Windows > Third Party Plug-ins, Programs, and Skins

New Standard View Skin: Easy Grey

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EnglishTiger:
Jappie

I spent this morning running MC32 on both my Mac Mini with it's Samsung 24" 1920x1080 Screen and MacBook Air with it's 13" Retina Screen switching between the ET Easy Grey Skin and ModernCards Dark Skin.

The attached link is for a set of Screenies from both Mac PC's mostly with Screen Size set at 100% but some are set to 150% and for 1 of them it was set to 200%.
But there is something you need to know about some of Apples Odd-Behaviour before you look at them.
Regardless of which app is being run there is always a Whitish (Apple) Header Bar at the top of the screen where the App's Menu is placed; however the Windows Control Buttons (Close/Min/Max) are always on the Apps own Header Bar
Apple's Retina system has a dislike for drawing anything (usually images) that is 1 pixel wide or high so if you look very carefully at any of the images where the Details List is visible you should spot the Vertical Gridlines between the Columns are "Absent".
The Apple OS also replaces the header bar on any small/secondary window; like the Tools > Options and DSP Studio Window with a whitish one that has rounded corners and the Apple System windows control buttons instead of the ones from the skin.
There is a small problem in respect of the Segoe UI Font - None of the Segoe font family are shipped with Mac PC's but they can be downloaded and installed. Unfortunately for the OS and MC to be able to use them the PC has to be rebooted.
Mac Pc's have always has had better graphics presentation than that thing IBM developed so there is less tendancy for small/light fonts being discoulered.

Images 1-12 are from the Mac Mini where I was using the Verdana Font some are with Size at 100% others are at 150% and 1 of them is at 200%
Images 3, 4, 8, 9 & 10 are for the ModernCards Dark and reveal a couple of the reasons why it should be sent to the rubbish dump.
Images 7 & 11 show that while the OS hijacks the MC Menu, which means the Drop Down Menus are located just below the Apple Header Bar they are still using the MC Skin and do get resized by the Skin Size Command.
Images 13-15 are from the MacBook Air, where I did install and use the Segeo  UI Font, and as long as the user is no more than 30" from the screen the lower line in the Display Panel is still readable.

So just as with the Win PC once again those images reveal that your skin was thought out, planed and constructed with a lot more thought than that Naff ModernCards Dark Skin; your Contrast Level is far better.

I wish I'd remembered to switch to the ModernCards skin on the MacBook and taken a screenie of it because that would have definitely revealed why I hate the thing.

Incidentally if you are wondering where the Dark Gey background ModernCards uses for the Currently Playing Track and the Selected Option in the DSP Window in images 2, 3, 4, 8, 9 or 10. It appears as 3 very short lines at the left hand side of the line in the images where the Track List is visible and at the right hand edge of the line in the DSP Window.

Link to Images on Pix01 - https://pix01.jriver.com/sM1%40m4ZV 

markf2748:
One notable difference between ET Easy Grey and Easy Grey (1.6) is the contrast between text and background when mouse hovers over an unselected tab.  In both skins the tab changes to whitish text with "light tan" background color.  For ET Easy Grey I find the contrast is very low and the text is barely readable.  Adjusting MC's Skin Effects does not help matters.  The contrast is higher in Easy Grey (1.6) and the background color choice is a little more consistent with the theme.

No criticism, just pointing it out.  Personally I currently use a horizontally striped dual grey-tone scheme for the tab mouseover, and a light grey underline for the selected tab (screenshot attached).  Aside: A low blue dot indicates the tab is locked.  An "i" prefix in the tab name indicates an Image View of the album artwork which is stored in the audio album folders as sidecar files.  I have 5 such Image Views defined in the Tree, each synced (i.e. same sort order) to its corresponding Audio View.

BTW, thanks to all for the discussion and sharing of your history and expertise with this challenging corner of MC.  I must confess to borrowing a couple of ideas.  :)


5/12/2024:  Updated second paragraph.

