Ah, that's not what I'm talking about. Should have made myself clearer. I'm looking to skin the look of the actual buttons (background/hover etc.), not the text.
The default buttons are actually rather clever in the way that they use transparency to allow them to work with almost any skin. I personally feel that the default buttons work best with darker skins, but can be a little jarring with some of the lighter skins.
They are skinnable though. Have a look in your "[MC install Directory]\Data\Default Skin Items\Standard View\" folder, where you will find three images named "CarRadio_ButtonLeft.png" "CarRadio_ButtonMiddle.png" and "CarRadio_ButtonRight.png". You need to create your own versions of these three images, saving them in the actual skin folder itself, not the "default skin items" folder. Once that's done, you then need to add the following code to the "Main.xml" file found in the skin folder (again, not the one found in the "Default Items" folder):
<CARRADIO>
<Entry Name="ButtonLeft" Bitmap="CarRadio_ButtonLeft.png" NumberImages="4" Margins="3,3,2,0" OverTextColor="FFFFFF" PressedTextColor="FFFFFF" />
<Entry Name="ButtonMiddle" Bitmap="CarRadio_ButtonMiddle.png" NumberImages="4" Margins="0,3,2,0" OverTextColor="FFFFFF" PressedTextColor="FFFFFF" />
<Entry Name="ButtonRight" Bitmap="CarRadio_ButtonRight.png" NumberImages="4" Margins="0,3,3,0" OverTextColor="FFFFFF" PressedTextColor="FFFFFF" />
</CARRADIO>
Once done, re-apply the skin to load your new buttons
It's not possible to skin them out of existence using 100% transparency. The buttons disappear, but leave a background coloured 'placeholder' bar showing that cannot be removed. You can remove the numbers by going to the "Car Radio" playlist group and adding playlists there named using this template: "[button number].[space]" so, a playlist named
12. would remove the "12" from button 12, and so on.
-marko