Spotify skins - MonkeyRok 5.1 updates (2010-05-06)

[Vyper]

To each his/her own. I happen to like those features.

[mattinsa]

best skin release I have ever used on MM - nice.

Just 2 things:

1. Clearer indication of "Now Playing" track - highlighting in white not so clear
2. Thinner mini-player,so can fit neatly in the menu bar of an application window.

anyway - thanks for this very professional, awesome skin - keep up the good work!

[rovingcowboy]

best skin release I have ever used on MM - nice.

Just 2 things:

1. Clearer indication of "Now Playing" track - highlighting in white not so clear
2. Thinner mini-player,so can fit neatly in the menu bar of an application window.

anyway - thanks for this very professional, awesome skin - keep up the good work!

the micro player is to fit on the task bar.

the mini / floatplayer is to be a place any where on desktop with out theme list views player.

[Deathaxe]

I am impressed. Very good job.

[Samuel_LB]

Thank you! Slick piece of work.
This is my favorite skin for now.

Sam

[kaoswaters]

Where the text shows the track, in the image you have 'Release Sense Goa 2007', I do not have that showing. ie above the album art, or anywhere else. Can you Help, thanks. PS ANOTHER excellent skin!!

[nohitter151]

Where the text shows the track, in the image you have 'Release Sense Goa 2007', I do not have that showing. ie above the album art, or anywhere else. Can you Help, thanks. PS ANOTHER excellent skin!!

Answer to that is in the first post:

-> To make a good imitation of Spotify, I recommend to use this skin in conjunction with Song Information Panel plugin. (See screenshot below). As Spotify, no track information is displayed on the main player, but it does on MiniPlayer. The player contains all the buttons (they are hidden in the logo).

[kaoswaters]

D'oh, thanks !

[Mizery_Made]

I'm loving a lot of this script. The color scheme, the icons, some really cool stuff in this one. I'd love to jump on the bandwagon. The trouble is, I've never used Spotify, heard the name before but beyond that, don't even know what it is. Thus, I wouldn't be using this skin "to look like Spotfiy," but more because I think it's a pretty great layout.

That said, I'm wondering if it would be possible for you to do a "Spotify Enhanced/Edited/Modified" or whatever you may wanna call it. One that would take the general design of what you have now, but implement some things that those used to other skins might miss. Such as some information on the player, like Title, Artist, Rating etc. And especially do something with the rating icons. That's my biggest turn-off from going ahead and switching over to this skin full-time. Too used to the stars, as they're easier distinguishable between a 3-star and 4-star for instance. Would it be possible to do up some edited stars, that would match the color scheme and such, and replace the bars?

[Eyal]

@mmfan: Thank you for your opinion.

@ mattinsa: Sorry but skins have no control on the Now Playing track. It defaults to bold, same color as other lines. It's a long dated request by many users on the forum.

Thank you Deathaxe, Samuel_LB, Kaoswaters !

@Mizery_Made. Thanks. I'm glad you like this skin. This first version is not perfect, I agree. It was on my plan to improve it to better fit MM.

I made a quick preliminary change to the skin for you to test; player with information, square ratings in playlists (not on player yet).
Download Spotify i temp: http://www.mediafire.com/?31mjozzoy2o and copy the .msz file to Mediamonkey\Skins\ directory.

Awaiting your feedback

Eyal
:~)

[Mizery_Made]

I'm not really sure what to say. The change made to the Rating indicators has some pluses and minuses to it, I feel. The change does make it easier to distinguish between the various rating amounts, which is good because it can be rather hard to correctly identify something as a 3.5 as opposed to a 3 on a quick glance for instance. However, I think design wise, it's a bad step. I've switched back and forth a few times, using it on each to try and get a proper feel for both... and the new ones just don't... look right. They're not as visually appealing, I think is what I'm trying to say. Though try as I might, I can't find a suggestion to offer that might blur the line a little more between usability and eye candy, so to speak.

I'm guessing that since this is a quick preliminary change, one of the other issues will sort itself out when you dive into this skin a little more. That being that the player is no longer "connected" to the main window. I don't mean that as if it's mistakenly come un-docked, but more in the since that it looks as though it's just the Mini-Player hovering at the bottom of the main window. The initial player looked as though it was all apart of the window and such. There's also the close, minimize, etc buttons. However, like I said, this is probably because you simply copied the information from the mini-player over for the main player or something.

