by badjeros » Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:14 pm
I regularly use my laptop as a backup music source when I do my cheesy college radio show. My software of choice is MediaMonkey (want to manage a dj-sized collection? Get the monkey.)
I would really like to have an easy-to-read, easy to operate skin that I can use when I'm fumbling with the CD decks and the turntables and the playlist notes and such. If I was clever I would make it myself, but I've never done any skinning and I'm way daunted about starting. And time-starved. Too many projects already.
So here's a request for the skinners: is somebody interested in knocking together a skin for DJs? It would *NOT* have to be slick or graphically pleasing in the least. All it would need is:
- big fat high-contrast start button.
- big fat high-contrast stop button.
- big fat high-contrast "time remaning" display
- big fat position-in-track slider to back that up
- alternating (but subtle) background colouration in the playlists, to make it easy to read across artist/title/etc.
It would have to NOT have:
- distracting textures, gradients, glosses, flourishes, geegaws, baubles, fringes, sparkles, anything to clutter the interface or distract from the core information.
Right now the closest I can find are:
The un-skinned ("Override Skin theme with Windows System theme") version. Good, but the play and stop buttons are too small, and the time remaining could be bigger, and the position-in-track slider could be higher contrast. I could forgive all that but: no alternating backgrounds in the playlist windows is killer.
Morten's iTunes v7. Close, but the time remaining and track position displays are too small, and it doesn't have a "stop" button, which it turns out is key. And the play button could be bigger. It's beautiful of course, but that's lost on me when the Tom Waits vinyl develops a skip and I'm stabbing for the play button on whatever Boards of Canada comes up first in the search results.
Can anybody help a poor DJ blast his tunes on the radio without screwing up too much?
I regularly use my laptop as a backup music source when I do my cheesy college radio show. My software of choice is MediaMonkey (want to manage a dj-sized collection? Get the monkey.)
I would really like to have an easy-to-read, easy to operate skin that I can use when I'm fumbling with the CD decks and the turntables and the playlist notes and such. If I was clever I would make it myself, but I've never done any skinning and I'm way daunted about starting. And time-starved. Too many projects already.
So here's a request for the skinners: is somebody interested in knocking together a skin for DJs? It would *NOT* have to be slick or graphically pleasing in the least. All it would need is:
- big fat high-contrast start button.
- big fat high-contrast stop button.
- big fat high-contrast "time remaning" display
- big fat position-in-track slider to back that up
- alternating (but subtle) background colouration in the playlists, to make it easy to read across artist/title/etc.
It would have to NOT have:
- distracting textures, gradients, glosses, flourishes, geegaws, baubles, fringes, sparkles, anything to clutter the interface or distract from the core information.
Right now the closest I can find are:
The un-skinned ("Override Skin theme with Windows System theme") version. Good, but the play and stop buttons are too small, and the time remaining could be bigger, and the position-in-track slider could be higher contrast. I could forgive all that but: no alternating backgrounds in the playlist windows is killer.
Morten's iTunes v7. Close, but the time remaining and track position displays are too small, and it doesn't have a "stop" button, which it turns out is key. And the play button could be bigger. It's beautiful of course, but that's lost on me when the Tom Waits vinyl develops a skip and I'm stabbing for the play button on whatever Boards of Canada comes up first in the search results.
Can anybody help a poor DJ blast his tunes on the radio without screwing up too much?
