Quinto Black CT - New Winamp Modern skin

[ariszlo]

Yes, that makes it clear.

[PeterK.]

Oh my! I have finally understood how to code a gradient. Yes, to code, not to draw. One cannot use a drawn gradient for the background of a resizable window - looks awful. But a gradient created using some code lines is the perfect solution for such purpose.

The gradient on the screenshot is nothing fancy - just two horizontal lines going from bright blue to dark blue. But it looks kinda glossy does it not? Maybe we could find another "fields of application" for that nice effect. (I still would love to have backgrounds in this modern acrylic style).

Any genius coder out there?

[PeterK.]

I just found out that adding my own background files to the CD Coverflow is surprisingly easy. Let me walk you through the process:

1) Click on the right mouse button in order to gain access to the context menu, scroll down to Add Own Background:



2) A small additional window will pop up on your desktop with an edit field and a button. Here you are supposed to paste the full address to the bitmap file of your choice. For example: G:\Quinto Black CT\Other Skins\Komodo\backgrounds\01.jpg. You can use *.bmp, *.jpg or *.png files.



After a click on the GO button the background is changed. Kinda cool huh?

Please remember that Winamp will resize the background pictures depending on the chosen window size. I will provide the exact sizes for every window size so you can crop your pictures accordingly and avoid being stretched.

P.S. I took the liberty of using background pictures from Victhor's Komodo skin for the presentation purpose.

[ariszlo]

As its name implies, Quinto should be the fifth official Winamp skin:

1. Classic
2. Modern
3. Bento
4. Big Bento
5. Quinto

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

As its name implies, Quinto should be the fifth official Winamp skin:

1. Classic
2. Modern
3. Bento
4. Big Bento
5. Quinto

It is a nice coincidence but Quinto was originally chosen as a Latin name. I just did not stumble upon the other meaning back then, found out later after the first release.

[PeterK.]

I am having some troubles here with key strokes. It is a neat feature as far as CD Coverflow window is concerned but as soon as there is another window open keyboard becomes useless. Like in this example:



I pasted the full address and file name into the edit field and would like to ...

1) confirm my choice by hitting "enter" - too bad Winamp starts playing a song because the key stroke "enter" is coded as "play current song" in the cd-coverflow.m file

2) move my mouse pointer to the left (in order to change a letter/number) and I cannot because "left" and "right" keys move album covers.

Somehow the command System.onKeyDown(string key) seems to work globally and not locally. I have no clue how to "isolate" those key strokes and keep them "within" one window. There is a post that describes exactly this behavior. Apparently, this onKeyDown() command used to work locally prior to version 5.53. Unfortunately nothing has changed.

What to do, what to do?

[gaekwad2]

He said he changed the line "to check for the context".
Wildly guessing (and knowing nothing about maki), is there a way to check which window is active?

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

There is a post that describes exactly this behavior.

He writes:

Originally Posted by clementj

However I changed that line to check for the context, and the core change is not a problem for me any more in 5.53.

Have you investigated his skin?

Off. Nice to see he has Hungarian music in his playlist.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by gaekwad2

He said he changed the line "to check for the context".

Yes, but this is not the point here. This guy "killed" a lot of context menus which would appear while typing certain letters.

Originally Posted by gaekwad2

Wildly guessing (and knowing nothing about maki), is there a way to check which window is active?

Much better!
I was aware of the command guiObject.isActive() which is used to detect whether an object (be it a button, text line or layer) is visible/active. And I also knew that I cannot apply guiObject's commands to layouts, let alone containers - since these are not guiObjects. This is what I get to see while compiling:

isActive : not a member function nor an event of class 'Container' at cd_coverflow.m:639 [65] :

But!
Browsing through the script files of the Winamp Modern Folk Dancer Skin I realized that the following line main.isActive() is used in combination with key strokes. So I looked into the variable declaration and noticed that "main" is declared as a layout. Hence it is possible to use it with layouts of a container! Huh!

Now, the coverflow script "looks" whether the Add Own Background-container (=window) has focus (= is active). If yes I can use keyboard while typing the path to my bitmap files - and if no: I can browse through the album covers. Perfect! I hope it stays this way.

