[quote="Dreadlau"]And the intuitiveness has absolutely nothing to do with the number of elements that are editable.[/quote]
Well of course it is unintuitive. It's going to at least take some learning curve to know what certain things are named, etc. I don't really know what could be done to make it more intuitive. After all, skinning is not exactly something that people do on a regular basis. In other words, what should it be more like when you're making a skin? Making a powerpoint presentation? Making a word document? Those types of things won't work in the context of skinning, because it's much more complicated than something like that.

[quote="Dreadlau"]I think you're not getting my point.

I don't wish for less things to edit. In fact I wish there were more things to customize.

The skinning editor is complex because its not intuitive.
And the intuitiveness has absolutely nothing to do with the number of elements that are editable.[/quote]

yes i get what you mean but i dont think nohitter151 gets it because he started making mm3 skins and did not use the old one for mm 2 skins. i think he did not? he could have but its only in mm 3 i remember seeing him make skins.

but your right the theme engine was got from some other developer and used for making these skins by using their workings of the theme engine. petrcbr has been with help from some members here that can script or program, been making the theme engine more easy to use on mediamonkey. but there is the fact to consider that the same skin engine is
being used by windows to make the windows themes. so he has to kind of work with in the limits that are set by what ms has blocked from 3d partys using the engine to make skins for their 3d partry apps.
thats why i have said several times that windows is not letting us change some fonts. or background items in real world use.
they blocked it cause they want those used only by the os to make its skins.

so it goes with out saying almost that if we are allowed to change some fo the things we want we could effect the os's shell skins.

you know there are kind of limits like that in every thing. example: you can't play your music loud when your bedroom wall
is next to your mom and dads bedroom wall. if you do you run the risk of a mad parent smashing the item used to play
the music..

same kind of thinking when making skins will let you see more that something might get broken if this or that is done.
8)

but i do agree some more correct help for the use of the items we can do in the theme engine now, would be very welcome.
and if petrcbr can figure out how to get some more of the objects to be viewed in the theme engines panels to check out
before we have to make the msz and test in monkey. would be great.

but he's been working on the win7 style addins for the skins. so maybe after he gets those working he can get the others
we need in the theme engine going. 8)

I think you're not getting my point.

I don't wish for less things to edit. In fact I wish there were more things to customize.

The skinning editor is complex because its not intuitive.
And the intuitiveness has absolutely nothing to do with the number of elements that are editable.

[quote="Dreadlau] really don't get why you all seem to think that making the skinning process easier would equal cutting in skinning functionalities?? :-? [/quote]
It's complicated because there are so many different things to edit in the skin. Fewer things to edit = less ability to customize.

Btw: The OP asked if there was a "default simple skin".

DreadM made a Training Skin for this purpose: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=44597&start=0&hilit=training+skin

[quote="nohitter151"][quote="Evil Overlord"]I can say that I've been using computers for decades now, have done some minor programming in my time, and consider myself a moderately advanced user (versus the general population). But I found the skinning process (including the novice guides) to be a) complicated, and b) too much cost for too little benefit.

I'm glad that there are people who were undeterred by the process, and that they've been able to produce skins the rest of us can enjoy. My point is that I think there's a large audience of users that would like to be able to make their own skins, but don't because of the complexity. A simpler process would make many more skins available to us all, even if they didn't have the depth of current ones. Perhaps there's room for two tracks - a starter version for the mass of us, and a fuller version that exposes more options for those that can handle it.[/quote]
I think the old adage here applies, "nothing worth doing is easy".

If they make an easy to use skinning program and all you can change is a few colors here and there, there really isn't much of a point.[/quote]

I really don't get why you all seem to think that making the skinning process easier would equal cutting in skinning functionalities?? :-?