I think it's a good idea that you've added a display for some information regarding the currently playing track, especially since the currently playing track doesn't always have to be in the Now Playing window/node. I know you suggested to use the Songs Panel script for this ability, but not everyone may want to, and be used to a skin offering it by default. At the moment though, I'm not that big of a fan of the way it's displayed though. It may stem from the fact that most of the skins I have used for a considerable length of time have a section roped off where information such as Title and Artist are displayed prominently, or that I keep expecting the text string displayed right there to be the file(s) shown/selected string. It might just be something I'd need to get used to.

Now though, I've got something to say regarding both versions of the skin. There seems to be an issue with tooltips. It seems to be specific to your skin, as I've checked the ones that come installed with MM by default as well as ZuneSkin, and this 'issue' isn't present for them. It pertains to the basic (not "show all information") tooltip that pops up in the track listing views (main window and now playing window) when a string is too long for the column. It seems to only be certain fields, while others go unaffected. Title seems to be fine, but with the Artist column, some strings can be cut off while others display with a box too long.

Take the string "Lil' Jon; The East Side Boyz; ft.; 8Ball; Bun B; E-40; Petey Pablo". When this artist entry is hovered over, it displays almost correct, except for the fact that only half of the "O" displays. Meanwhile, with the string "Lil' Jon; The East Side Boyz; ft.; Krayzie Bone; Mystikal", the final "A" only partially displays while the "L" goes missing. A third example is "Lil' Jon; The East Side Boyz; ft.; Chyna Whyte; Too Short" where the hook on the "R" is cut short, while the T goes missing. All three of these examples, when the track is the one currently playing (and receives the bolded text), the string fully displays, but the tooltip box looks as though it's a few spaces too long. Enough to fit two or three characters in maybe.

No clue why it might be doing this, though like I said, on the other six skins I checked for this on, this behavior wasn't present. It does affect both the initial skin release, as well as the modified version you put up. Another affected column is "Filename," as the "P" in "MP3" has the right edge cut off, while the "3" is completely missing. The Now Playing thing is present there as well. *Scratches Head*

[Eyal]

Thank you very much Mizery_Made. Generally speaking, I came to the same opinion as you.

Ratings
You may be right when you say it breaks the visual feeling. It does look right (B) with one rectangle per star. Original rating is based on 4 lines per star, and when mouse hover it steps two lines at time (half star). I got used to it after using it a while, but like you said, it's too different from the stars system, as it's too difficult to visually evaluate the rating. An alternative would be (C) with 2 squares per star, for a total of 10 squares. Again it's quite different from (A), I think it doesn't break the visual aspect so much, but still different from the 5-stars rating system. Personally I don't like.



As I don't want to put stars, technically it's still limited by ratings size; each star must be exactly 16 pixels width. I made a long reflection about ratings in this skin. As it has been already downloaded more than 500 times, Ultimately I will leave it as is. As the saying goes, the first idea is best.

All suggestions are welcomed though.


Player
Like you said, with info and rating it doesn't look merged to the window. I just can't see how and where to put track info without altering the size/aspect. So I'm glad SongInformation panel came to the rescue. BTW you can put the panel on any other position (see Vyper's screenshot).


Tooltips
Sorry, I never noticed that thing. I think it's due to used font. Microsoft Sans Serif. I like this clean font and is /almost/ same size as Arial or Tahoma. I can confirm it's doing the same with my other skins using the same font, Carbon and Helium. I don't think i'll change the font for this issue I consider minor.


Thanks again for your comments.

Eyal
:~)

[Mizery_Made]

It all pretty much makes sense. I think though that option C for the ratings would be at least a good alternative to offer. It seems like a good compromise between something easily recognizable while also not looking as out of place as B does. That's just me though. I do love the originals though to a degree, as the smaller bars do allow for a more fluid looking slide up the scale (much like an equalizer bar), as that's a neat little effect.

One major drawback to this skin is the Auto-Organize window. That thing is horrendous! The yellow in contrast to the rest of the skin, the light text coloring being lost in said sea of yellow and worse yet, the grey... oh the nightmares.

[Eyal]

One major drawback to this skin is the Auto-Organize window. That thing is horrendous! The yellow in contrast to the rest of the skin, the light text coloring being lost in said sea of yellow and worse yet, the grey... oh the nightmares.

Yes I know. This is common to all dark skins with light text color.
Nothing skinners can do about it. Yellow/grey background colors are pre-defined and hard-coded in MM. Same for the SearchBox and Tools|Extensions text color. What a shame. After years of complaining about this, I'm still not sure developers are aware of this problem.

See this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=42831

[DreadM]

Greetings

All suggestions are welcomed though.

Hi Eyal, here are my suggestion about your rating system:



I like the second one