A huge THANK YOU to both of you!

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Have you investigated his skin?

How did you find it? I know the "Houston Computer Freak Page" is down. And I did not search further.

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Off. Nice to see he has Hungarian music in his playlist.

The only "Hungarian" music I know!

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

Now, the coverflow script "looks" whether the Add Own Background-container (=window) has focus (= is active). If yes I can use keyboard while typing the path to my bitmap files - and if no: I can browse through the album covers. Perfect! I hope it stays this way.

I knew you would solve it!

Originally Posted by PeterK.

How did you find it? I know the "Houston Computer Freak Page" is down.

I just googled for it.

Originally Posted by PeterK.

The only "Hungarian" music I know!

Yes, Germans could compose good Hungarian music.

[PeterK.]

Ben, who is Quinto's big fan, wishes all component would have the same width - so you can stack all of them up like a pile of old, good Hi-Fi stereo parts.

I still refuse to make the Main Player smaller because it would "crash" the entire design, which was planed to have sharp songinfo text lines in the first place. In order to achieve this goal I had to choose 1x1-pixel for size for the smallest part of the text - and by doing so the Main Player got that wide.

(If the size of a pixel contains decimals like 0.2345x0.2345 it will look blurry. You must avoid decimals if the text should look sharp.)

On the other side, cutting the side panels smaller would "shake" the design concept - this just does not look right to me:



Another request Ben made was to - at least - add some feet under the components, so they look more like Hi-Fi components. This is not a bad idea, especially because these feet could be "switchable" - show them if you like them - hide, if you do not. I will think about it. CD Coverflow with own backgrounds is finished and I could image to add those feet for the upcoming update.

And a huge THANK YOU to Ben for making those release posts!

[PeterK.]

By the way: If I add those feet to every component the whole Hi-Fi rack will be higher than 1080 pixel, which would mean user sitting in front of a Full HD display/monitor cannot have those devices stacked up. This would also mean one has to keep the Main Player on the left side while all other parts would cover monitor's right area. And in this case, different sizes should not be a problem.

What do you think?

[ariszlo]

I don't mind if you add an option to "grow legs" but I will leave it unchecked. I prefer it as it is now. If I want legged windows, there are plenty of skins that provide them: Pimeer, Winamp Media Tower, JVC Tape, etc.

[ariszlo]

Well, I was wrong about "plenty". Looking through my Modern skin collection, I have only found 5 more skins with legged windows: EPS High End System, Lexicon, lexicon2, RetroTech and ZDL Gold Stack Reel-to-Reel.

[PeterK.]

For those of you who would love to increase the "Hi-Fi Feeling" while having my skin on the desktop there is a beautiful Pioneer Plug-In showing two loudspeakers, which are movable. Give it a try!

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Well, I was wrong about "plenty"...

Like I already mentioned, after giving it a thought, I do not like the idea of adding additional feet/legs (you name it) because the Hi-Fi rack would be higher than a Full HD monitor/display, which would force the user to "tear it apart" and put the Main Player on the left and all the other components on the right side of the monitor/display. And having the parts spread on the desktop in this manner should not be a problem anymore regarding the different component sizes.

[PeterK.]

A short update on "Add Own Background" window.

There is a very interesting thread about how to grab a file from your hard drive and use it for a variety of purposes within a skin.

Some skinner used it in their work like leechbite in his KameleonDUI skin. And since I am always eager to make things easier for me and the user, I tried to add such feature to the "Add Own Background" but in a shorter version. Meaning: there is a button which opens Windows' standard "Open/Save-Dialog Box" (!!!) so you can browse through folders and click on your new background file instead of typing the full path into the edit field. And in addition to this there is also a preview window for a double check.

A first draft of this window looks like this:

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

There is a very interesting thread about how to grab a file from your hard drive and use it for a variety of purposes within a skin.

The Faces tab in iron2000's cPro - KAO skin has three buttons that allow you to do that: one for the main player, one for shade mode and one for the notifier. The skin requires the ClassicPro plugin.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

...The skin requires the ClassicPro plugin.