My impression about the skinning engine:

1: its not dedicated
2: many items that don't have any effect
3: Some fonts have to be changed at one place, others at an other place. Doesn't seem to have any logic.
4: some changes are only visible if the skin is packed in .msz
5: It looks complicated. Or maybe it's me that is too stupid.

can you please tell us what part of all our help on skinning is making a road block for you?
because it really is easy i still can not program but making these skins is like water rolling off a ducks back. just as slick as it can do it.

any one of us here are more then willing to help find a way to get you past that road block your hitting just let us know
what one is it. the chevy , the ford , the oldsmobile , or the dodge? so one of us can get the right key for you and move it.

peke told me its like doing the old winamp classic skin when i started on mm 3 skins.

just unzip the mmip file then unzip the msz file in to a new folder. start from there getting the images out of the old mskn file for which ever your starting to change one of the players or the theme. and then reverse your steps to put them back in to mskn files and zip files save the last zip as a msz file then put the msz file in to the skins folder and pick it from the list in the options.

that made me understand. but you see it takes 20 hours to go through each step for making a winamp classic skin no matter how little images you use.
winamp had a very simple program made for making the classic skins. it changed the color scheme of one style of skin.
so you ended up with thousands of the same skin with the same colors called different names. not a very liked thing
and nobody here wants that to be done with mediamonkey.

now also if you look at skinning the jet audio program you will find they have an sdk file for doing that.
just to make it easy to change the layout and the 10,000 images for the player. not simple in my book.

there is only a few hundred images for mediamonkey. windows media player has a way to make user skins but not very simple to do for it.

jr. don't even try to make anything for them. they won't use it they tell you to send it in and when you do thats the last of it, they toss it out. they don't want any user stuff unless they ask the user to make it. which is why i tossed that program out years ago. i sent in av effects to them each time they got them the program was updated with a new way to make the av effects to which i had to learn all over again. after 5 times of that i got fed up with what they were doing and tossed it.

so monkey is simple the trouble is most every one is use to the hard programs to make anything for. or they can't revert back to total newbie to learn a simple one again.

break down of the skin for monkey.
1.theme skin
2.main player skin
3.floating player skin
4.vertical task bar player
5.horizontal task bar player
6.full screen player

theme is just you skinning the mediamonkey explorer style shell.
main player is just skinning the player it automaticly is put in to the theme skin to look like one skin.
floating is just that it is player with out the theme skin. and can be on any place on the screen.
vertical player is just small player that goes on the task bar
same with the horizontal player. but both need their own files can be same looking just different in tall or short.
full screen player is just another floating player ( i belive) for the video player controls when watching in full screen.
its in mm 4 which i don't have so i cant tell if it is just a floating one. but it makes sense that it would be.

take one of the six cards and place it in your folder and put the new card back on it. you got a new background skin then.

but if the simple way of saying can't help you then i think any of the others that make lots of skins are also programmers or script writers get one of them to tell you in that langauge they sould be good for you that way.

8)

@Roving cowboy
I very much appreciate the effort you went to with the walkthrough, and I did try to use it. Unfortunately, your [i]saying [/i]"its simple" doesn't seem to make it so for me.

@nohitter 51
""nothing worth doing is easy". I just can't agree with that. Some things are easy. Some things aren't. There's not a lot of correlation with their value. Eating a pizza is easy. Having sex is easy. I think they're both worth doing. Designing a Mars mission is not easy, but it is worth doing. Building a market in mortgage-backed securities is not easy, and not worth doing.

Thanks to all for the input. My point was to suggest an easier method for designing skins, and/or a better variety of skins. I stand by that point.

[quote="Evil Overlord"]I can say that I've been using computers for decades now, have done some minor programming in my time, and consider myself a moderately advanced user (versus the general population). But I found the skinning process (including the novice guides) to be a) complicated, and b) too much cost for too little benefit.

I'm glad that there are people who were undeterred by the process, and that they've been able to produce skins the rest of us can enjoy. My point is that I think there's a large audience of users that would like to be able to make their own skins, but don't because of the complexity. A simpler process would make many more skins available to us all, even if they didn't have the depth of current ones. Perhaps there's room for two tracks - a starter version for the mass of us, and a fuller version that exposes more options for those that can handle it.[/quote]
I think the old adage here applies, "nothing worth doing is easy".

