INTERACT FORUM

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)  (Read 2240 times)

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« on: September 13, 2024, 02:32:57 pm »

New for Media Center 33, cncb has been working hard on this new feature.

For any other of you long time users who may be familiar with rhinobanga's decades old plugin, cncb's work is at least as good, and in some areas, quite a bit superior.

First off, rhinobanga is an absolute legend, to me ;) He built a full featured, rock solid plugin that has worked, pretty much, flawlessly with MC for decades. Time, sadly, was catching up with it... FTP, awesome back then, but no sFTP... hosting providers do not like that these days... only 32 bit compatibility... that's not, erm, compatible, with the general desire, user-drift, towards 64 bit.

cncb's work takes care of all of this, and a little bit more...

For anyone who fancies a stab at creating a skin, this new MC feature gives access to three extremely useful things...
  • Any visible item shown can be assigned an MCC command
  • Any item can use the output of an MC expression
  • It is possible to create a dynamic skin, where backgrounds, ratings, fonts etc are all inherited from whichever standard view skin is currently being used

I also feel it's worth pointing out a 'thing' regarding settings, and what may or may not be acceptable to you personally... namely, the "Show for (seconds)" setting...
When I'm using the "Notify" skin, I find a time of twenty seconds is good. The thing is, the popup offers useful information via tooltips, such as album review (if set) and artist Bios (if set), along with ratings and next/previous track info... so long as the mouse is over the popup interacting with it one way or the other, it will not hide after the set twenty seconds. This, is wonderful :)

For decades, with the old plugin, I've used, exclusively, the 'Top Toolbar' skin, but recently, I've leaned heavily towards the "Notify" skin. imho, it's pretty cool :)
I strongly advise making the ctrl+i combo global (via settings). It will then hide/show the popup as desired regardless of what you're currently doing.

With that, and in the hope of inspiring some others with vision/imagination way better than mine, this weekend I am sharing the four skins for the playing now popup feature that I've kept up-to-date as development has progressed. Pictures and links to the popup skin threads are below.

Note:
All of the skins below have been produced on a screen using a 1920 x 1200 resolution @ 100% on Windows 10 Pro. Feedback from users on other platforms is especially appreciated.

Logo

Info and download

Notify

Info and download

Play

Info and download


Top Toolbar

Info and download

Enjoy :)

cncb

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3122
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2024, 04:26:00 pm »

The only things currently lacking in the JRiver iteration are the "Current Playlist" button, and sliders for volume and progress, none of which, to me, are deal breakers (though the current playlist button is a really close call) :)

Check the next build for a "current playlist" command that shows a popup list.  It will take more work if you want the list customizable.

I'm not sure about .mjp.  I will check it out.
Logged
-Craig    MO 4Media remote and player:  Android/TV/Auto | iOS | Windows 10/UWP

JimH

  • Administrator
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 72531
  • Where did I put my teeth?
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #2 on: September 13, 2024, 11:42:06 pm »

Craig,
Open any mjp file in notepad.  MC owns the file type (Media Jukebox Package) and will execute the contents of the file when you click on it.

Marko,
Thanks for the great write-up!  Remind me to suggest you to jmone for VP of Marketing when he finally gets to work!

Rhinobanga,
If you're reading, thank you!
Logged

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2024, 01:43:44 am »

Check the next build for a "current playlist" command that shows a popup list.  It will take more work if you want the list customizable.
Nice. Will test as soon as it's out. Customizable would be a bonus, the old plugin's list was not, it just showed [artist] - [name]

I'll update the attachments in the first post as the skins progress. "Notify" has been changed for now as I've found that's reliably causing MC to crash if you try to move it with mousebehavior set to "1"

-marko

cncb

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3122
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2024, 01:07:53 pm »

Nice. Will test as soon as it's out. Customizable would be a bonus, the old plugin's list was not, it just showed [artist] - [name]

I was referring to the list colors, etc., but we can make the actual text customizable if you want.

