Code Monkey - A customizable dark skin inspired by Visual Studio

[TIV73]

Heads-up everyone,
the current version of the skin uses a font called consolas. That font (usually) comes pre-installed with windows so the skin depends on it being available by default, which is not always the case, so it broke for some users. In addition, it is a windows-only font and is guaranteed to not work on linux and mac installations. Due to licensing restrictions I also cannot include the font with the skin to make it available everywhere.

That's why the upcoming version of Code Monkey will replace the old font with a new one called Inconsolata. This is not as big of a change as it may sound, the new font looks very similar to the old one (which is the reason why I chose it), and I added some customizations to the skin trying to make them match even more.
If you want to, you will spot differences of course, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if people won't even notice the font has changed if they aren't reading this annoucement. On top of that, inconsolata is available under an open source license, so I can simply bundle it with the skin to ensure it's availble consistently.

In addition, I also added step-by-step instructions on how to modify the skin to use your own custom font to the github page. It's still not something I recommend or support, but if people want to do it I may as well make it easy.

Original post:
Are you a coder? Web developer? Have you ever thought 'Man, those last four hour spent debugging a race condition were amazing!' and wanted to bring this warm, fuzzy feeling back home with you? Or maybe you are no developer at all but always wanted to experience the elation and joy of what it feels like to read the words 0 failed, 0 skipped?

Well, you are in luck! With Code Monkey, a skin for MediaMonkey 5 inspired by the color theme of Visual Studio, you can now bring the look of your favorite IDE to your music player and enjoy the feeling of being right back at work while listening to your music.



Check out the github page for more screenshots, which is also where you can download the latest version of the addon. It's also available in the addons section on the MediaMonkey homepage.

[drakinite]

I really like it!

[jiri]

Wow, great job!

While I like the blue you've chosen, I wonder how'd it like in the orange, we currently use both in MM5 and MM Android. Which reminds me, that a generic way of palette changes for any skin could be interesting.

Jiri

[TIV73]

Orange would probably work as well.



Switching out the base colors is easy enough, but it gets a little more tricky when you start doing modifiers like desaturate, mix, fade, or stuff like that.

Still, if there was a way to swap out variables in skins based on user settings to create themes or editions I'd be all for it. Or even cooler, some kind of inheritance system where you define the base skin once, and can then create derived skins where you can selectively swap out variables or whole blocks from which the user can later select.

[drakinite]

I'm planning on making a "color picker" control class when I have time, since I noticed that Monkey Groove could greatly benefit from having a user customizeable color. (https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=17316)

I like that orange version!

[Werewolfhero]

Looks awesome, liking the blue version.

[dypsis]

I'm planning on making a "color picker" control class when I have time, since I noticed that Monkey Groove could greatly benefit from having a user customizeable color. (https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=17316)

I like that orange version!

That's a good idea having a color picker.
I also prefer the orange version. In fact, a green color would even be nice.
So, the color picker will be handy.


PS: Is the forum going to have a separate section for the MM5 functional addons as opposed to skins like MM4 did?

[drakinite]

I don't see any dedicated forum for MM4 skinning? Just the Artwork forum, under Contributions.

I don't see any need to replace the existing Artwork forum, since it's already non version specific. We'd just have to update the pinned posts/announcements, since they're pretty outdated.

[IanRTaylorUK]

This is a really nice skin. It has exposed an interesting "feature".

I installed the skin on my MMW 5 2338 Portable installation. The "new" skin is shown under the menu option View / Skin.... Just as you would expect.

The Code Monkey skin is applied to another installation I have (on the same computer) MMW 5 Debug Portable. This is without Adding the Add-On. But in this case the "new" skin is NOT shown under the View / Skin... menu option.

Same for a Normal (non-portable) installation and a Normal Debug installation (first time running).

I can see that it makes sense to share the consequence of the add-on between the same type of installation and the debug version but I wasn't expecting the "portable" installation to impact the "normal" installation.

Subsequent opening of the each type of installation showed either a reversion to the standard skin or a mix (colour standard, text of the new Code Monkey skin). The RefreshSkin add-on (soft load) seems to resolve.

[drakinite]

Sorry about that - That is a known issue, it's tracked as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=17548
The problem arises from when the portable installation imports settings from MM4. It copies a few unintended non-portable settings, causing it to share some of the same assets with your non-portable MM5 installation.

To fix it for your own installation in the meantime, you can go to MediaMonkey.ini within the Portable subfolder, search for "TempDir", and replace it with the following:

Code: Select all

TempDir=Portable\Temp\

Make sure to do it while MM is closed, because it automatically overwrites MediaMonkey.ini after you close the program.

[monkeyfan1970]

Thank you TIV73.

For crafting this! I really love this skin.

Could you fix the font size of the track duration and track remaining counter. The font size is just too small.

Thank you.

[TIV73]

In the next version I updated some files to align the skin more with the default one - which incidently also slightly increases the font size on some screen elements, the time display left and right to the seekbar being among them.

[IanRTaylorUK]

A really like this skin but I am currently looking at Unorganised Files (Music Node then Files To Edit then Unorganised Files).

It is very difficult to see the "highlighted" text intended to show the difference between the information and the "organised" state.

Please could the readability of this be improved. Many thanks.

https://octoberclub-my.sharepoint.com/: ... Q?e=IvAj2S

https://octoberclub-my.sharepoint.com/: ... g?e=VsMVWj

[TIV73]

Seems like that is an issue that's inherited from the monkey groove skin (which code monkey is based on) due to the way how color inheritance is handled in that there. I opened a new post in the bug report forum for this.

[IanRTaylorUK]

Thanks for looking into this and raising a bug report.