If they make an easy to use skinning program and all you can change is a few colors here and there, there really isn't much of a point.

[b][quote] a) complicated, and b) too much cost for too little benefit.

[/quote][/b]

what? i see you said the novice guides.? i presume those are mine, as i wrote them for the newbies. most others are for more advanced users.

its as i said your an advanced user you can do some programming you need to totaly forget what little tricks you can do
in programming and read and do the newbie walk thourgh with out trying to add in a shortcut. that is how it works. i wrote that step by step as i did each one., in a break down of how to do it. i say to set up folders. then i say how to get the stuff ready, then which stuff you need to change then how to change it and test it.

but for programmers there are some tips and issues added in by steegy and updates from me. but thats all that does
is show you step by step its so easy to follow instructions that you forgot how to follow them when you became smarter then the normal user. or the total newbie.

but that is why morten and the others and rusty have their info typed out for use by the more advanced newbies.

but what is complicated for you? the workings of the theme engine. yes that can be a little / a lot of learning curve.
um you want to use the images you made.
you just open the theme.mskn in the theme engine.
by first starting the theme engine then browsing to the theme.mskn file you want to open by the engines file open link.
once it is open just click on the link it has for exporting the images from the mskn to a folder.
its under its file menu i think? maybe edit menu?
when its done just close the theme engine,
change all the images .bmp.png or .bmp.bmp formats to the first of the two listed. for some reason the theme engine adds one to the end of the name when it exports them.

now use image editor to chagnge all the images you want to change.

when finished you reverse the process by starting theme engine. then going to the open link and opening the theme.mskn file again.
this time go to the image node it has and there select each of the images in its list then you get three buttons use the replace button and pick the one you want to replace it from your file folder. [i]not the gallery .[/i]
do that for all the images.
now save the mskn file and close the theme engine now reopen the theme engine and re open the theme mskn.
you can now go to each object and change the size and the images.
best way to change the size is to just go to the bmp command in the right code panel. click it to open the bmp target scope
now mark out the top left and the bottom right corners of your image that you want to use on that object. look at the size
the image is on the top of that target panel.
click the okay button and change the two sizes in the right side code panel.
remember to click on another command in that panel after you change the number before you move to another object cause it won't change unless you do the extra click to get out of edit mode.
you also need to make sure the client for that object is large enough to view the image you just added if you made it bigger.
do that for all the images you want to change in the skin save the theme.mskn file and close the theme engine.
now you can copy and paste that theme mskn file in to your testing folder with all the other files for that skin.
place that testing folder in the skins folder of mediamonkey so it is found easier by monkey. it will be dalled a "testing" skin if you called the folder that.
now open mediamonkey and go to the options panel and then to the skins node slide scroll bar down if there is one. to find the testing skin. click on it and you will get your skin loaded you can then see if any images did or did not work.
close monkey go back to the theme engine your working with and open that theme mskn file again. fix any image that did not work and save close copy and paste in to testing folder restart monkey and look for any other things that need fixed.
repeat until finished.

whats hard about that. its simple the most troublesome thing is the constant need to do the checking by copy and paste of the file in to a test folder. but i got use to that also its rather fast and easy now for me.
it should only take about 3 skins for you to get really fast at some things.

yes the better skins take time the skins with more image changes take time if you change the size of the images it takes time. but after about 3 or 5 skins you should be able to make them in about 4 hours with just doing image changes and not mess with layouts or size changes.

its the making of new layouts that takes a lot of testing of the skin.

the blues monkey skin i made took me about 4 hours to make. the concert skin took me about 48 hours to make and about 24 to 27 hours to get the lights working like they do.

the hardest thing in making the skin is the chair you sit on. it gets hard after about 3 hours.

the best thing to do first is find or make all your images you want to use when you change the skins images for your images.
i use lots of photos and parts of photos some i took some i find online and cut out what i want to use. that takes time
but it is not in using the mediamonkey theme engine
it is using the multiple photo editors to get what i want for images.
so i don't count that time spent there.

if you want to know that time then every skin i made needs to have 72 hours added to the time i said before, as thats how long i spend finding the best images for what i want. yes its hard on the computer chairs i wore the wheels off 3 of them and then i wore out 4 or 5 pillows cause the chair cushion wore out also.