Note that the next build supports Popup skins in .mjp files.
Logged
-Craig    MO 4Media remote and player:  Android/TV/Auto | iOS | Windows 10/UWP

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2024, 01:12:43 pm »

Confirmation that the "Move" bug is fixed.
I was referring to the list colors, etc., but we can make the actual text customizable if you want.
Very neat approach to the playing now list presentation. I like it. I think the current standard view list will always work, don't you?
Being able to customize the text would be a lovely bonus if it's not too much hassle :)

Top Toolbar and Notify now have the button, but it won't work until build 23 is released publicly, so I've removed them for now.
I am extremely inept when working graphically on tiny things like these. I know they look a bit rough and amateurish. I'll keep trying though :)

Note that the next build supports Popup skins in .mjp files.
Currently, to install a skin, we do:
Code: [Select]
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<MJPF version="2.0">
<Package>
<Name>Seamless</Name>
<Action>INSTALLSKIN</Action>
Is there a "INSTALLPOPUPSKIN" action or is it more complex than that?

-marko

cncb

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3122
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #6 on: September 18, 2024, 10:15:11 am »

Currently, to install a skin, we do:
Code: [Select]
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<MJPF version="2.0">
<Package>
<Name>Seamless</Name>
<Action>INSTALLSKIN</Action>
<URL>http://www.mpw.scot/files/ia/Seamless.zip</URL>
<Version>1.0</Version>
<HasActions>0</HasActions>
</Package>       
</MJPF>
Is there a "INSTALLPOPUPSKIN" action or is it more complex than that?

It is exactly the same as a standard skin (use INSTALLSKIN).
Logged
-Craig    MO 4Media remote and player:  Android/TV/Auto | iOS | Windows 10/UWP

cncb

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3122
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #7 on: September 19, 2024, 09:55:06 am »

Being able to customize the text would be a lovely bonus if it's not too much hassle :)

Done.
Logged
-Craig    MO 4Media remote and player:  Android/TV/Auto | iOS | Windows 10/UWP

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #8 on: September 19, 2024, 12:13:58 pm »

Awesome sauce. :D Is this in build .24?

cncb

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3122
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #9 on: September 19, 2024, 12:48:49 pm »

No, .25.
Logged
-Craig    MO 4Media remote and player:  Android/TV/Auto | iOS | Windows 10/UWP

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #10 on: September 21, 2024, 07:20:33 am »

No, .25.
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

  • Regular Member
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 1113
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #11 on: September 22, 2024, 06:38:30 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?

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.
Logged
Apple Mac Mini Desktop Computer with M4 Pro chip with 12 core CPU and 16 core GPU: 24GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD Storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 Thunderbolt5 + 2USBC ports.

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #12 on: September 22, 2024, 07:43:11 am »

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

  • Regular Member
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 1113
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #13 on: September 22, 2024, 09:45:04 am »

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.
Logged
Apple Mac Mini Desktop Computer with M4 Pro chip with 12 core CPU and 16 core GPU: 24GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD Storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 Thunderbolt5 + 2USBC ports.

EnglishTiger

  • Regular Member
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 1113
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #14 on: September 23, 2024, 07:12:39 am »

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  ::)
Logged
Apple Mac Mini Desktop Computer with M4 Pro chip with 12 core CPU and 16 core GPU: 24GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD Storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 Thunderbolt5 + 2USBC ports.

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #15 on: September 23, 2024, 12:12:36 pm »

You are correct. This was me trying to see if adding the third image would cure the 'black square'

If you look closely, you will see that I only needed two images, because I specified the same image for hover and pressed. For giggles, I copied the hover image and added it, naming it 'pressed'. The black square persists, so I don't think it's that. My next test will be to use one of the sets of volume images in place of the arrows and see what happens then. If the square is still showing with those, then it's something up with the MCC command for those compared with the volume commands.