Win 11 Pro 64-bit | Win 10 Pro & Home 64-bit | MC 32.0.45 (currently in beta)

EnglishTiger:
This morning I remembered why the Selected Track in the List Section and Selected Option in the DSP Window look so odd/bad on the Mac. It's because it, like a few other skins, uses badly formed transparent overlay images with the word "Selection" in their name. When any of those skins are used on the Mac that weird distortion visible in the Images for the ModernCards Dark Skin. two of the skins where the Overlay Images don't get distorted on the Mac are the Pearl Bailey and ThunderStorm Skins. So well done Jappie for, without realising it, changing those "Selection" images from ones that use badly formed images using transparent colours to ones that using solid colours, making it Mac Compatible

Mark that lack of contrast when hovering over inactive tabs on the ViewHeader is down to me, technically the Tabs section of the skin.xml is obsolete and I wrongly removed it;, what I forgot is that although MC no longer has tabbed forms/frames its color statement is used by the ViewHeader sections Inactive Tabs. Incidentally that's not the only place where instructions in one section of the skin.xml get used in another, usually unrelated, section;
the Legacy Tag Window and parts of the DSP Studio window use some of the instructions and images from the List Section.

Mark you don't need to apologise for "borrowing a couple of ideas"; with the exception of the very first skin that was created for MC it is probable that some of the other skins available have borrowed code and ideas from other places. When I created my own skins the layout of the skin.xml is me applying the same principles I'd learnt as a Computer Programmer/Analyst; lay the file out by starting at the top left hand corner and work left to right down the screen to the bottom right hand corner. Some of the images were built using my ideas, or ideas/suggestions my Grand-Daughter came up with, but there are some images that I borrowed from other skins and modified to suit my requirements; and a lot of the remaining code was certainly borrowed from other skins; and I'm certainly not the only Skin Creator that has done that. One of the reasons for all those comments in my skin.xml files was to make it easier for other users to modify them to suite their own requirements or as a starting point when creating a brand new skin.

The reason why adjusting MC's Skinning Effects didn't improve the contrast problem is probably down to the fact that Skinning Effects get applied to the whole skin and unfortunately, thanks to the MC Skinning Engines idiosyncrasies, can result in totally unexpected result.

The attached ET Easy Grey.Zip has the version with the reinstated Tab section plus I've added the 4 mac Close, Minimize, Maximize and Restore Buttons that my skins use and changed the relevant instructions in the MainFrame and Frame sections to use them instead of the 3 OSX buttons.

Jappie:
I see new posts from EnglishTiger and Mark. A lot of information.
I am impresssed by all the responses, hints and ideas. Printscreens of MC on MAC. I can barely see border lines of the Options popup windows. Oh, help.
Did I start this? Will I be able to finish the new Skin?

Just to give an update about the progress on the Skin Easy Grey: there is a lot to do.

I am still cleaning up images.
Example: 'click area' is a well known concept with website-building. Many buttons from Modern Cards have this click area. But do we really need this? It seems NOT. With or without it I notice no difference when using MC. Cleaning up is not a priority but I am working on the images so...
Example: image sizes. I am removing all the 1x and 1.5x sizes. I have to make sure I don't need them and the new default size (2x) is the best. Volume-bar and Progress-bar are typical: the background disappeared with skin-size 50 or 60%. And while I am at it, let's improve the Volume-bar (yes a very nice improvement!).
Example: The colors of different button-stages. Yes you can expect less 'minimalism' and better use of colors. No you won't see it at first glance. It's puzzling, I had to set up some guidelines like (default for the Player-bar): Volume: Mute off, Play: no shuffle, no repeat, DSP On=default (DSP Direct=special).
And so on...

