Yet Another New Skin Thread

[Strike&Co.]

Screenshots and notes at http://www.muskingum.edu/~rmusgrav/skin.html

It's a picture skin, not one of the uber-cool non-rect "I Am A Photoshop God" things, but that doesn't keep me from having [fun and] problems with it.

Problem #1: Skinning the components.
Mostly I can just get the skin to forget that there is anything but the main window. Though I have had windows that were skinned, but displayed nothing else (just the borders & background that stdframes should have); almost like they're not getting the content="<stuff>" ?? I also got something really interesting, when I told it to make the playlist, then defined the stdframe stuff -- I got a default-like playlist, but with the stdframe background image where the scrollbar background should be, and as the background for the titlebar.
And whats up with the WinampAbstractionLayer version="0.7" stuff in the WACS folders? Did they not update these? Are they worth borrowing & patching, or should I start from scratch?

Problem #2: Dragging animated layers.
Instead of a seekerbar, I'm using an animated layer. The problem is, I can't get it to be draggable -- once the mouse goes off of where the bar originally was, it picks up the underlying background and drags all of WinAmp around instead.

Problem #3: Remaking the Thinger
I've got a Thinger-like menu I really like, but I'd love to steal the Thinger icons so I don't have to even think about skinning the Thinger.

Problem #4: (Non)scrolling backgrounds
In the skins I've looked at, the background for the playlist scrolls up and down along with the playlist.. is there any way to avoid this? (As I haven't been able to skin components at all yet, I haven't had a chance to try to mess with this myself)

I'm also sure there are a lot of ways I could make this thing look better... Graphics aren't my specialty, which is why I'm borrowing the background image. They're fun to play with though, so feel free to throw suggestions at me along with the rotten veggies.

[More notes: I've been developing this in #488. Should I grab the newer builds for development purposes?
And if posting the current .wal would help, I can do that too. ]

[Da_Pipe]

i like the picture. Where'd you get it?

[Strike&Co.]

From www.Merekatcreations.com by way of Megatokyo.

Merekat rocks.

[Da_Pipe]

you're right, Merekat is good.

[Atmo]

All pictures and content of this site are copyright 2002 Kristen Perry. No reproduction, distribution or public display allowed without written consent by Kristen Perry.

I hope you've got permission.

[Strike&Co.]

Yup, did that before posting the screenshots.

(Oh, and 'Happy Thanksgiving' to any USAmericans here.)

[Strike&Co.]

Got the stdframe thing fixed -- somehow I was using a macked up version of standardframe.maki. Figures it'd be something stupid.

Now I just have to figure out what I want the graphics for the stdframe to look like. If I can make concept art, I'll put up some screenshots after the weekend. If not, I'll see if I can post some "not doing this" screenshots.

I'm gonna poke at the Thinger a little, too. Between that and basic component skinning I should have something done by.... hm. Well, I'll shoot for Tuesday evening.

[jyvasaa]

some components add an icon to the thinger, so to display these components' thinger icons (maybe a coder here knows how to look for one of them), you can have the winamp icon become the thinger display window, make two triangles for left move and right move, and have an exit button in the u-r hand corner of the thinger ring. i slapped together a not-so-good layout; check out the attachment.

[Strike&Co.]

OK, new place for screenshots and updates:
http://www31.brinkster.com/strikebase/skin.html

To-Do:
1) Look at HAL_v1's 'Thinger' code and see if its worth borrowing for my thinger.
2) Winshade modes
3) Miscellaneous cleanup & tweaking (both code and graphics)

[J_Bloggs]

The thinger icons
<componentBucket id="thinger" x="16" y="1" w="90" h="23"/>

The scrolling buttons
<button action="CB_NEXT" image="thgr" x="112" y="8"/>
<button action="CB_PREV" image="thgl" x="4" y="8"/>


Change the x, y, w, h and images as you need them.


adding orientation="vertical" to the componentBucket MIGHT make it vertical, but someone else should say something if I'm wrong.

[Strike&Co.]

Er, no, AFAICT all that componentBucket line does is place the pre-made icons in a line somewhere.
The scrollbuttons are hooked into it with ' action="CB_NEXT" '...

HAL_v1 at least got the icons themselves into a .png for use as buttons or layers as desired.
If I can't find a way to dredge those out of the basic WA3 files I'm going to use his .pngs (or re-make them myself). The downside there is theres no way to support components that add icons to the thinger.. But then the math to make the circular Thinger can be done ahead of time instead of in the MAKI code.

[Strike&Co.]

Well, for now I'm gonna have a menu 'fake' thinger, and a right-click stdframe 'real' thinger.

Scripting question (using build #488):
(I know I had problems with a non-standard standardframe.m before, but I'm gonna try playing with the titlebar text on-the-fly, so thats the logical place to add my scriptage.)
My copy of standardframe.m calls onSetXuiParam(), which _is_ defined in the script. Does this call work? How does one normally setXuiParams (the only "setX" functions I found in std.mi were onSetXui and setXml)?

[edit]Well, maybe this won't be as hard as it looked. Theres a nice little titlebar.m in the wacs folder. We'll see if it'll get me anywhere.[/edit]

So I'll get to see how global Global things are, and how many times standardframe.m gets loaded. But not tonight, its naptime. If anyone can give me some pointers on how to get started, cool. If not, I'll try to post whatever I come up with.

Once I get this stuff finished & update the webpage I'll release a beta.. Hopefully before February, but we'll see.

[Strike&Co.]

After more stupid mistakes, I got the script running.. Doesn't mean it runs _right_.

Either I get titles of ":componenttitle" (using Text.getText()) or the title reverts to normal after about a second (via Text.setAlternateText()).
Is something un-setting the AlternateText, or is AlternateText supposed to work that way?

And/or does anyone know how to get the :componenttitle into a String w/o just having the string _be_ ":componenttitle"?
[edit] Yes, its ":componenttitle" and not ":componentname", if that makes a difference. [/edit]

I'd really like to use standardframe for everything, instead of having to specifically make each window.

[Strike&Co.]

OK, I've resorted to using a timer to keep refreshing the alternate text. Yay...

I think I'm still on track for a release before Easter. Just have to go over the graphics and I should have a beta ready..

[Strike&Co.]

Well, brinkster doesn't want to let me upload the 900-some KB .zip

So I've been stuck trying to have some friends beta-test, as well as actually having a job now.

I'm pretty close to being done, so if anyone wants a late beta version, contact me and we'll work something out.