Of greater concern to me atm is just how poor that popup looks on the Mac :(



I don't really want to move the ratings to the right, as then, here, they'll look orphaned.
Also, on Windows, it defaults to a top-left alignment, and auto-wordwraps. On the Mac, it appears to defaulting to a center vertical alignment, with, I'm guessing, no room for a second line via word wrap. I wonder, is it pulling the alignment settings from MC's standard view settings? I just assumed the plugin was defaulting that way so didn't waste time adding specifications for it in the xml.

Could you try something for me?
In the xml file, lines 10, 14 and 18 have the details. Font size is set 13, 15, and 13. How small do you need to make the font in order for the tails in "y" to not be cut off and for the info to wrap onto the second line if necessary?

Do the tooltips suffer from any similar 'uglification' on the Mac, or are they OK?

Thanks ET,

-marko

EnglishTiger

  • Regular Member
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 1113
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #16 on: September 24, 2024, 06:55:49 am »

Marko -

Both Google and I mislead you, the "Palatino" Font is supplied on the Mac but not on the Win11, instead it has one called "Palatino Linotype" so your guess is a good as mine as to which Font the New Version of Play is actually using on the Win.
I downloaded and installed the Palatino Font to make sure the PopUp was using the one in the main.xml and not some undisclosed default font.

On checking lines 10, 14 & 18 I spotted that line 18 did not contain a FontFace="Palatino" statement in it, so I added in the version I'm testing
I also created 3rd "pressed" state images for the Hide, Playlist and Show buttons and modified the main.xml accordingly.
With regards to the hide & show buttons and that annoying black square, even with images for all 3 states it was still happening, I reckon it could be down to the way those 2 MCC commands work on the Win PC.

Until a Mac version that includes the changes in the Win MC32.0.24 and MC32.0.25 is available it is a bit pointless doing anymore testing on that platform.
I did do some limited testing on it and can report that Tooltips on the Mac are exactly the same as they are on the Win PC.

I don't know if you have spotted this but if a tooltip contains a "Char(10) " statement the space behind the "Char(10)" appears at the beginning of any line that is displayed immediately after one that contains "Char(10) ".

Of the attached images:-
The 1st shows 3 different versions of "Play; the original "Dynamic" version, the New Version (I renamed it's folder and skin name to "Play 2") and "Play V" a modified version of Play 2 that uses the Verdana Font instead of the Palatino Font.

The 2nd shows both MC and "Play 2" using the Palatino Font whilst the 3rd shows both MC and "Play V" using the Verdana Font.

If you look closely at images 2 & 3 the Font Size in MC is 10 but the smallest Font Size specified in "Play 2" and "Play V" is 12; which technically means that none of the text visible in the Popup should be smaller than the text in the MC Standard View List Section it's sitting on.
N.B. Tooltips do use the same size font as MC.

ET

Logged
Apple Mac Mini Desktop Computer with M4 Pro chip with 12 core CPU and 16 core GPU: 24GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD Storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 Thunderbolt5 + 2USBC ports.

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #17 on: September 24, 2024, 12:39:00 pm »

First of all, thank you for your time. Our time is precious so it means a lot when it's given freely.
Both Google and I mislead you, the "Palatino" Font is supplied on the Mac but not on the Win11, instead it has one called "Palatino Linotype" so your guess is a good as mine as to which Font the New Version of Play is actually using on the Win.
I downloaded and installed the Palatino Font to make sure the PopUp was using the one in the main.xml and not some undisclosed default font.

On checking lines 10, 14 & 18 I spotted that line 18 did not contain a FontFace="Palatino" statement in it, so I added in the version I'm testing
I also created 3rd "pressed" state images for the Hide, Playlist and Show buttons and modified the main.xml accordingly.
With regards to the hide & show buttons and that annoying black square, even with images for all 3 states it was still happening, I reckon it could be down to the way those 2 MCC commands work on the Win PC.

