Windows Media Player 11-skin [MM3] v1.3 released

[gege]

Morten, I've found some strange behaviors, but I don't know if they are MM3-A4 bugs or are related to this skin:

1 - Open MM with this selected. The status bar is shown ABOVE the player, as it is supposed to be. Hide the player (with Ctrl+Alt+L or Show>Player menu). Unhide the player (again with Ctrl+Alt+L or Show>Player menu). The status bar is displayed BELOW the player.
Close MM, start it again and the status is back ABOVE the player...

2 - Don't know how to correctly describe this in english but I will try: When I hover the pointer over the player buttons, there's a nice FADE effect from one state to another. The same occurs with the system buttons (minimize, maximize, close) in the float player (is this the correct name?) mode. But in full mode (again, is this the correct name?) system buttons change suddenly, without that fade effect.

3 - When I start adding tracks to the library, the progress bar goes crazy, with a lot of flickering and alternating its place above the status bar and over the player... (Edit: I've found out this occurs with all skins. There's a progress bar that appears and disappears repeatedly if "Automatically analyze volume of unanalyzed tracks" is checked. Looks like I've maximized the "analyzing volume" progress bar once, now it starts maximized, causing a really ugly effect. So, it's MM bug)


BUT I must say the skin is going great. Congrats.

[Morten]

Morten, I've found some strange behaviors, but I don't know if they are MM3-A4 bugs or are related to this skin:

1 - Open MM with this selected. The status bar is shown ABOVE the player, as it is supposed to be. Hide the player (with Ctrl+Alt+L or Show>Player menu). Unhide the player (again with Ctrl+Alt+L or Show>Player menu). The status bar is displayed BELOW the player.
Close MM, start it again and the status is back ABOVE the player...

2 - Don't know how to correctly describe this in english but I will try: When I hover the pointer over the player buttons, there's a nice FADE effect from one state to another. The same occurs with the system buttons (minimize, maximize, close) in the float player (is this the correct name?) mode. But in full mode (again, is this the correct name?) system buttons change suddenly, without that fade effect.

3 - When I start adding tracks to the library, the progress bar goes crazy, with a lot of flickering and alternating its place above the status bar and over the player... (Edit: I've found out this occurs with all skins. There's a progress bar that appears and disappears repeatedly if "Automatically analyze volume of unanalyzed tracks" is checked. Looks like I've maximized the "analyzing volume" progress bar once, now it starts maximized, causing a really ugly effect. So, it's MM bug)


BUT I must say the skin is going great. Congrats.

1 - MM bug. Thx for letting me know.

2 - This is a tricky one. People needs different behaviours on buttons like that because in the way they are implemented. Close, Min and Max doesn't need that effect, so it should be able to define if you want to use this effect or not. Will be fixed if my request goes through, although it's not an important bug.

3 - MM bug. Will tell the team if they do not see it here.

[rovingcowboy]

3 is in fact the way monkey works it is just doing it so fast you think its a bug. monkey opens the status bar to do the adding of the songs.
and to do the volume anaylizing of the songs. and albums.
if you have a fast computer or have the options to anaylize
turned off then monkey closes the status bar after each song
faster making it jump up and down like monkey ate mexican jumping beans.

it is not really a bug but it can bug the crap out of you when you see it.

and it has been reported in the beta test forum already.

however there is a bug with the player and this simular action of jumping or jerking it is with the mouse hover over of the ratings area in the players.

it won't show up on mortens skin
since it looks like he did not put the ratings in the player.

[gege]

Morten, I have some additional issues I'd like to point:


a) The "Switch to micro Player" button is behaving strangely:
. Open MM and press "Switch to micro Player". MM goes to the taskbar.

. Restore MM.
. Press "Switch to micro Player" again. Nothing happens. ???

. Press "Minimize player".
. Press "Switch to micro Player" again. MM goes to the task bar again.

. Restore MM.
. Press "Switch to micro Player" again. Nothing happens again. ???

. From any "nothing happens" state, press "Minimize player" and go back to full mode.
. Press "Switch to micro Player" again. MM goes to the task bar again.

So, it looks like the sequence "Restore from micro player" > "Switch to micro Player" is not working properly.




b) - If the album art in not exactly square, its thumbnail in the player is displayed with white "bars" above and below the cover. IMO, this "bars" should be transparent.




c) - If an artwork is almost completely black, the thumbnail is very hard to distinguish (2). I know it is exactly the same behavior of WMP (1), but it could be improved by adding a subtle semi-transparent border around the thumbnail (3).

[Morten]

a) Bug in MM. Will be fixed.
b) Feature request. Thanks.
c) I'm not quite sure. When will it be activated, and when is it not?
d) This one you didn't wrote, but there actually seems to be a bug placing the three systembuttons in the main-player 1 px vertical off-set. This is a problem when packing the files in a .msz-file. Will look into it

Thanks for commenting these issues. It will make this skin only better

[gege]

a) Bug in MM. Will be fixed.
c) I'm not quite sure. When will it be activated, and when is it not?
d) This one you didn't wrote, but there actually seems to be a bug placing the three systembuttons in the main-player 1 px vertical off-set. This is a problem when packing the files in a .msz-file. Will look into

c) Look at my mockups. I just added a white square with opacity set to 15%, then I pasted some artworks... results below.
I was thinking you could simply add this square to the background, and thus it would be always "active". But, what about when there's no artwork? I don't know... Maybe you better leave the whole thing as it is now...




d) Yeah, I'd noticed this but I simply forgot to mention...

[rovingcowboy]

when there is no album art the no album art image should show up.

[Opeth]

Dude that skin looks awesome but the link is dead

[Morten]

Dude that skin looks awesome but the link is dead

Yeah. The forum is down. I'll upload to an alternate server in 5 seconds

Edit;

Download link #2;
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FOFP44VP

[Big_Berny]

Yes a border like suggested (c)) would be cool. But the solution for non-square arts could be better: I'd just add 1 pixel to each side for the white semi-transparent background.

[Morten]

I think this is something which should be done possible via the skinning-module. This will be addressed long before MM3 final, I can promise you that!

[rovingcowboy]

you did not understand the last message i did.

so i'll put it in a different way.

all it takes is morten to make a black image with a border.
for there to be a border when there is no album art.

[Blake]

This skin is meant to look as much like WMP11 as possible, so doing that would defeat the purpose of it.

[Morten]

Well, this is an authentic WMP11 skin so it gets a blue note instead. And this is a developer concern, not a skinner concern as of now.

[rovingcowboy]

yep i know that guys but they were asking how to have a border. so i was letting them know..