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[Awesome Donkey]

With regard to the skins that will provide a more "Mac Like" interface they just don't exist. I've searched modern, modern cards, modern JRiver and nothing shows up.  

Here, try these modified Modern Cards skins I've been using and maintaining - they come in dark, gray and light. They look great, if you ask me.

To install them, extract and drag and drop the three folders inside the .zip file into the following directory;

Code: [Select]

~/Library/Application Support/J River/Media Center 21/Skins/Standard View
An easy way to navigate to this folder is by right clicking on the Finder in the dock, selecting Go to Folder... then copying and pasting the above in.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/02uvh53bjakpgua/ModernCardsMacSkins.zip

[JohnT]

Should we be including these in the Mac installation package?

[Awesome Donkey]

Should we be including these in the Mac installation package?

It'd be up to the original author, Dirhael. For the three above I'd probably have to officially fork them off and rename them, if it was alright with him. However, they're based off an older version of Modern Card, pre-scaling support.

[JohnT]

I asked Dihael, we'll see what he says.

Edit: I didn't notice what you said about not having scaling support, I guess that makes them less useful for a general distribution.

[JohnT]

After you find Modern Cards and try it, you might want to try Fusion X3 and Metro X:

http://maverick07x.deviantart.com/art/JRiver-FusionX3-278840579
http://maverick07x.deviantart.com/art/JRiver-MetroX-327728200

Both are a bit more Mac like than others. I'm still stuck on Black and Blue Too (HC SB).  It doesn't look anything like a Mac program, but it's nice and dark and easy to read at the same time.

Brian.

How about these, do they have scaling support?  Do they look nice on a Retina display?

[blgentry]

With regard to the skins that will provide a more "Mac Like" interface they just don't exist. I've searched modern, modern cards, modern JRiver and nothing shows up.  Perhaps a link to the skins in question could be provided.

Here's the original Modern Cards skin, including both the Dark Edition and the Regular version:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=83217.0

Also, as I said 7 or 8 posts above, here are two more skins that are worth checking out.  Fusion X3 and MetroX:

http://maverick07x.deviantart.com/art/JRiver-FusionX3-278840579
http://maverick07x.deviantart.com/art/JRiver-MetroX-327728200

There are also FusionX1, X2, and X4 all with slightly different font sizes and overall "wrappers".  I thought X3 was the best of the bunch, but you might like one of the other 3 versions also.

Brian.

[blgentry]

How about these, do they have scaling support?  Do they look nice on a Retina display?

I just tried MetroX and FusionX4.  Neither have scaling support if you mean support for the View > Size menu.  But that menu item doesn't work well with any skin I've tried (those that support it).  It just changes the spacing between elements.  Doesn't make things any more readable either direction, because the fonts stay a fixed size.  I'm not even sure what the use case for it is.  Perhaps I'm missing the point of it.

I don't know if either work well on Retina as my Mac is one of the last ones made without Retina.  But I guess since they don't have "size" support, they don't have Retina Mode by definition.

Brian.

[Awesome Donkey]

I asked Dihael, we'll see what he says.

Edit: I didn't notice what you said about not having scaling support, I guess that makes them less useful for a general distribution.

His latest Modern Card Dark Edition skin has scaling support. There just isn't a light version of the skin (yet). If there was, I'd redo these modded skins and support the scaling. Or, I guess, I can try modding the dark version into a light version. Hmmm.

[JohnT]

I just tried MetroX and FusionX4.  Neither have scaling support if you mean support for the View > Size menu.  But that menu item doesn't work well with any skin I've tried (those that support it).  It just changes the spacing between elements.  Doesn't make things any more readable either direction, because the fonts stay a fixed size.  I'm not even sure what the use case for it is.  Perhaps I'm missing the point of it.

I don't know if either work well on Retina as my Mac is one of the last ones made without Retina.  But I guess since they don't have "size" support, they don't have Retina Mode by definition.

Brian.

By "scaling support", I mean that the skin's graphic elements are provided at a larger size (either 2x or 4x) and each element's scale factor is specified in the skin's main.xml file.  It's mainly for support of Retina and other high-dpi displays.  Skins that don't provide larger graphics are blown up on a high-dpi display and appear fuzzy to the eye.