Knowing what happened to Skinconsortium I am today very glad I decided to skin Quinto in the old-fashioned way without any additional plug-in.

[PeterK.]

A new screenshot:

[PeterK.]

A neat idea.

As if it was not enough that you can have ...

• transparent background

• no background

• your own background

in Coverflow's window, you also can have an animated background from now on. Just hide the background and put Coverflow window exactly over Milkdrop window:

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

in Coverflow's window, you also can have an animated background from now on.

Winamp rocks and Quinto makes it rock more!

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Winamp rocks and Quinto makes it rock more!

[PeterK.]

I would like to ask if someone knows a skin with a "clean" rotating circle? I am emphasizing the word clean because some useless junk appears during my circle's rotation:

[PeterK.]

As many of you know Quinto Black CT gets "dark" when playback is stopped. A lot of buttons and displays all over the entire skin get dimmed. The purpose of this feature is to indicate that no music is being played and hence the player (Winamp) is in off state.

According to that scheme I also added this feature to Album covers on:

- Playlist Editor
- CD Coverflow
- CD Case
- ART window

And since some users find it weird and "unrealistic" I am asking you to share your opinion and let me know whether we should keep this dimmer on Album covers or get rid of it.

[PeterK.]

Now this is my very last Christmas present for you this year:



The original vinyl is as big as the CD window. I had to shrink it a bit so I could create and upload a gif, which was not bigger than 240KB.

How do you like it?

[PeterK.]

Once again, Vinyl Record in original size:

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

I would like to ask if someone knows a skin with a "clean" rotating circle? I am emphasizing the word clean because some useless junk appears during my circle's rotation:

Take a look at this one (https://www.deviantart.com/scottiesc...v1-2-679473033). It appears to have "clean" rotating circles. The volume knob in the Main Window and the cassette tapes in the Tape Window.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

Take a look at this one (https://www.deviantart.com/scottiesc...v1-2-679473033). It appears to have "clean" rotating circles. The volume knob in the Main Window and the cassette tapes in the Tape Window.

Thank you very much for your link Aminifu but I have to apologize because I meant rotation using Layer.fx_onGetPixelR command and not Animation Layer (containing many images in a very long bitmap file).

Layer.fx_onGetPixelR calculates pixel's position during a rotation and needs only one bitmap image instead of multiple, which are shown one after another.

As you can see in the previous post I managed to rotate the label of the vinyl record by making the margin around the label bigger but still cannot rotate the entire vinyl because those weird edges pop up - I assume it is the same oddity which we already have seen with reflected album covers and which many times gave us corrupted images.

[ariszlo]

Do you mean the arced areas in the corners? If so, is it possible to remove them with regions?

Originally Posted by PeterK.

I would like to ask if someone knows a skin with a "clean" rotating circle? I am emphasizing the word clean because some useless junk appears during my circle's rotation:

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Do you mean the arced areas in the corners?

Yes, I mean those weird "edges" appearing during the rotation.

Originally Posted by ariszlo

If so, is it possible to remove them with regions?

Well, I must admit I have never done anything with regions, so you have to show me where and how. But on the other side something tells me that this idea will not help, because those black edges are not part of the bitmap file. They are calculated by the layer.fx() command during the rotation. I can only get rid of those "additional edges" when I set the distance between the center of the file (label here) and the corner very wide. But in my case this would mean that my vinyl bitmap must be bigger than the entire window/container - which is not possible. Hence all I could do was rotate the label.

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

Well, I must admit I have never done anything with regions, so you have to show me where and how.

Haven't you? Then how did you do this?

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

Haven't you? Then how did you do this?

This is "alphabackground" parameter for the Playlist Editor layout. Too bad Winamp's standard windows are not "alphabackground" compatible and that is why you cannot see the playlist in this window. I made a post about it here.

[ariszlo]

Okay, this is how you cut out areas with regions.

A region png has black and transparent areas. The shape and size of the black area defines the shape and size of the area you cut out.

