Easier skinning or a default simple skin

[Evil Overlord]

It would be nice if designing new skins (or modifying existing ones) were substantially easier, or if a broader range of choices were available.

[Bona fides to soften readers up for a critical comment later]
- I think MM is a terrific program, and by far the best music organizer and tagger I've found. I've used MM happily now for years.

[critical comment]
- I think MM is very unattractive. And so are most of the available skins.

Now, obviously this indicates in part simply that my taste doesn't match that of the many, many people who are quite happy with MM's look, or with the people who do a lot of work designing skins that many, many people very much like.

However, it does kind of leave people like me out in the cold, and trying to find players that are not quite so black on black (or blue on blue), or cluttered with widgets.

Clearly, the answer, then, is "Go make your own skin."
I tried. I really did. But I'm not a programmer, and I found the process awe-inspiringly difficult. Even modifying someone else's skin was beyond my skills.

So, my request is this. Either:
a) make the process for designing new skins substantially easier. Drag and drop easy.
or
b) offer one or two simpler skins. Something more like MusicBee or Jaangle, perhaps. Simple, but not so plain as foobar2000. The ones I've seen (and I think I've looked at everything) don't fit the bill for one reason or another.

[Lowlander]

MusicBee looks nearly the same as the VitreousBlue skin: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... t=vitreous and Jaangle looks very similar to the CleanMM skin: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... mm#p276113

[Evil Overlord]

I have to disagree about Vitreous Blue, but CleanMM looks interesting. Thanks for pointing it out. I guess it's been a few months since I looked through all the skins.

[rovingcowboy]

mm 4 is going to use more windows 7 like skins but will also keep the old mm 3 skins able to be used.

[nohitter151]

The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.

[Eyal]

The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.

I disagree. It's (relatively) easy once you know How-To.
Took me a month to create my first skin!

[nohitter151]

The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.

I disagree. It's (relatively) easy once you know How-To.
Took me a month to create my first skin!

You're right, . But what I meant to say was that if it were made any easier, we would not be able to customize it as much as we can now. I guess what I'm trying to say is there is a trade off between how easy it is to skin vs. how much you can customize the look. There's a pretty good balance between those now, but as someone who already knows what they're doing skinning, I'd rather see them make it more complicated but give us more freedom to customize the look.

[rovingcowboy]

i'll have to agree on it most newbies can understand some html coding and or scripting that makes it a little tuff to learn
how to make a mediamonkey skin.

but for the total newbie to computer stuff that can't even make a web page with a wysiwyg editor that is who i made
that fast newbies walk through for, so if the newbies that are able to do some scripting and or html coding, could just
remember back to how they were when they too were a total newbie, then taking that fast walk through would be easy
to make a back cover for the theme skin, and give them a good foot in the door for learning the rest of the skins.

i really do think that with what i put up there on the wiki and what rusty and morten and steegy put up there. and the others that did also contribute to the knowledge there, it is fully possible for a total newbie or an advanced newbie to make
a full skin set of all the 6 skins for mediamonkey.

i also do not expect it to much more then an image or color change of the skin they use in the lessons to adjust.

that extra tweaking of the placement of the items in the player skins or wheather or not to include any item in their style
will take some time to learn how to do. the advanced newbies would pick up on the tweaking of the skins faster.

but i still agree with the original poster it is hard for the person that can program, script, and make a css web page from notepad to just jump in and do a skin. (but that is because they have a harder time remembering how a total newbie sees things.



EDITED IN

i was thinking more after i submited this reply and i thought i could tell you in a manor here that might help you more if you can bake a cake.

the program code is the cake baked and ready for icing, the images used on the skin are the fondot for the cake, the ini files in monkey for the skins. are the icing design layouts for the items you place on the cake like the pre-made statues.
the codes in the ini file are the math calulations for your exact placement of those statues.

[Dreadlau]

The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.

Are you serious?

I wonder why people have asked for a dedicated Mediamonkey skinning program then?
And why there are so many posts about the skinning engine not being intuitive?


btw: Wow Musicbee UI looks very similar to Mediamonkey.

[nohitter151]

The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.

Are you serious?

I wonder why people have asked for a dedicated Mediamonkey skinning program then?
And why there are so many posts about the skinning engine not being intuitive?


btw: Wow Musicbee UI looks very similar to Mediamonkey.

Did you totally miss my last post? http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/postin ... 3#pr277516

Anyway, I doubt that skinning any program is ever "intuitive". There's always going to be something of a learning curve. But I don't see how manipulating images like you use in MM is "difficult". Other programs use XML documents, html, CSS, and lots of other stuff that is much "harder" than what MM requires.

[DreadM]

Greetings

I disagree. It's (relatively) easy once you know How-To.

Thats true

The skinning is already very easy, I don't see how it could possibly be made much easier.

well i must say ,to create player skins it's very easy ( because they have a clear structure )

the only thing what is difficult is the theme.mskn (after some skins it's still confusing me )

would be nice to have here also a clearer structure!But I'm still look forward and hope for some Improvements

Other programs use XML documents, html, CSS, and lots of other stuff that is much "harder" than what MM requires.

I look inside Cad program or VLC player , but this stuff is really to much for me !

[Evil Overlord]

I can say that I've been using computers for decades now, have done some minor programming in my time, and consider myself a moderately advanced user (versus the general population). But I found the skinning process (including the novice guides) to be a) complicated, and b) too much cost for too little benefit.

I'm glad that there are people who were undeterred by the process, and that they've been able to produce skins the rest of us can enjoy. My point is that I think there's a large audience of users that would like to be able to make their own skins, but don't because of the complexity. A simpler process would make many more skins available to us all, even if they didn't have the depth of current ones. Perhaps there's room for two tracks - a starter version for the mass of us, and a fuller version that exposes more options for those that can handle it.

