MediaMonkey forum

yes changing colors and buttons make a new skin msz file. and is called a new skin.

but it is only a new copy of the previous one color skin.
its like buying a new car every year and only buying the same model
its still the same car just new stuff on it with new color.
and that is what most the "new skin's" are looking like. same old trouble winamp has
people making new recolors with the same style of buttons.
whats the choice in that.

i know you skinners out there or possible skinners have more image skills then that.
all the " new skins." or should say new versions of previous skin model are only making mediamonkey have
the same boring gui's as the other software used to play muisc and videos, thats going to get mediamonkey lost
in the over all mass of media players on the market.

what do we have to do come grab you by the ankles and turn you upside down to shake out your image creative ideas.
come on guys / gals get out of that rut of same model new color crap. i seen the chevy, i want to see the mg skins
or the ford skins, or the old duesenburg, bently, durrant star, buick roadmaster skins lets get something out there that will make mediamonkey jump out of the screen to the passer by surffers.

you can only take this same old style new color and buttons thing so long. and in my book its gone too long now.

What you call boring, I call clean and classy.

It's just a matter of taste in the end.

But I understand what you mean. Most skins for mm4 are not very colorful.
Delletronic being probably the exception.

If there where more skinners, there would be more styles of skins.

But attracting designers would require:

-a better/new skin engine.
-more enhancements and improvements for the things that aren't skin-able.
-a new repository for skins.
-a nicer layout for Mediamonkey website and logo
-being present on the different art and design platforms ( For example there is no section for MM in Deviantart )

Makes sense?

yep i know its different strokes for different folks.

but its also painful to see skins get dumbed down and called new.
i really liked nohitter151's skin when it was made for mm 3 and had the word blue in the name
it showed more artistic talent then the default one he changed it too.

sure it was white and is white but i was looking beyond that to this artistic talent which he seems to have
tossed in the trash can for his new default version.

well the new skinners are nice and very welcome to make us some more great skins.
but the theme engine is okay it has some things that limit us and you know i know only too well
what they are.
but look at the skins and what you can do with them. i've showed how to make different shapes in the main
player and float player and how to make different image buttons. in all my skins.
with the number of images we can make in our minds the limits of new skin themes are boundless with
the current theme engine. the more they add to the theme engine as feartures we can skin
is just a bonus.

sure i've got trouble with mm 4 not showing the floating player on skins made for mm 4 in win7 or vista. and
showing a disfigured floatplayer if using a mm 3 skin in mm 4. but i'm hopeful they will get it fixed by the time
the new mm 4 is stable.
and with the float player being so customizable that can be the most thought out skin design in the whole skin pack.


yes we could use posting on those other art site locations that would help.

and most of us here know this

a new repository for skins.

was made and is used in part by some but is only on the back burner because
of errors in mm 3 and now going to mm 4.
and nohitter151 was moving things to it but stopped i can only guess he did so because of the errors or rusty told him too.

but even without that others can make theme skins. with 3d shapes in them eyal was doing good on the 3d stuff now he has gone in to scripting some so i think he might slow up on the skins.

Dreadlau wrote:What you call boring, I call clean and classy.

It's just a matter of taste in the end.

But I understand what you mean. Most skins for mm4 are not very colorful.
Delletronic being probably the exception.

If there where more skinners, there would be more styles of skins.

But attracting designers would require:

-a better/new skin engine.
-more enhancements and improvements for the things that aren't skin-able.
-a new repository for skins.
-a nicer layout for Mediamonkey website and logo
-being present on the different art and design platforms ( For example there is no section for MM in Deviantart )

Makes sense?

+1000

I agree completely with Dreadlau.

I have to say, I think that most of the skins that have been produced are garish and cartoonish and they make MM look like a toy in comparison to some of the classy software out there. The only thing that keeps it ahead of it's competition is it's superb functionality and extendability (is that even a word???) that is fully realised by the scripters. I realise that while I'm saying this, I haven't contributed anything to the skinning community and I know how easy it is to just criticise other people's efforts while adding nothing but it's my opinion. I think the Pulse skin in MM4 is very classy and that's the look I'm using right now, with one or two mods of my own but very little.

I would like to see the GUI modernised to compliment the functionality, Jiri hinted that that was going to happen with MM4 and I have to say, I see virtually no difference at all from MM3. The 'native' skin (i.e. MM4 in skinless mode) looks just the same as MM3 and I think this is a huge failing from the design team.

Like I say, it's just my opinion but, when put alongside Helium and even iTunes and WMP, it looks very amateurish and that's a real shame.

Best Regards

Goodog

Guys, don't forget that less is more .

PetrCBR wrote:Guys, don't forget that less is more .

Not to rovingcowboy. To him, MORE is more!

Greetings

PetrCBR wrote:Guys, don't forget that less is more .

You are right ,on this i agree ,
but general a bit more control over the main objects and some small bugfixes would not hurt !
and special for MM4, option for aero frame able / disable ,more control over tab layout!

User can disable aero, but it's not a skin option (so skin can't manage aero availability as it's a little complicated to change it dynamically).

PetrCBR wrote:but it's not a skin option (so skin can't manage aero availability as it's a little complicated to change it dynamically).

Too bad

PetrCBR wrote:User can disable aero

This sounds good,it's a step in the right direction
if you look at Music Bee ,there is a option in the skin menu to skin the window border!

Year ago i've made some tests (internal only) how to draw custom border together with aero. It work 'fine', but there're some complications because of ThemeEngine we're using and need many changes in TE to make it work as we need.

Hi PetrCBR.

Did you consider the possibility of changing theme engine for a more powerful engine?

Could this be a candidate: http://www.ksdev.com/vgscene/index.html

Is switching the skin engine planned at some point?


Thank you.

PetrCBR wrote:... ThemeEngine we're using and need many changes in TE to make it work as we need.

Speaking of ThemeEngine...
Petr, in this post I've made some assumptions related to themeengine, but I was simply speculating.
Could you please confirm or deny what I said there?

We're considering to move to VGScene in future (mainly because of multi-platform support).

gege, i know ThemeEngine we're using is outdated, but i can't see anything we really need in latest version and based on our huge customizations it's high risk to update (and for no 'real' reason).

PetrCBR wrote:gege, i know ThemeEngine we're using is outdated, but i can't see anything we really need in latest version...

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't demanding the update to latest version. I was just asking you to confirm or deny this speculation:

gege wrote:I think ... the MM team have made their own mods on an earlier version of themeengine. Now it is kind of difficult to use an updated version of vanilla themeengine.

Which you have just confirmed:

PetrCBR wrote: ...and based on our huge customizations it's high risk to update (and for no 'real' reason).