice CD COVERFLOW.

OK, it is not as nice and pretty looking as these. And this is caused by one simple Winamp restriction:

• one cannot draw the Album Cover with skewed edges so it looks like being in the background and not standing parallel to the main cover in front.

Let me see if I manage to understand and implement the Reflection Function made by leechbite in Victhor's Komodo skin. Such a CD Coverflow must have reflections!

[PeterK.]

Well, it turned out leechbite did a wonderful job. As if it was not enough that implementing his script worked like a charm, no, we now have not only a CD Coverflow, we have a moving CD Coverflow! Check out the attached video.

I will definitely send a huge, colossal THANK YOU to him and hope that Victhor does not mind.

P.S. I cannot upload the zip file, getting an error message. Apparently too big, although only 1,3MB.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

...

Let me see if I manage to understand and implement the Reflection Function made by leechbite in Victhor's Komodo skin. Such a CD Coverflow must have reflections!

The reflections in KOMODO-X Touchscreen do not work well. You randomly get the wrong reflections associated with the album covers on the PL+ and the Now Playing screens.

I assume you're not having this issue with your skin.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

The reflections in KOMODO-X Touchscreen do not work well. You randomly get the wrong reflections associated with the album covers on the PL+ and the Now Playing screens.

I assume you're not having this issue with your skin.

Yes, I also did have some small visual glitches regarding the reflection pictures. And I already got rid of one of them, which shows reflection, where there should not be one (see screenshot). You will not notice it unless you have a plain color background - in my case dark gray.
And the whole CD Coverflow seems to be awfully "heavy" - gives my processor hard time when clicking on a album cover during playback or moving the entire window around the desktop.

Having said that two questions arise:

• should we keep all the functions (like clicking and double-clicking on the album covers) or just make a "presentation list" showing the covers?

• should be keep the covers in a resizable and moveable window or create one, which is as wide and high as user's desktop and static? (like the "About Quinto" window)

[PeterK.]

I am adding the Tips & Tricks feature to my skin and would like to know what you ...

• found difficult to understand while using this skin

• what you did not know hot to use/enable/turn off or on

• what you could not find but saw on the release screenshots or read about it on the forum/changelog

• anything else that fits this Tips & Tricks criteria

Thanks.

[PeterK.]

I managed to create a Playlist window with its own background.

I do know there was a long struggle for a customized playlist background, someone even wrote a plug-in (sort of) ages ago, for which you needed an ATI graphics card, in order to see your own pictures as background.
Well here it is:



This approach still needs some "polishing", cannot be compared to the official and very sophisticated Playlist Editor content but could serve as a foundation for many more ideas to come.

[ariszlo]

Very good. And it has a wider scrollbar.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Very good. And it has a wider scrollbar.

Oh yes, it does. This is a slider thumb which you declare in the elements. So basically, you can have any scrollbar and thumb - no dependency on pledit.bmp attachment anymore.

[PeterK.]

Apparently there is a bug in the Skinning Engine and this is the reason why the reflected album covers are either wrong or look corrupted. So all I could think of right now would be a CD Coverflow without reflections and window: plain cover pictures on your desktop.

What do you think? Should we keep it?

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

What do you think? Should we keep it?

Yes, it would add an extra flavor.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Yes, it would add an extra flavor.

Extra flavor, eh? ... Deal!

[PeterK.]

A short update on the CD Coverflow.

I created a transparent window and put 9 (two more) album covers on it. Since making a resizable window was linked to some visual issues (like cut off covers) I decided to make the window static and add a context menu, which among other points also provides "CD Coverflow Size" option. And this would be the sizes:

- 608x290 (default)
- 1024x430
- 1366x550 (HD width)
- 1920x750 pixel (FullHD width)

The other context menu entries are:
- hide/show cover reflection
- change info text color (light/dark)
- hide/show window

Anything else?

[ariszlo]

What do you mean by hide/show window? Hide/show the coverflow or hide/show coverflow's translucent background that darkens the desktop wallpaper?

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

What do you mean by hide/show window? ...

How would you describe the fact that the background of the coverflow is hidden?

Oh, and by reflection I mean the light reflection on the album cover, not the (often wrong or corrupted) reflection of the album cover in the shiny floor. Maybe I should call it "Light Reflection".

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

How would you describe the fact that the background of the coverflow is hidden?

I would call it "Hide/show (translucent) background".

Originally Posted by PeterK.

Oh, and by reflection I mean the light reflection on the album cover, not the (often wrong or corrupted) reflection of the album cover in the shiny floor. Maybe I should call it "Light Reflection".

I got that. "Hide/show reflection" would be enough, imho. You do not need to complicate the description if you are only using one kind of reflection.

Alternatively, you could call it "glass effect", as Blayde and other early skinners called it.

[PeterK.]

I think I am going to leave it like this: