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

Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)

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marko:

--- Quote from: cncb on September 19, 2024, 12:48:49 pm ---No, .25.

--- End quote ---
Thanks.

There were several issues with the "Play" skin shared above, so I've pulled it for now. The whole skin has been redone. There is now zero dynamics. What you see is what you get regardless of Standard view skin choice or font settings. The pic in the first post has been updated. I'll add the skin once build .25 is public.
There had been a few downloads... no feedback?

EnglishTiger:

--- Quote from: marko on September 21, 2024, 07:20:33 am ---Thanks.

There were several issues with the "Play" skin shared above, so I've pulled it for now. The whole skin has been redone. There is now zero dynamics. What you see is what you get regardless of Standard view skin choice or font settings. The pic in the first post has been updated. I'll add the skin once build .25 is public.
There had been a few downloads... no feedback?

--- End quote ---

marko I don't blame you for wanting to go for zero dynamics in the new version of your "Play" skin; some of the contrast problems you and others have encountered with some Standard View Skins will probably only be fixed when somebody is daft enough to volunteer to modify the skins that do suffer from bad contrast problems. Incidentally some of them, especially when there is a lack of contrast between the PlayBar Buttons and the Background, may never get solved; the PNP Skins, for obvious reasons, are getting their background colour from somewhere other than the PlayerBar and there are loads of skins where the PlayerBar colour is vert different to those used in the rest of the skin.

Other than the original 256x256 logo skin the only ones I've downloaded and checked so far are the last versions of the Logo and Play Skins that were available via your first post.

That Logo skin is incredible as it manages to avoid 2 problems; its size allows it to be placed in a position where it is not obscuring anything the user may need access to it also avoids the other unavoidable/unsolvable problem, distortion of the PlayerBar Buttons in a  Playing Now PopUp Skin other than the Standard View Skin it was designed to work with.

For somebody who has been known to claim they are not very skilled at image manipulation you have done an amazing job of converting the MC Logo into something extremely functional. My granddaughter had ago at replicating what you must have done and gave up when after an hour all she had managed to do was crop the pause button and erase the parts of the other buttons to leave only the pause button visible in the cropped image. Erasing pixels one by one, especially when the image being worked on contains curves, is an arduous task so I reckon it must have taken you at least a couple of days to create just the normal states for each of the 5 buttons.

Just like your Standard View Skins the "Play" skin reveals your attention to detail, your ability to be innovative and reveals just how flexible skinning a Playing Now PopUp can be, especially your use of Tooltips. Other than a couple of problems I encountered on the Mac-Mini the "Logo" and "Play" skins  behaved perfectly on both the Mac and Win Pc's
One of the problems on the Mac may be one that only Apple can fix, the Apple graphics engine has an unpredictable allergy to drawing lines that are 1 pixel high or wide, because of this the border around a PNP Skin never gets drawn. The other one may be own to the way the AppleOS handles overflow, on the Win your use of a Double Height Line allows any data that exceeds the line length to flow into the lover half of the double line (image 1) on the Mac only 1 line of text that appears to be centred vertically in the Double Line height (image 2).

With regard to the lack of feedback situation.
I'm not sure if it's because this is a forum that most people don't visit but you don't have to look at too many of the threads on the first page to realise that for whatever reason a very noticeable number of MC users seem to think that just downloading something is enough of a reward for the hard work, effort and time taken to provide whatever it is they have downloaded.

marko:
Cheers ET. Naturally, with decades old skin threads littered with tumbleweed, I am aware of these things, but it doesn't put me off bumping my gums about it ;):)

The very latest version of "Play" (updated this morning) is available here.

What I'm really curious to know is, now that everything is defined in the skin, how does it look on the Mac?
Google seemed confident that a font called Palatino would be a good bet as being common between platforms, though I wasn't convinced.

The only visual issue I've not been able to resolve is those minimise and maximise buttons... When I click and release, there's a flash of a black square. None of the volume buttons do that. I'm pretty sure the playlist button does it too, but it's very fast, not nearly as noticeable as those other two.

All four skins will be back up when .25 is out and I can make the list details as I'd like them.

-marko

EnglishTiger:
Marko - For once Google was telling the truth the Palatino font is one of the ones that ships with both OS's , but there is a slight snag as there seems to be a discrepancy between how Microsoft and Apple measure Font Sizes as the font appears to be slightly larger on the Mac PC than on the Win PC. It could well be because way back in ancient history Mac's used 72DPI whilst Microsoft used 96DPI. The difference in the font size on the Mac is affecting the headings for the skins 3 section, they're being abbreviated but that can be overcome by moving the Rating Stars a bit further to the right.

On the Win PC just like you I noticed that Black Square when clicking on the minimise and maximise buttons, but that black square did not appear when clicking on them on the Mac. But I could not induce the black square putting in an appearance when clicking on the playlist button on either platform

I spotted that you are using customised stars and I love that new playlist feature, which is very obviously getting it's colours  from the Standard View Skins List Section along with the Scrollbar. I love the fact that it automatically scrolls down to the current playing track. There is one thing about the Playlist that may confuse some users, it had me confused for a while, and that is there is no immediately obvious way of closing it; thankfully it didn't take me too long to work out that clicking anywhere, other than on the playlist, closed it. I think the only part of the playlist you may have problems when trying to achieve zero dynamics could be the Scrollbar and it's component parts.

Other than the existing known differences between using it on the Mac PC I did find one slight problem that is common to both platforms, if the popup is open and MC is minimised whilst a change of track occurs the popup fails to update itself; thankfully issuing 2 ctrl+I instructions results in it reopening displaying the correct "Playing Now" track. I spotted a similar failure to update on a track change when I used ctrl=i to open one of popups just before a track change happened which resulted in it displaying the coverart and details for the old track along with the elapsed time for the new track. I reported it to CNC so hopefully the Fix he made to overcome that problem may also solve the problem of Play not updating itself if MC is minimised during a track change.

Since my Granddaughter insisted we create 2 Playing Now PopUp Skins based on the older version of Play I'm hoping it is a while before she sees the new version because knowing her she will find a way of getting just about every button that exists in a Standard View Skin onto a PopUp.

I've attached a Mac screenie so that you can see what it looks like on that platform.

EnglishTiger:
marko - I think I have discovered why you/I are seeing the black square when pressing the minimize, maximize and playlist buttons.
There are 3 images named in the Source statements for those 3 buttons but you have only provided 2 images.
The 3 Volume buttons only have 2 images named in their Source statements which corresponds to the number of images provided.

I reckon you can put the black square never appearing when I tested it on the Mac down to AppleOS crankiness  ::)

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