[rovingcowboy]

a) complicated, and b) too much cost for too little benefit.

what? i see you said the novice guides.? i presume those are mine, as i wrote them for the newbies. most others are for more advanced users.

its as i said your an advanced user you can do some programming you need to totaly forget what little tricks you can do
in programming and read and do the newbie walk thourgh with out trying to add in a shortcut. that is how it works. i wrote that step by step as i did each one., in a break down of how to do it. i say to set up folders. then i say how to get the stuff ready, then which stuff you need to change then how to change it and test it.

but for programmers there are some tips and issues added in by steegy and updates from me. but thats all that does
is show you step by step its so easy to follow instructions that you forgot how to follow them when you became smarter then the normal user. or the total newbie.

but that is why morten and the others and rusty have their info typed out for use by the more advanced newbies.

but what is complicated for you? the workings of the theme engine. yes that can be a little / a lot of learning curve.
um you want to use the images you made.
you just open the theme.mskn in the theme engine.
by first starting the theme engine then browsing to the theme.mskn file you want to open by the engines file open link.
once it is open just click on the link it has for exporting the images from the mskn to a folder.
its under its file menu i think? maybe edit menu?
when its done just close the theme engine,
change all the images .bmp.png or .bmp.bmp formats to the first of the two listed. for some reason the theme engine adds one to the end of the name when it exports them.

now use image editor to chagnge all the images you want to change.

when finished you reverse the process by starting theme engine. then going to the open link and opening the theme.mskn file again.
this time go to the image node it has and there select each of the images in its list then you get three buttons use the replace button and pick the one you want to replace it from your file folder. not the gallery .
do that for all the images.
now save the mskn file and close the theme engine now reopen the theme engine and re open the theme mskn.
you can now go to each object and change the size and the images.
best way to change the size is to just go to the bmp command in the right code panel. click it to open the bmp target scope
now mark out the top left and the bottom right corners of your image that you want to use on that object. look at the size
the image is on the top of that target panel.
click the okay button and change the two sizes in the right side code panel.
remember to click on another command in that panel after you change the number before you move to another object cause it won't change unless you do the extra click to get out of edit mode.
you also need to make sure the client for that object is large enough to view the image you just added if you made it bigger.
do that for all the images you want to change in the skin save the theme.mskn file and close the theme engine.
now you can copy and paste that theme mskn file in to your testing folder with all the other files for that skin.
place that testing folder in the skins folder of mediamonkey so it is found easier by monkey. it will be dalled a "testing" skin if you called the folder that.
now open mediamonkey and go to the options panel and then to the skins node slide scroll bar down if there is one. to find the testing skin. click on it and you will get your skin loaded you can then see if any images did or did not work.
close monkey go back to the theme engine your working with and open that theme mskn file again. fix any image that did not work and save close copy and paste in to testing folder restart monkey and look for any other things that need fixed.
repeat until finished.

whats hard about that. its simple the most troublesome thing is the constant need to do the checking by copy and paste of the file in to a test folder. but i got use to that also its rather fast and easy now for me.
it should only take about 3 skins for you to get really fast at some things.

yes the better skins take time the skins with more image changes take time if you change the size of the images it takes time. but after about 3 or 5 skins you should be able to make them in about 4 hours with just doing image changes and not mess with layouts or size changes.

its the making of new layouts that takes a lot of testing of the skin.

the blues monkey skin i made took me about 4 hours to make. the concert skin took me about 48 hours to make and about 24 to 27 hours to get the lights working like they do.

the hardest thing in making the skin is the chair you sit on. it gets hard after about 3 hours.

the best thing to do first is find or make all your images you want to use when you change the skins images for your images.
i use lots of photos and parts of photos some i took some i find online and cut out what i want to use. that takes time
but it is not in using the mediamonkey theme engine
it is using the multiple photo editors to get what i want for images.
so i don't count that time spent there.

if you want to know that time then every skin i made needs to have 72 hours added to the time i said before, as thats how long i spend finding the best images for what i want. yes its hard on the computer chairs i wore the wheels off 3 of them and then i wore out 4 or 5 pillows cause the chair cushion wore out also.

[nohitter151]

I can say that I've been using computers for decades now, have done some minor programming in my time, and consider myself a moderately advanced user (versus the general population). But I found the skinning process (including the novice guides) to be a) complicated, and b) too much cost for too little benefit.

I'm glad that there are people who were undeterred by the process, and that they've been able to produce skins the rest of us can enjoy. My point is that I think there's a large audience of users that would like to be able to make their own skins, but don't because of the complexity. A simpler process would make many more skins available to us all, even if they didn't have the depth of current ones. Perhaps there's room for two tracks - a starter version for the mass of us, and a fuller version that exposes more options for those that can handle it.

I think the old adage here applies, "nothing worth doing is easy".

If they make an easy to use skinning program and all you can change is a few colors here and there, there really isn't much of a point.

[Evil Overlord]

@Roving cowboy
I very much appreciate the effort you went to with the walkthrough, and I did try to use it. Unfortunately, your saying "its simple" doesn't seem to make it so for me.

@nohitter 51
""nothing worth doing is easy". I just can't agree with that. Some things are easy. Some things aren't. There's not a lot of correlation with their value. Eating a pizza is easy. Having sex is easy. I think they're both worth doing. Designing a Mars mission is not easy, but it is worth doing. Building a market in mortgage-backed securities is not easy, and not worth doing.

Thanks to all for the input. My point was to suggest an easier method for designing skins, and/or a better variety of skins. I stand by that point.