Your ideas ... and you don't have to be a designer!

Morten · Post by **Morten** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 2:08 pm

Ok. I started this thread to let you people show us/tell us about what you want visually out of MediaMonkey. A good place to start is to watch this thread;

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/ind ... opic=43077

That thread is foobar's and it has some really cool programmed visuals for foobar2000. The idea is not to steal, but to let you guys tell everyone what you want in your program. This will help everyone so that MediaMonkey also can get it visuals complement the functions it has.

Keep posting!

Morten · Post by **Morten** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 2:27 pm

I will start;

I want the expanded glass-area in Vista made possible to use in MM.

durden999uk · Post by **durden999uk** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 4:26 pm

Hey Morten, in the name of inspiration (or maybe skinspiration?) rather than theft, here are a couple of modified itunes skins from deviantart that I like.

The thing I take from them (as a non-designer) is the use of colour. Now that the player is better integrated into the whole MM aesthetic, I can see the potential for colour, both depth and variation, expanding - no longer limited by finding a winamp player that 'fits'.

Also, as a non-designer, I am guessing that altering the colours of a design is not the hardest thing to do: blakeloth1 had several colour variations out pretty soon after the first alpha release (@ blakeloth - I apologise if I am selling your skill or achievement short!

). I have just been looking at your preview itunes skin, and it has got me thinking about the huge possibilities available to designers; one coded skin can be released with 3, 5, 10 different colour combinations with, I assume, relatively little extra work on the part of the designer (note the word relatively; again, I don't mean to disparage

). This would, in turn, increase the number of skins by 3, 5, 10 times...MM could be better integrated with desktops...we would be able to look beyond simply imitating the appearance of other software...and greater choice in looks will mean that more people will be drawn to the product. In my opinion, the colour's the thing...

Morten · Post by **Morten** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 4:45 pm

I agree that colors are important.

The color, the gradients, the glow, the shine of the buttons are very important in a design. The most hard thing of designing a skin is actually going from raw photoshop-material to real-coded player skins.

Fortunately the player's skinning module is very easy to learn, and with the enhancements to come I'm sure we can imitate and even ellaborate music-programs design. Foobar2000 have a fantastic skinning community, and I think we'll see some really great skins from this community also. Because the sky is soon the only limit...

rovingcowboy · Post by **rovingcowboy** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:38 pm

Morten9300 wrote:I will start;

I want the expanded glass-area in Vista made possible to use in MM.

hey i am not sure but i think this is already possible.?
i have been trying to change the back ground of the player.
and have been trying to add in activeimages in certian places.

i use the skinning engine i can't code. as my sig.. says. not a programmer.

but i found some strange things happen when you tell it not to draw the client ? it just disapears and you see what is on the desktop maybe that is how it is done.? you make that half transperant image then tell the skinning engine not to draw that client you put that image with.?

then the transperant background is shown. the half transperent image would be just to give it some texture so you can see it is there.
the effect is really strange looking when seen in the skinning engine by use of the control test button.?

Morten · Post by **Morten** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:14 am

You could use semi-transparent png's to get that glass-effect, but it isn't real glass as Vista does it with blurring. The coders must code it for Vista so that if I don't define for example the borders in the Theme.mskn, then the borders will be glass. Up to this point, the windows are Aero Basic.

rovingcowboy · Post by **rovingcowboy** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:42 am

so what your saying is that in vista the authors just turned on alpha blending for the background of the player and set it to 98% blending so the glass highlights could still show.

and when it is turned off the normal back ground of the player shows.
but the blending is set as default for the players window background.
but not the text area or other areas of the player.

is that what your saying?

yes sometimes i get a burst of knowing and can type like i am understanding of some stuff programmers do.
but it is just a rare burst of knowledge. and might be with some
errors

Morten · Post by **Morten** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:48 am

What I'm saying is that MediaMonkey isn't coded right for Vista as of yet, and that's why you don't see glass-borders if you delete the entry from your skin. In addition to that, I want the possibility to define an area which is to be glass, and I can then change the opacity and color of this Vista-compatible area so that we have Vista's capatibilities in our hands when coding a skin for MediaMonkey.

rovingcowboy · Post by **rovingcowboy** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:56 am

okay i was just wondering as i too was trying to get my skin to look shiny like glass that is the jade monkey skin i just made.

i got the jade monkey to be shiny by way of photo shop but i did not get the glass effect to work at all which is what i was trying to do when i found the not drawing of the client made things go away.

if i could have got it like glass then it would have been a heads up skin like pilots see in their helmet masks. but i had to make it jade that is okay i like the jade monkey too.

jcferpa · Post by **jcferpa** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:34 am

what do you think?

http://paginaweb.de/jcferpa/skins.zip

Morten · Post by **Morten** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:38 am

Here's a collection of skins that I like. Some of them may get coded to MM3 by me.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/20232534/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/32088169/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/13428400/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/23487322/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/28474074/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/28395525/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/18198328/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/25445166/

blizeH · Post by **blizeH** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 10:18 am

That clear Vista one would be great!

Something like this either of these would be nice too:
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/41904061/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/42432577/

Post by **Peke** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:05 pm

I like that Foton for WA5

Tested it with http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/15465394/
and one loud Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa..... Cool rised.

JoFo · Post by **JoFo** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:52 pm

Camino style with Vista min/max/close buttons would be nice for MM3.

Anyone?