[JohnT]

His latest Modern Card Dark Edition skin has scaling support. There just isn't a light version of the skin (yet). If there was, I'd redo these modded skins and support the scaling. Or, I guess, I can try modding the dark version into a light version. Hmmm.

Dihael said he'd be happy to see his work included in Media Center.  He's willing to provide PSD files, so if we can find someone to create scaled up versions of the lighter skins we'd have them all.

[Awesome Donkey]

Dihael said he'd be happy to see his work included in Media Center.  He's willing to provide PSD files, so if we can find someone to create scaled up versions of the lighter skins we'd have them all.

I wonder if he was able to get started on a light version of the skin. If at least the buttons are done, it should be easy to finish and create both light and gray (for the Mac) versions. I'd offer to give it a try, but I can't draw things like the buttons. Assembling the skin would be pretty straightforward, I'm thinking.

IMO, ModernCards is the best skin available for MC. And it's the only third-party skin that supports scaling, as far as I know.

[blgentry]

Just my opinion but...

Modern cards is "eh".  It's ok.  It's not bad.  The light versions are just about unusable for me because the fonts are so tiny and the whole thing is just blaringly bright.  The "dark edition" is much more usable, but again, it has rather small fonts.

Skins are a matter of personal preference, tempered with the hardware (display, graphics card, viewing environment) that one has at hand.  So opinions are going to vary.

Awesome Donkey and I tend to agree on a lot of things.  This is one where we don't.

Brian.

[JimH]

Can you change the font size in MC's options (under View)?

[Awesome Donkey]

If that doesn't work, you might want to try looking at the dark edition skin's main.xml file - I do see differences for fonts, e.g. the <Entry Name="Display" > portion where scaling isn't used (like in Noire).

Dealing with the font size issue(s) in the main.xml file shouldn't be too hard to fix, as far as I know. Today I'm going to attempt creating a light version of the skin... or at least partially create one (likely sans buttons, for now). I'll also log into my Mac partition and see if I can do anything about the fonts there.

P.S. How does one enable retina mode for use in a skin? Is Noire the only skin that supports this?

[blgentry]

Can you change the font size in MC's options (under View)?

Yes.  Tools > Options > Tree & View > Advanced > Select font .

Unfortunately this causes MC to pick a new font.  I believe it's Lucidia Grande.  This font looks quite different than the default font.  I've never been able to figure out the default, as it's not listed anywhere (in the INI files) and doesn't show up in the font picker interface when trying to change fonts or sizes.

So if you change the font size, it's effectively a one way trip:  You can never get back to the original font without manipulating the User Settings.ini file.  Luckily I already knew this and I made a backup of the file before I made a change today as a test.  I was hoping that maybe this was working differently now, since you asked about it.  Unfortunately this functionality is still not exactly what you would expect, and for me, it's not a great solution.  It's pretty weird behavior really.

The good news is, I'm very used to the way that MC looks, with the default font, at 100% size settings, on my current system.  So I'm happy.

But someone might want to look into the font issue I've described above.

Brian.

[Awesome Donkey]

This reminds me of something else, I wish MC could select and use the default Apple system font when using the Mac (Lucida Grande on Mavericks, Helvetica Neue on Yosemite, San Francisco on El Capitan). As far as I can tell, the Apple system font doesn't appear as a choice when using select font under MC (other apps can access the Apple system font as a selection, as far as I know). San Francisco is definitely not an option unless you somehow obtain the fonts from Apple (if you're a developer) and manually install them.

What is the default font MC uses on the Mac? Arial? Courier New? Tahoma?

[kurushi]

@blgentry try my skin (it support hig dpi) and choose the avenir next font

[Awesome Donkey]

John, any update on this? Is the dark edition of Modern Cards going to be added to MC? Did you get the PSD files? If so, is there any resources for a light version of the skin? If not, and you got the source PSD files, mind if I have a crack at them?

