Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Matt]

Hi all,

We had the idea of changing the current skin with the time of day.

Using the default "Modern Cards: Grey Edition", changing the brightness (View > Skin > Skin Effects) a little as the day progresses.

We could simply add a checkbox to the Skin Effects dialog like "Automatically change with time of day".

Would this be a nice feature?  Thanks.

------------

Edit by JimH -- Here are the screenshots of the skin.  It's based on Modern Cards Grey.  At sunset, it gradually becomes darker over 30 minutes.  At half an hour before sunrise it becomes lighter.

Select it as you would any other skin (under the View Menu).

[Awesome Donkey]

It would be a nice feature indeed. I wish Windows 11 included this like macOS does now.

[Hendrik]

Gradual changes over time of day are rather unusual, not sure I have seen that before. Most apps just switch between bright and dark skins.

[bytestar]

Sounds good, I'm already excited about it 

[Doof]

I'm curious how this would play native blue-light filter features like Night Light or whatever Apple calls their equivalent. It sounds interesting! I'd try it out for sure.

[joshhuggins]

I think a lot of folks would like this. I personally always prefer my stuff to be on the dark side, but a gradual change might be something cool. Could do some really cool effects if you can set the start and end colors specifically. Skins could morph into neon highlights at night.

[Matt]

We're going to release this today.  It will be a new skin based on our default skin.

Thanks for the help.

[mattkhan]

I'm not sure what the intended look is but thought I'd report how it behaved.

I tried it just now (10pm my time), was rather bright white to say the least. It seemed to reduce tone ever so slightly (modern cards grey perhaps) after a minute or so but still pretty bright overall.

[Doof]

Yeah, agreed. It seems way too bright for 6pm. I'm also not sure if it's keying off the system time? I tried manually changing the system time to a few different times throughout the day and didn't notice the skin changing at all. Is there supposed to be a setting in Skin Settings to enable this? I don't see one.

[JimH]

There is a setting.  I'm not sure where it is.

Matt was planning to use Skin Effects, but I don't see it there.  You'll be able to set the light and dark modes, and the times. 

[Matt]

Pick the skin Twilight to see the effect.  It will get darker until midnight.

[Doof]

Ok, seems to be working now. When I first started it, it seemed too bright but I might have not given it enough time to catch up. I tried changing the time, but never saw it change brightness. So I went back to my old skin then later (~11:30pm) switched back to Twilight. It was still really bright, but then about a minute later suddenly got a lot darker, like it didn't switch to the correct brightness until some timer had elapsed. It seems to be at max darkness now and it opens to the correct brightness every time now so it'll be interesting to see what it looks like in the morning!

[Doof]

So I started up MC this morning and it was still showing the darker shade. I watched the system time to see if MC changed shade when the clock changed minutes, but it didn't. Then about 10-15 seconds later it did finally switch to the correct brightness level. So it seems like MC is starting some internal timer when it starts and then updating brightness when the timer elapses. Maybe it needs to do an initial time check/brightness adjustment when it first loads?

[Matt]

So I started up MC this morning and it was still showing the darker shade. I watched the system time to see if MC changed shade when the clock changed minutes, but it didn't. Then about 10-15 seconds later it did finally switch to the correct brightness level. So it seems like MC is starting some internal timer when it starts and then updating brightness when the timer elapses. Maybe it needs to do an initial time check/brightness adjustment when it first loads?

Next build will load right away.  Then once a minute.

[bytestar]

Where can I set the country setting for Twilight, i.e. the time zone ? for Europe/Germany.

[Matt]

It just uses your system time and compares it to midnight for the darkest.

[bytestar]

Ah ok, and is it also planned that the Media Center theme will be based on the system setting for dark and light ? (a real dark mode ?)

It just uses your system time and compares it to midnight for the darkest.

[Doof]

I don't see myself using this with this particular skin, because I'm all-in on dark mode everywhere else and it's just too bright. Team chat and my code editor are both dark mode but then MC is just bright white on my right monitor so I have to minimize it. But if this could be applied to any skin I would definitely see myself using it on something like Modern Cards: Dark Edition to have it tweak brightness/contrast throughout the day/night. Color shifting between two colors throughout the day would be cool, too.