8)

I can say that I've been using computers for decades now, have done some minor programming in my time, and consider myself a moderately advanced user (versus the general population). But I found the skinning process (including the novice guides) to be a) complicated, and b) too much cost for too little benefit.

I'm glad that there are people who were undeterred by the process, and that they've been able to produce skins the rest of us can enjoy. My point is that I think there's a large audience of users that would like to be able to make their own skins, but don't because of the complexity. A simpler process would make many more skins available to us all, even if they didn't have the depth of current ones. Perhaps there's room for two tracks - a starter version for the mass of us, and a fuller version that exposes more options for those that can handle it.

Greetings

[quote="Eyal"]I disagree. It's (relatively) easy once you know How-To.[/quote]
Thats true

[quote="nohitter151"]The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.[/quote]
well i must say ,to create player skins it's very easy ( because they have a clear structure )

the only thing what is difficult is the theme.mskn (after some skins it's still confusing me )

would be nice to have here also a clearer structure!But I'm still look forward and hope for some Improvements :D

[quote="nohitter151"]Other programs use XML documents, html, CSS, and lots of other stuff that is much "harder" than what MM requires.[/quote]
I look inside Cad program or VLC player , but this stuff is really to much for me !

[quote="Dreadlau"][quote="nohitter151"]The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.[/quote]

Are you serious?

I wonder why people have asked for a dedicated Mediamonkey skinning program then?
And why there are so many posts about the skinning engine not being intuitive?


btw: Wow Musicbee UI looks very similar to Mediamonkey.[/quote]
Did you totally miss my last post? http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/posting.php?mode=quote&f=1&p=277583#pr277516

Anyway, I doubt that skinning any program is ever "intuitive". There's always going to be something of a learning curve. But I don't see how manipulating images like you use in MM is "difficult". Other programs use XML documents, html, CSS, and lots of other stuff that is much "harder" than what MM requires.

[quote="nohitter151"]The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.[/quote]

Are you serious?

I wonder why people have asked for a dedicated Mediamonkey skinning program then?
And why there are so many posts about the skinning engine not being intuitive?


btw: Wow Musicbee UI looks very similar to Mediamonkey.

i'll have to agree on it most newbies can understand some html coding and or scripting that makes it a little tuff to learn
how to make a mediamonkey skin.

but for the total newbie to computer stuff that can't even make a web page with a wysiwyg editor that is who i made
that fast newbies walk through for, so if the newbies that are able to do some scripting and or html coding, could just
remember back to how they were when they too were a total newbie, then taking that fast walk through would be easy
to make a back cover for the theme skin, and give them a good foot in the door for learning the rest of the skins.

i really do think that with what i put up there on the wiki and what rusty and morten and steegy put up there. and the others that did also contribute to the knowledge there, it is fully possible for a total newbie or an advanced newbie to make
a full skin set of all the 6 skins for mediamonkey.

i also do not expect it to much more then an image or color change of the skin they use in the lessons to adjust.

that extra tweaking of the placement of the items in the player skins or wheather or not to include any item in their style
will take some time to learn how to do. the advanced newbies would pick up on the tweaking of the skins faster.

but i still agree with the original poster it is hard for the person that can program, script, and make a css web page from notepad to just jump in and do a skin. [b](but that is because they have a harder time remembering how a total newbie sees things.[/b]

8)

[b]EDITED IN[/b]

i was thinking more after i submited this reply and i thought i could tell you in a manor here that might help you more if you can bake a cake.

the program code is the cake baked and ready for icing, the images used on the skin are the fondot for the cake, the ini files in monkey for the skins. are the icing design layouts for the items you place on the cake like the pre-made statues.
the codes in the ini file are the math calulations for your exact placement of those statues. :D