[JohnT]

Yes, sorry for the delay.  I'll try to get hold of the light edition today and send you a link.  We'll also get the dark version into a 22 build by Friday.  Thanks for your support on this.

[Awesome Donkey]

Well, even if there's no light edition (yet) I might be able to work some magic with the dark edition's PSD resources and create one from that.

[JohnT]

Well, even if there's no light edition (yet) I might be able to work some magic with the dark edition's PSD resources and create one from that.

Dihael had said a couple weeks ago that he had made a lot of updates the light skin and that it just needed a bit more work to make it ready for release.  Unfortunately I didn't download the PSD files from Github at that time and now the link doesn't work, so I requested a new link from him.

[Awesome Donkey]

Ah, nice! With a light version of the skin it should be easy to fork and create some different colors (like Mac gray).

[Awesome Donkey]

Okay, so I've got the dark edition PSD files and it looks very likely I can do a light edition conversion with them (then from there make Mac/Linux skin forks galore!). In fact, I've already got a work-in-progress version done, mainly with the main color changed and modified the minimize/maximize/restore/close buttons to perfectly match Windows 10.

http://i.imgur.com/mOA9i7D.png

Now, my question is for John, Matt or any of the skin gurus out there... which art file or which part in main.xml controls the background (which is still dark in the screenshot above) for the artist/album columns and the lower playlist? I can't for the life of me remember what it is.

[JohnT]

I don't know offhand, but I just emailed you a link to the master light version of the skin, so that will probably tell you.

EDIT: Try looking for "Tree" / "BackColor"

[Awesome Donkey]

Okay, got it. Thanks. I ended up re-forking from the light edition source files.

So, I've got some major progress done on a fully-light version of the skin: http://i.imgur.com/nkPyeZs.png

Of course, scaling works great now: http://i.imgur.com/jIzPXta.png

Some resources still need to be recolored, once that's done and I'm satisfied I'll re-fork the skin again and make the Mac gray version.

[JohnT]

Looks great!

[Awesome Donkey]

Alright, I *think* I've got everything recolored and it's nearly ready: http://i.imgur.com/v2I9KaJ.png

But... there's a bug that I believe I once fixed in main.xml and yet again for the life of me I can't remember how. Anyways, the minimize/maximize/restore/close buttons (since they're larger) go below the frame border (both the unmodified, original dark and light editions also have this bug ) in the options window, DSP studio, about dialog, etc.

http://i.imgur.com/DvBqUal.png

Can't I increase and extend the width of the top frame itself by a couple inches to fix this? If so, how? Once that's fixed, I'll fork it and Mac gray it up!

[JohnT]

What happens if you modify Frame_TopBorder.png to be a little taller?  Or maybe play with the "Margins=" attribute?

[Awesome Donkey]

What happens if you modify Frame_TopBorder.png to be a little taller?

That works. Fixed.

Here's a WIP Mac gray version on macOS Sierra: http://i.imgur.com/HHmQHOI.png

There's some other stuff that needs to be done, some tweaking too. I can't test retina mode though, so it probably looks bad.

[Awesome Donkey]

Mmm, now this is nice. Mac MC 22 + WIP Gray Mac skin + Retina Mode and skin size set to 110%: http://i.imgur.com/86xUH0t.png

Nice and smooth looking. Granted, I don't know what Retina Mode is supposed to look like (never seen a Retina Mac).

EDIT: MC22 + WIP Gray Mac skin + Retina Mode and skin set to 100% with font size increased by one = perfect for me: http://i.imgur.com/ryWy6tV.png

[JohnT]

Looking good.  Can I get a copy of the skin to test?

[Awesome Donkey]

Looking good.  Can I get a copy of the skin to test?

You've got mail.

I've gone through and tested all the stuff I could think of, and didn't notice any issues. They look pretty nice on both Windows and Mac. Though, various Linux distros and themes, that'll take some doing, which should be interesting to say the least.

[couchjr]

Just to chime in from the peanut gallery to say that this typography is looking promising. How does it look in the Album view? (Split screen with array of cover art on top, tracks and tags on the bottom, and the tagging window open at lower left)?