Until a Mac version that includes the changes in the Win MC32.0.24 and MC32.0.25 is available it is a bit pointless doing anymore testing on that platform.
I did do some limited testing on it and can report that Tooltips on the Mac are exactly the same as they are on the Win PC.
Agreed re: the platforms catching up. If I'm honest, "pointless" also sprang to mind as the minefield of differing platforms really begins to make my head hurt. More on that further on...

I don't know if you have spotted this but if a tooltip contains a "Char(10) " statement the space behind the "Char(10)" appears at the beginning of any line that is displayed immediately after one that contains "Char(10) ".
Yeah, I noticed, but decided I liked it better that way. Easier for me to read :)

Of the attached images:-
The 1st shows 3 different versions of "Play; the original "Dynamic" version, the New Version (I renamed it's folder and skin name to "Play 2") and "Play V" a modified version of Play 2 that uses the Verdana Font instead of the Palatino Font.

The 2nd shows both MC and "Play 2" using the Palatino Font whilst the 3rd shows both MC and "Play V" using the Verdana Font.

If you look closely at images 2 & 3 the Font Size in MC is 10 but the smallest Font Size specified in "Play 2" and "Play V" is 12; which technically means that none of the text visible in the Popup should be smaller than the text in the MC Standard View List Section it's sitting on.
N.B. Tooltips do use the same size font as MC.
I had a bit of difficulty following the images and their references, but, if the last one of each group is from the Mac, that looks great. Almost like I'd expect.

Earlier on, when I said "more on that later", here's the more...

I never made a tooltip for the stats lines because, here, for me, they never got truncated. For me, that's just annoying. The info should be readily visible, you absorb it the instant you see it and shouldn't need to move the mouse for a tooltip if you want what's missing.

This whole interaction of ours has left me quite deflated. Please don't take that personally, I'm sure you know what I mean :)
I spend considerable time on these, and here on my Windows 10 Pro PC, I'm happy, results are great, functional, slick, and look pretty good too. It's such a neat new thing for MC33, I want to show others what's possible, and maybe, someone else will be inspired to create something not-yet-thought-of.

Then, I see how mental it looks on the Mac, and begin compromising how it looks on my PC in an attempt to make it at least presentable on the Mac.
We have no idea at all how Linux (with all its varied carnations) is interpreting things.

Floundering, I end up with two thoughts...
1. For this to work for all supported platforms, the xml is going to need to offer platform specific settings, along the lines that a standard view skin currently does, and anyone who's tried to produce a skin that fits all already knows what a headache and turn-off that is...

2. I'll make it look good at my end. If it don't look so good at the other end, the user will just need to either edit the skin to suit their needs/platform, or delete what they downloaded, muttering to themselves that marko is an ass to think that this is ready for release :D

You have arrived at the same conclusion as me regarding the irritating "black square". I'll report it as a bug and see if there's anything that can be done.

ET, thanks again. Your help has been invaluable to me. It will be the weekend before I get to have a proper play with "V" as well as the expression driven pop-up playing now list :)

-marko.

EnglishTiger

  • Regular Member
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 1113
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #18 on: September 27, 2024, 07:12:31 am »

marko - since fixing the problem with Fontsize may take a while to fix what I would like to suggest is for you to concentrate on getting your popup skins performing the way you would prefer them to and when you are happy with them send then to me and I'll try them out on the Mac and report successes or any problems back to you. That way we can both apply the necessary pressure needed to get the PlayingNow Popups looking and behaving the same way on both platforms.

I appreciate your thanks but there is something you should never forget - when it comes to MC Skins you Lead and others Follow, including me.
Logged
Apple Mac Mini Desktop Computer with M4 Pro chip with 12 core CPU and 16 core GPU: 24GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD Storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 Thunderbolt5 + 2USBC ports.

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #19 on: September 27, 2024, 01:33:40 pm »

Thanks, and yes, I'd kind of arrived at this juncture myself too, minus the "send to ET" step, which I'll add, now.

