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[patented_licks]

New Skin: Onyx. Black with blue trim.

Download: http://waterfire.us/onyx.htm

[marko]

Thank you for posting. It's always good to have folk working on new skins. Having churned out one or three myself, I know how much work is required... you don't turn these things out in an afternoon!

Onyx could benefit from a little polish in the following areas...

The tabs are quite jarring. You have round corners on the main frame, consider rounding the tab corners too, and make them overlap while you're in there. The troughs and peaks don't feel right somehow.

The biggie for me, and always one of the first things I do when I load a new skin, and one of the things I found hardest to balance nicely in my own skins, are multiple selections. The details of the tracks selected in the attached screenshot are really difficult to read, at least for my fifty year old eyes, they are, and in thumbnails, the resulting alternating light/dark stripe effect of a multiple selection is a nightmare for me.

The difficulty there comes from the fact that we need to use the same 'selection' image for both details and thumbnails. I have asked several times over the years for a separate "list_thumb_selection.png" file we could specify, but it must not be as simple to do as it is in my head, else we would have it already!

Other than that, a nice effort at a dark skin. Keep them coming, and if you need any pointers for anything, just ask.
Also, feedback on new skins can be notoriously slow. Don't let that put you off

-marko

[kurushi]

Héhé honestly i spended beetween 3 & 4 hour for to make a skin and per eg on my diabolik skin i was making the  colors variants at the same time so 5 or 6 hours for 3 skins with just various colours.
But now it 'll take one or 2 day cause o have forgotten so much ^^.
the first skin is long then it's fast.
For my last one 1 hour only but i have just changed some colors... the base was here ...

In fact the longuest part is to choose what i want; i try so many variant in each part of the skin.

Making a skin is not so hard and long but making the ressouce can be (i mean buttons etc...) for the metro style it took me only 5 mn with paint but a skin like you'rs Marko with shade and so on it can be long i am agree

[marko]

Of course, it's not hard, but, it's attention to detail that counts, and that's what takes time. It needs to be right, down to the last pixel. Everything placed just so, in relation to the other parts of the skin. All those options and areas of the program you never visit need to be checked also to ensure that they are OK for those that do use them... more time...

If you're really going to do it right, you don't rely on the stock "Default Skin Items", you create your own graphics for the header menu bar, the tabs, the DSP, Shuffle, Repeat, Display view, Volume options, quick search toolbar, the selection rectangle, full screen player bar....

The menu background has to look right... be original.
Choice of colour is important and has to work in all areas of the xml where they are shared.

I work on the principal that the important thing is the presentation of the media, and the skin should not distract from that, and a hastily made skin does indeed distract. Skins with super high contrasting elements are also distracting, especially if your involved in a marathon hours of tagging. Getting it all to hang together in that way, borrowing as little as possible, takes time, and the less of that you have spare, the longer it takes. It should never be rushed to release. The 2nd Stage skin from Mr Chriz is a prime example of this, released after being in developement for years!

And that first skin... deary me, learning how the matrix drawing works, experimenting with the xml, learning where the colours are shared, that takes almost forever!

[patented_licks]

marko,

Thanks for the feedback. I toned down the list/tree/menu selection. Have not decided what, if anything, to do to modify the tabs. Still considering.

[patented_licks]

Taking marko's critique to heart, updated the tabs to be less "jarring."

Download at http://waterfire.us/onyx.htm.

[marko]

The selection background is so much better now.
The tabs... well, better, but instantly recogniseable to me (You should perhaps consider a mention for the source)

I'm not going to knock you for that. My first skin, The Fly, began life as a rehashed Noire (JRiver) and Dave's "Opus" action window. As I got more into it, I decided that I wanted to learn more about what may or may not be possible with the XML skinning language, and try creating more of my own skin parts along the way. It took a lot of time, learning on the hoof that way, but I feel was worth it.

I remember colours being the biggest pain...

[patented_licks]

marko,

Thank you again for your encouraging remarks about the Onyx skin, which led to what I obviously think are were improvements.

Your implicit remark about giving credit for a supposed source of inspiration made me laugh out loud over the discrepancy you and I have in what constitutes creativity, or deserves credit.

You disliked the straight, angular lines used in the first version of the Onyx skin. Which is to say some curvature was being called for. Having come to that conclusion that you had inferred, the only choices left were what curve, how much curve, and how symmetrical. I decided upon the simplest choice: a perfect half-circle.

My wife disliked (in the first version of the skin) that the selected tab visually recessed while the unselected tabs stood out. I agreed that should not be so.

Thus came another larger issue – how to highlight.

The time-worn solution I came to was to have the unselected tabs have lower overall value (lightness) than the active tab, with decreasing value vertically (i.e., lit from the bottom up), while the active tab lit from the top down, at overall higher value. That affords a "flipping" visual look for mouseover (along with bluish font, which I had already put in).

This obvious in hindsight derivative solution will no doubt continue to be used in the future.

Hopefully people will discover the Onyx skin, enjoy it, and inspire others to make new skins. That is why I made it public.

These media skins are nothing more than a series of aesthetic design choices. All are derivative, and severely constrained by the design skills of the programmers who developed the unfortunate venue for skin development, which results in inordinate time consumption in making skins, owing to both poor software design and lack of documentation.

I am quite grateful to the graphic skin makers who preceded me and provided me insight, and especially the JRiver coders who "broke" the Black-On-Black skin I was using with version 20 of their software, prompting my exploration in this little nook.

I use this quite excellent program all the time, so the time consumption to get a decent looking skin that I personally find appealing worthwhile. I am also grateful for this forum, which has been informative, and rendered to its instant quality by the diligence of administrators such as yourself (marko). Thank you all most sincerely.

[marko]

OK, I stand corrected. The second I saw the tabs...


I thought, ooh, 2nd stage...

and assumed you had modded those.

I'm kind of glad they broke it too. Anything that encourages users to take up the dark art of skinning, although, they did fix it.

Also, just for clarity, I am not an administrator, just a user like yourself with a library that's eleven years old. First files imported 6th March 2003.

Happy Christmas to you and yours.... Santa good to you?

[William-NM]

Thanks for all your hard work -  that's a great looking skin. I think it'll make a lot of other MC users very happy, too. The one little thing that I thought I'd mention is that the right scroll bar is light colored. Not a big deal, as it usually isn't visible. I just happened to be  trying out the new Galleria track info plug-in and it's a bit taller than my usual cover art or milkdrop2 viz. Just thought I should mention it. I'll attach a screenshot.  Thanks again and Happy New Year!

[marko]

That scroll bar is in the actual display window. It's either specified by the track info plugin, or it's using the default windows scroll bar. MC skins only specify two scroll bars, one horizontal, and one vertical, and they're used where ever they are required.

You can test this by loading another skin. I would not expect the scroll bar you have shown there to change, regardless of the skin used?

-marko

[blgentry]

This is a REALLY attractive skin!

It's my new favorite. Thank you for making it and sharing it with us.

I was just looking for something to test my Mac script for linking in skins non-destructively and found this one.   It's really nice. 

Brian.

[patented_licks]

blgentry,

Thank you for the kind words. Much appreciated.