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[bytestar]

Is it possible for someone to repair the Purity Skin? The section for Cloudplay is completely unreadable. This issue only occurs with this skin.

[HPBEME]

Is it possible for someone to repair the Purity Skin? The section for Cloudplay is completely unreadable. This issue only occurs with this skin.

Unzip the attached file into MC's standard skin directory, which should be in one of the following locations, depending on which version of MC you have installed (or unzip to both locations if you have both 32 and 64 bit versions).

MC 32bit:  C:\Program Files (x86)\J River\Media Center 32\Skins\Standard View
MC 64bit:  C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 32\Skins\Standard View

This creates a new skin folder called Purity Mod.  Open MC and select the new skin from View menu.  I am not sure if Purity is one of MC's default installed skins, but if it is, having this separate modified Purity skin will prevent MC from overwriting the modification during one of the many/weekly program updates.

The reason Purity has this problem with CloudPlay has to do with the Tree Background being light, while all it's other background elements are dark. Purity is one of the few skins that does this, which is why the problem only occurs with it. 

To resolve this I darkened the Tree background image file, which is what CloudPlay "samples" to use for its main panel content background color. Since CloudPlay's content area uses a light gray text color (the <List> Text hex value), when that is combined with the Tree's light gray background it becomes unreadable (the colors turn out to be virtually identical).  I darkened the tree background image file so it provides reasonable contrast for both dark and light text colors.  Hopefully that all makes sense... or not. You probably don't care, so long as it works.

NOTE: you must restart MC, including the server if applicable, for the color change to take effect. CloudPlay colors are retained, even after refreshing the view and even after switching to different skins, until you do a full restart of MC (FYI: middle-clicking MC's close button will perform a restart). 
_______________________________________________
For the dev team:
I would be great if the CloudPlay colors updated in real-time instead of requiring a full restart.

Also, if Cloudplay would simply use the list background color for the main content area of CloudPlay (like it is in every other main content area) color conflicts would be automatically avoided for all skins - now and in the future.  To provide contrast for the CloudPlay Header Area, use the Hex color specified in the <VIEW HEADER> section for either: [Background] or [HeaderBackground]

[Matt]

Hi HPBEME.  Should we pull that mod into the main Purity skin?  It looks like you changed two files: Playerbar_Display and Tree_Background.  Thanks.

[HPBEME]

Hi HPBEME.  Should we pull that mod into the main Purity skin?  It looks like you changed two files: Playerbar_Display and Tree_Background.  Thanks.

Not really sure - obviously I don't work at J River, but I do appreciate your asking for my opinion. I was just trying to help a specific user out with that skin - it took me about ten times as long to write the explanatory post than it did to make the skin change! That said, the issue the OP was having would apply to anybody using the Purity skin with CloudPlay, so it probably does make sense to permanently incorporate those modifications.

You probably saw what I did with the PlayerBar display image, but I will describe the changes I made specifically, just to be sure: The images upper corners were nicely rounded, but the lower corners were almost sharp. I mirrored the upper half of the image to the lower half to make all the rounded corners symmetric, which to my eyes looks better.

I also increased the image height. Purity's default is to capture the data only within its PlayerBar display "window", with the track slider and 3 lower right buttons (Repeat, Shuffle, DSP) outside of it. As you know, in the main.XML file the user can change the Data Style from 0 to 1 in the <PlayerBar> section, which enlarges the display window to include the track slider and three buttons within its borders.  But the original image's short height resulted in no discernible difference when you toggled the Style setting. With the increased image height, you can now show the PlayerBar window two different ways as intended.  I did not bother to explain all this in the original post… because… well… it would take so long to explain, hahahahaha.

We don't even know yet if the OP has tried out this modified skin and likes the change! 

All that said, I really do think (as I noted in my 1st reply at the bottom) CloudPlay's content area should use the skin's XML specified list background color, and the CloudPlay header should use either the skin's specified tab Background or PlayList Header background color. That way you never have to worry about any color conflicts or poor contrast.  Every skin uses text/background colors that are contrasting (some with better/higher contrast than others) - if they didn't, every skin's display would be problematic across all MC view types, not just CloudPlay.