Little issue: WaveForm Bar colors. I don't have the WaveForm bar only those 2 little spectrum-analyzers in the top-bar (and they don't respond to the WaveFormBar colors :). Analyzing audio, not done. Don't want the data in my sidecar.xml. Will analyze some music, so I can setup nice colors. OK, just had MC analyze some music. YES, now I see the 'Wave'. Play with colors, okay.
Little issue: Fonts? Important, yes! 'Segoe' not on Mac? Makes me think of website-building: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif or: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif. Those were/are the most OS and browser-compatible options. I can NOT change the default Windows 10 font (without registry editing). So, for the 'looks' of MC there is little choice. But it does influence contrast and balance of text on the Skin.
Little issue: in version 1.4 there was a border with rounded corners but it looked bad at 50-70% Skin-size. It should be possibble. 'Blue Steel' Skin has it. It does not work on Easy Grey. The border lines just do NOT meet at the corners. After (again) several hours I found a solution. Rounded corners are back.
Little issue: Overlay transparency-issue on the MAC. I did not know about this issue but I do know that transparency is something to avoid. If a see layer-transparency in an image in Photoshop I will remove it. There is another transparency issue probably on both Mac and Windows computers: overlay transparency will not work in video-playback with something like the 'Mini Player'. I tried to give it rounded corners but they showed up black when playing a video and going to the topborder to activate the playerbar. GIF-transparency always had better support among the OS's. But we want more colors, so we need PNG...

I won't bore you with more details. Maybe at the end of this week, maybe next week, there will be an update of Easy Green.

EnglishTiger:
Jappie

If it's going to make it easier to create your new buttons you can safely reduce the number of images for the List_ListButton and all the PlayerBar Buttons from 5 to 3, nobody gets to see the 4th image and the 5th "click area" image is only required if you want to restrict the click area to a part of the canvas the image is sitting on; i.e. to restrict the "click area" to the visible (coloured) part of a Mac Circular Windows Control Button instead of the Square Canvas it is sitting on.

WaveForm Bar colours - the simplest way of changing/modifying them  them is to do what I did in ET Easy Grey -  use the hex value for the PlayerBar_SliderPos.png image for WaveformBarA and the one for the PlayerBar_SliderPosFront.png for  WaveformBarB - that way you don't have to run analyze audio to get some tracks to populate the Waveform field/tag.

The reason why you can barely see border lines of the Options popup windows for the mac is down to the Mac OS hijacking the "Frame" and putting it inside that Form with the White Header and rounded corners at the top and bottom. It also does it with all my Skins which, like your Easy Grey Skin, also have a 1 pixel wide or high outer edge that is a different colour to the rest of the frame border images. What you are seeing in those mac images is the Hijacked Frames Border Edges and not the ones for the Frame Border Edges

I think I may have found a solution to the "Mini Player Rounded Corners Problem" I created a variant of ET Easy Grey and in PSP modified the Mainframe_TopBorder.png image to give it Rounded Corners and a 1 pixel wide edge colour to all except the bottom edge so that I could see what MC was drawing.
In Standard View without it being maximised not only were the round borders present I discovered something interesting/amazing; I hadn't altered the position of the Windows Close Button so when I hovered over it it also had a Rounded Top Right Corner, the "Overlay" was only being applied to the coloured/textured part of the skin and not the transparent area. The same happened when I switched to mini-view, in Display View when I moved the mouse up to the top of the screen to get the Drop Down Player Bar to put in an appearance it did have transparent areas around the outside of the rounded corners but when I hovered the mouse over the Windows Close Button the Overlay was rectangular with square corners but that may be down to the player bar being on top of a textured part of the display view window.


The solution may well be to do the  same as in the main.xml file for the Blue Steel, Green Eyes and Thunderstorm skins, all of which have rounded corners, and do not have any lines of code that reference the FullScreen  Player.

P.S. Display View has a Default Pure Black Background which makes it difficult to spot if the rounded corners have transparent areas around the corners, I manged to see them by using a TrackInfo plugin that does not have a black background.

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