I really don't like that mono-spaced font, so, to figure out what actually happens, I set the skins to specifically use "Segoe UI". Will be interesting to see what it does when it can't find the font. I presume it'll fall back to use whatever standard view is set to use... but will it?

Also, now that build 27 is public (and I've yet to test the volume slider), I was thinking that, hopefully over the weekend, I'd whip the four skins into shape, test the mjp file thing, and then lock this thread and post them again, in all their updated glory, in individual threads, with mjp files, so that if they get updates, you just need to double-click the mjp file again to grab the latest changes.

I've spent a bit of time this week dragging the expressions into the v33 century, they were old and cludgy, but because they just worked, I was too lazy to sort them, until now. They're much better. I've also looked hard at the current iteration of "Play" and feel that everything to the right of the function icons, except thumbnails and ratings, can be covered by tooltips, so, there'll be a new skin that is just that logo, plus the function buttons, and nothing else. I think it'll be OK.

-marko

I appreciate your thanks but there is something you should never forget - when it comes to MC Skins you Lead and others Follow, including me.
You made me blush, so I skirted around this :) I think others more skilled went before me, I learned from them :)

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #20 on: September 28, 2024, 05:50:43 am »

marko - since fixing the problem with Fontsize may take a while to fix what I would like to suggest is for you to concentrate on getting your popup skins performing the way you would prefer them to and when you are happy with them send then to me and I'll try them out on the Mac and report successes or any problems back to you. That way we can both apply the necessary pressure needed to get the PlayingNow Popups looking and behaving the same way on both platforms.

I've spent hours on these four skins this morning. I found so many silly mistakes in all of them. Think I have them all sorted out now...
Logo


Notify


Play


Top Toolbar


I'll send you d'load links. Thinking that probably the best way forward atm is going to be to offer platform specific versions of these...

EnglishTiger

  • Regular Member
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 1113
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #21 on: September 28, 2024, 08:31:28 am »

Logo
I couldn't spot any differences when using it on the Win PC and the Mac PC and I ain't going to borrow one of NASA's telescope things to find if there is any actual difference

Play
Until cncb can sort out the "FontSize" problem this one can only be used on the Win Platform see Image 1

Notify
You get 9 out of 10 for this one - there is a slight alignment problem
The "Pause" buttons has "y-248" the play button has "y-230"
Other than that play spot the difference with Image 2

Top Toolbar
You get 9 out of 10 for this one - it also suffers from the "FontSize" problem - which is easily solved by removing the "Fontsize" instruction and adding a Tooltip to the "Details" line

In Image 3 the top one is for the Win Pc, the 2nd is for the Mac PC and the 3rd one is what you get on the Mac if the "Fontsize" instructions are removed

One of these days I'll find out how to get the images into the body of a posting and not appended at the bottom

P.S. Any slight differences in the mac image sizes is mainly down to me having to crop the popup images out of the Mac screenies - PrtScn on the Mac is no where near as sophisticated as the 1 in Win11.



Logged
Apple Mac Mini Desktop Computer with M4 Pro chip with 12 core CPU and 16 core GPU: 24GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD Storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 Thunderbolt5 + 2USBC ports.

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #22 on: September 28, 2024, 12:13:41 pm »

Thanks ET. That's all pretty cool, and nowhere near as bad as I expected. I'll try removing the fontsize here too. If I remove the fontsize from instructions from "Play", will it still be messed up on the Mac?

Is your Windows snip of "Top Toolbar" also without the fontsize instruction? It looks to me like the line needs to move up a pixel or two to center it, but then, it's going to be too high on the Mac, right? Currently the centering on the Mac snip looks to be pretty much spot on.

