Hey Jim
I'm aware of skins and have a large good collection of some really pretty ones
I'm actually planning to make one to steal the visuals of RealOne as I LOVE the way they've made it look.
Real actually did an amazing job as I now really like the player purely from the way it looks and useability and this is from someone who has hated Real for years.
As far as I'm aware though the skins dont cover the icons within MJ itself in the view schemes and they dont work when MJ is in full screen mode (I mean when you double click a video to watch it full screen).
This GUI is quite basic and definitely not pretty.
If it's possible to skin this mode I'd be delited but as far as I know it's not.
Icons in the right click menu's would also really help to just stop it appearing as it appears now as a big list of text but would help to bring each function to life with an easily recognisable icon.
Also icons for explorer would be hugely welcomed as well as the ability for it to say things other than: Mediajukebox File.
One other thing visually, Both WMP and Real both offer constant access to: Playlists, Media Library, Playing Now, Devices, Radio, Web etc at all times.
MJ has all these features but they are all in the tree which makes them disappear when browsing. The useability advantage of having them visable at all times is amazing as it's very strongly a case of: Out of sight, out of mind a lot of the time.
Having these large links to these areas as strong clear buttons makes jumping betweem them something I do often in both of those apps but rarely in MJ.
They also offer vifferent views depending on which area you are looking at with the views really designed specifically for what you are dealing with.
This is an area MJ is seriously lagging behind in.
Right now MJ wins in terms of organisation and ability to add new fields, view schemes etc but looses by quite a lot in terms of simplicity and ease of use.
Both of these programs are catching up to MJ FAST and I'd hate to ever see it ever go under.
Their GUI's, wizards for building smartlists (now added to RealOne and took me 1 click and 1 minute to learn how to use and build smartlists along with their point in Real whereas they took me ages to become familiar with in MJ), and overall user interface is where they really are pulling ahead.
Take a look at the tool to add 'Auto Smartlists' to RealOne.
It's totally wizard driven which means building them requires no knowledge of the program, no looking up features in the help file, adding limiters to the smartlist in terms of length, etc is all suggested to you to incorporate into the search rather than with MJ where you have to be aware of it's existance before hand.
v9 REALLY needs to have GUI interfaces built for the following areas to pull the features to the surface and shove them in users faces:
- Rename from properties
- Get properties from Filename
- Smart Lists
Anyway, I hope I'm not seeming pushey, I'm just saying the areas that I feel MJ really lacks in compared to these other programs as I really dont want them to win.
I love the support and interactive feel of how you guys work and you all seem extremely friendly and like nice people instead of greedy money hungry corporations.
I'm not sure if you guys ever test out the other programs much to compare them but if you dont you might want to just one day play with them a bit and see what parts of them you really love.
I always test new software to see which one I really love and usually swap every time I find a program I like better.
MJ is the only one I stick to out of loyalty to the company. The other companies can do whatever they want I'm not too fussed.