I know that CloudPlay, Spotlight, and Streaming pages/views behave differently than all the other views, which I presume has something to do with those pages interfacing directly with the Internet (maybe?). So perhaps it's just not possible to point directly to a skins specified hex color, which is why CloudPlay's content background color is "sampled" from the tree background… is that correct?  If however, that is not the case, then using approach I noted above would be much more robust and foolproof.

[Matt]

How about we try this:
Changed: Cloudplay uses the list background color instead of the tree background color (since it uses list colors for text).

I don't know why the code was using the tree background color but list text colors.  It seems like if it just used all the same it would work fine.

[HPBEME]

I don't know why the code was using the tree background color but list text colors.  It seems like if it just used all the same it would work fine.

I am pretty sure I made that exact point about the streaming page in a thread a year or so ago. Every view should use the list background color for the main content area so it is consistent across every MC view.

A potential issue however is the CloudPlay Header already uses the list background color (or at least that's what appears to be when I check multiple skins). That means this change would create a solid color throughout the CloudPlay view/page. Not the end of the world, but stylistically, some may prefer different colors for the header and main content areas, if for no other reason than to help visually segregate them.

That is why I suggested using the hex color specified for Background or BackgroundHeader in the <VIEWHEADER> section. This would provide guaranteed proper text/background contrast as it would already be accounted for in the rest of the skin' s design.

Coupling the new CloudPlay background color with the header color change I am proposing here will result in the header/content colors matching throughout every MC skin, which seems to me to be a desirable outcome.  The attached pictures show how the Playlist and CloudPlay page appearance do not match currently - these changes would fix that.

And while you're at it, maybe get rid of the oddball colors that are used for the New and Popular text links? Those colors conflict with every skins other text colors, so I'm not sure why that was done.  And really, why not turn those links into buttons instead, like you have for the genre options across the top?

[Matt]

Here it is with Purity using the list background.

[HPBEME]

It looks fine, but as predicted, the entire CloudPlay page is one solid color - no contrast for the CloudPlay Header area like it is now (or I guess before after this update). Maybe no one will care, but skins that don't use dark gray backgrounds might not look as good as this skin with one solid color.  Regardless, you can just go with it as-is and see if you get complaints that header is not a different color from the main content area any longer.

Any possibility of getting rid of the ugly purple New and yellow Popular text link colors?  Using those colors is such a bizarre choice and they clash with basically every skin.  Maybe the yellow text works for the Aruba skin, but that skin is seriously out-of-date looking and should be deprecated (along with a slew of others IMO).  The purple does not work with any skin.

[JimH]

Matt,
I think we should back out these changes.  I believe the pages are generated on our Cloudplay server.

[EnglishTiger]

Out of the 65 skins I tried it is only the Purity Skin that has a text/foreground contrast problem on the Cloudplay initial page, though there are a few that do have a visibility/contrast problem with the colour of the "New" and "Popular" links but that could be fixed by using the same text colour the "Listener Supported" and "Continue" links use; plus there are some skins, especially ones with white backgrounds, where there is a visibility problem with the "Cloud" image, something that could be cured by giving it a 1 pixel wide black border.

I agree with HPBME that the logical change to the Cloudplay initial page would be to use the ViewHeader colours for the top section and the List colours for the body section,
Like him I would like to see every view use the skins main.xml List colours but there is one problem, despite multiple requests  for "Display View" to be changed to using the main.xml List colours instead of Pure White Text on a Pure Black Background; a colour combination that no Standard View Skin uses in in the main.xml List section, that chnge has never happened.

N.B. There is a error on that initial page in this line - Cloudplay content is used to build Radio JRiver stations. Radio JRiver station buttons are to the right of the search window above - the "search window" it is referring is on a subsequent page, the only visible search bar/window on the initial page is the one in the player bar.


P.S. Although the Purity Skin used to be one of the skins that was installed when the user installs MC or an MC Update, it was removed from the list of Bundled Skins around the time the ModernCards Skins got added to that list.