In Notify, the line of function icons below the player control buttons look really fuzzy on the Mac, with and odd purple-ish border around them. Is that just a screenshot and crop thing or is that how they are actually drawn on the Mac?
I had no choice but to use custom icons for minimise and maximise as the "PLAYERBAR" ones were too varied between skins. "Noire" for example, didn't even draw them, but if you could find them with the mouse, the "over" images would appear. Apart from that line, everything else in the skin is dynamic, driven by the current standard view skin. When it works, it's really rather good. My "Seamless" skin, and Dragyn's "Opus MC (Blue)" work really well with Notify.

I have two Shania albums here, C'mon Over and Up. I also have that Bryan Adams album, and that Sharleen Spiteri album. Do you have any of her albums with the band Texas? "Southside" and "White On Blonde" are, imo, both excellent albums. I saw Texas live at Edinburgh Castle on New Year's Eve many many years ago... I don't know if I was just expecting too much, but it turned out to be, not quite the worst (that honour goes to Madonna at Murrayfield Stadium, by a country mile) but the gig was a real let down for me. Still, their albums are great fun and I play them regularly.

-marko

EnglishTiger

  • Regular Member
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 1113
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #23 on: September 28, 2024, 01:06:22 pm »

marko -

The Win Snip of the "Top Toolbar" is from the original version

I'm not sure what the fuzziness in the Mac "Notify" "PLAYERBAR" Buttons  image is down to.

At present the Win PC is attached to a Samsung CF27 (27") curved monitor and the Mac PC is attached to the 24" version of the same monitor. Tomorrow I'll switch the monitors over which hopefully will enable me to find out what may be causing the fuzziness around those buttons. My guess is it's either the PrtScn on the Mac or a combination of the routine the popup skinning engine uses to resize the images and the Mac's unpredictable allergy to lines that are 1 pixel wide or high.

In the Std View Skin those "PLAYERBAR" buttons are 48x36 in the popup I am working on if I set the the size to anything lower that 36x24 the button edge vanished on the edge on the Mac; which shows how weird the mac can be at times because that 1 pixel button edge is set 1 transparent pixel in from the edge on all 4 sides.
The Mac is a platform that once had a reputation for being the best for handling graphics but since Apple introduced Retina Graphics it has developed some real odd habits.
Logged
Apple Mac Mini Desktop Computer with M4 Pro chip with 12 core CPU and 16 core GPU: 24GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD Storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 Thunderbolt5 + 2USBC ports.

marko

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 9160
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #24 on: September 29, 2024, 01:18:53 am »

Final Update here...

mjp files are created and confirmed to be working correctly (here, on Windows 10, 32 bit, at least).

Without the font size instructions the "Play" skin is a hopeless fail on Windows, so as reported by ET above, this one is going to have to be written off for the Mac. Maybe it works on Linux?

Final tweaks made to "Notify", as I noticed that there wasn't enough room for the "clear rating" button on the ET Blue skin, and also, without control over font size, the details line can get truncated once the font gets over a certain size, so the info there is now also shown via tooltip.

I will create a new thread for each of the skins. Download will be by way of mjp files. This way, MC will install the skin for the user, and for any future tweaks, I'll just update the files on the server and a double click on the mjp file will grab the update.

Next up for me...
Create a new version of "Play" that should work on a Mac
Test the new Volume slider content type
Check out a couple of popup related things shared with me recently

Once I've created the new skin threads, I'll link them in the first post here, and lock this thread.
Thank you to cncb for the outstanding work on this feature, and to ET for the invaluable Mac and xml error testing.

-marko

cncb

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 3122
Re: Playing Now PopUp Skins (x4)
« Reply #25 on: October 08, 2024, 11:48:51 am »

Without the font size instructions the "Play" skin is a hopeless fail on Windows, so as reported by ET above, this one is going to have to be written off for the Mac.

I have been working on something else for a while but finally got back to this.  I think I have the Mac font size issues worked out in the next Mac build.  It was not scaling properly for the "retina mode".
Logged
-Craig    MO 4Media remote and player:  Android/TV/Auto | iOS | Windows 10/UWP
Pages: [1]   Go Up