Once you have a region png, you can define a region layer, which is an image layer with a sysregion="-2" attribute.

lozenge.zip contains a skin in which a lozenge-shaped hole is cut into an animation. The region png and the region layer are defined in xml/rotor.xml

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

...Once you have a region png, you can define a region layer, which is an image layer with a sysregion="-2" attribute...

Thanks for your explanation.

According to this post it only "works if desktop alpha is turned off". And this is not the case here because I must have desktop alpha turned on! Always. Anything related to alpha desktop being off is not important do my skin. Also you mentioned cutting of parts of the image: the background of my label image is transparent, so cutting of parts of it makes no change here.

I must add that those areas which appear during the rotation are "linked" to the position of the circle - because they change shape/size while the label rotates. Hence I am still convinced it is a bug within the Skinning Engine, which creates those edges.

[ariszlo]

Originally Posted by PeterK.

According to this post it only "works if desktop alpha is turned off".

That might have been true back then but regions do work with desktop alpha turned on in recent versions of Winamp.

Originally Posted by PeterK.

And this is not the case here because I must have desktop alpha turned on!

Let me repeat: regions do work with desktop alpha turned on.

Originally Posted by PeterK.

the background of my label image is transparent, so cutting of parts of it makes no change here.

sysregion="-2" erases everything in the defined area, not only the background.

Originally Posted by PeterK.

Hence I am still convinced it is a bug within the Skinning Engine, which creates those edges.

I agree but since I don't think it will ever be fixed, one has to rely on workarounds.

Originally Posted by PeterK.

Hence all I could do was rotate the label.

That is in fact a clever idea. I had not noticed that the disc was not rotating until I read it was not.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by ariszlo

...That is in fact a clever idea. I had not noticed that the disc was not rotating until I read it was not...

Ppsssssttt .... keep it secret!

Seriously, I do not think it would be necessary to rotate the entire vinyl record because you would not see it. Those light reflections would stay where they are and the rest is black with some grayish/blueish rings. We should also not forget the cpu usage behind such enormous calculations. I really doubt every Winamp user has a four-core-processor. So I am going to keep it as it is: label rotation it is!

And I am not going to touch the CD because that thingy rotates way toooo fast - hence there is nothing to see. This time it would be mandatory to make the entire CD rotate because of so many colors (coming form the transparent plastic and the coating/finish). But on the other hand, there was no old-fashioned/retro-feeling while listening to a CD because it was hidden in a CD drawer.

[Aminifu]

I agree that rotating the record label is enough. Is there a way to remove what appears to be a skip (near the end of every rotation) in the example provided in post #426?

The additions you are making for this skin keep getting better and better. Keep up the good work.

Thank you for removing the decimal part of the BPM value. The Winamp media library uses it to round up the whole number it displays, instead of just dropping it. What you've done is okay, since I don't think many people would notice this.

[PeterK.]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

I agree that rotating the record label is enough.

Originally Posted by Aminifu

Is there a way to remove what appears to be a skip (near the end of every rotation) in the example provided in post #426?

Do not worry! This skip is just a part of the GIF file which I had to cut in order to have it smaller than 240KB otherwise one cannot upload a GIF. (I wish I knew how Victhor did it once when he uploaded a 750KB gif-file - must be an admin privilege ). The label makes a perfect, smooth 360° rotation. Trust me.

Originally Posted by Aminifu

The additions you are making for this skin keep getting better and better. Keep up the good work.

Will do!

Originally Posted by Aminifu

Thank you for removing the decimal part of the BPM value.

I found a program which detects BPM in a song and saves it in the tag. And this program saves it with decimal, so it was the first time that I noticed there is a decimal point. At all.

[PeterK.]

And this is how both windows, Compact Disc and Vinyl Record look like if there is no saved album cover:





I decided to make those NO COVER backgrounds transparent. Otherwise half of the compact disc and vinyl would be hidden. Should we keep it like this?

Update: I forgot to mention that compact disc as well as vinyl record "move out" of their "boxes" when a song is played and "hide back" when user hits stop.