Like if I could set a "peak day" setting and a "peak night" setting in Skin Effects and then have MC dynamically shift between the two throughout the day. That would be awesome.

[marko]

So, is it simply this:

Code: [Select]

<!-- Enable the DSP functions for this skin -->
<Effects>
<Data Enabled="1" Style="1" />
</Effects>that makes the magic happen?

I've had Twilight active for some time now, (19:30 atm) and can see no difference between it and the default grey version.

How would this behave, do you think, on a skin that was predominantly dark to begin with?

[Matt]

Yes, we tell the skin to transition in the skin's XML.

We could add other types of effects, but walk before we run

[lepa]

Brightness doesn't seem to reset when changing to other skin

[marko]

that's it. Neat. I kept Twilight active, reset brightness, then the thing kicked in and dimmed it down. Probably should reset on skin change though.

[Matt]

It will use a separate setting in the build I'm publishing shortly.  You might want to reset skin effects in case they're messy from earlier.

[marko]

I can't help feeling that a global "active brightness" setting either at the top of the "Skins" sub menu, or a tick in the "Skin Effects" dialogue would be better?

Then, if enabled in the skin, it's active if ticked, and, if enabled in the skin, it's ignored if this setting were unchecked. This would remove the need for duplicate skins, and also for the user to need to remember which skins are enabled and which are not.

[marko]

I've enabled this on a dark skin I've been messing with.... it's pretty cool.

I've still to decide if this is "new toys" novelty or something that would become a deal breaker if it got removed...

Right now though, it's pretty darned cool 

[lepa]

I agree that trigger for this would sit nicely on skin effect page as what it does is just setting brightness automatically and manual brightness is set there also

[marko]

If you have a right click menu open at the time it does its auto update, the menu closes. Also, when the auto update happens, the whole MC interface does a refresh.

Both of these things will probably stop me using this feature. Too much potential for something 'not good' to happen whilst I'm working on file sets, tags, etc.
For example, I could enter a search to get at some files, and start working on those files, making changes that mean they no longer match the search. It's a wonderful thing that despite that, the files stay so I can complete whatever I'm doing. This forced refresh causes them to vanish midway through my work.

I was curious how this would work on a dark skin. Around ten years or more ago, I found this over at DeviantArt... https://www.deviantart.com/alexander234/art/Silent-Night-167394420

I've been tweaking it a bit, both to be more to my liking, and to make it look correct on today's MC, (without scaling support) so activated the auto brightness on it...
For me, late at night, it gets a bit too dark. It's attached if anyone else wants to try it.

-marko

[marko]

Here's another side effect of Twilight...

This running on MC server PC, on 24/7, monitor set to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity... with me?

Yup, monitor is not sleeping!

[JimH]

Here's what we settled on for now:

[Matt's description]

...   the effect gets fully bright at sunrise (beginning the transition 30 minutes before), then starts to get dark at sunset and becomes
fully dark 30 minutes later.
[end Matt's description]

It is based on the default "Modern Cards: Grey Edition.  We may try to add more skins later.

[EnglishTiger]

I realised that the ET Lightness series of TrackInfo Plugins was not a very good match for usde with the Twilight Skin.

Since it is impossible to recreate the transitions that Twilight uses in the 30 minutes before Sunrise and Sunset in HTML, CSS or JavaScript.
I've done the next best thing and created a series of new ET TrackInfo Plugins based on 2 New Skin/Color Themes:-
ET GreyLight for use with Twilight between Sunrise and Sunset and ET GreyNight for use between Sunset and Sunrise.

You can read about them here - https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,129621.0.html

Or Download them here - https://yabb.jriver.com/mediacenter/accessories.php

[whatwhat]

That's interesting. Is it okay just to change a skin into Twilight Skin without additional settings? I appreciate if someone gives me more details, for example about what time I can see conspicuous change of color around.
The screenshot is my Twilight skin information.

[JimH]

Just try it.  Yes skin darkens a little around sunset and lightens around sunrise.  The transitions are gradual.

[datdude]

It would be great if this also applied to theater view. Could a filter be added over the entire screen that does something similar to the Windows 10 night light? I love browsing theater view with that on, but the problem is that when you play a movie, it distorts the color of the movie so I have to leave it off.