Tochscreen friendly Skin - Howto ?

Hello,
i'm planning to make a mod of one of the available skins to make it more Touchscreen friendly.

So i have several questions i'd be happy to get helped with:

#1
How do i change the width of the vertical scrollbar ?
I already found out that i can set the 'spinWidth' and 'spinHeight' in the
reference.xml file. But i cannot find any appropriate setting for the vertical scrollbar.

#2
How do i add additional buttons to the mysongs left pane ?

Cheers
Chris

Ok,

here's the 1st tip to mod your skin into a more touchscreen-friendly style:

#1 Zoom the Spin Buttons (page up/down buttons in listviews):

Open reference.xml of you favority skin and search for the following tags:

<spinWidth>XX</spinWidth>
<spinHeight>YY</spinHeight>

For XX and YY i've set each to 40 units.


Any other idead to make the skins working better together with touchscreens ?

Your help is appreciated !

Cheers
Chris

In the references.xml there's a list control. The description says 'default list control' i believe. I don't have the files in front of me right now.
That element defines the base for all the list in the different plugins.
In there is the definition for the height and width of each item. For example the song titles in my music. I don't remember exactly what I set it to, but try the same 40 you did for the spinners.

This is all from memory, and even that was learned by experimenting. I really don't know what everything does in the skinning files.

Good to see someone else is trying this too. What skin are you starting with?

I would start on the MCE skin that me and mario is working on since that will be most up to date. But then you would have to wait until it is out and that is some days more...

And the place to start if you want to change global settings in a skin is references.xml.

Here's my first attempt to make the vertical scrollbar wider. However, this feature is not yet implemented in the current release of MP. I had to change the source code in order to incorporate this setting in the reference.xml:

<control>
<description>default vertical scrollbar control</description>
<type>vscrollbar</type>
...
<VscrollWidth>40</VscrollWidth>
...
</control>

Here the result:



Hi Dev Team,
could you incorporate this ability and others to make skinning more flexible ?

Thank you !

Chris

There is a setting in the configuration to not show scroll bars. I used that setting in conjunction with larger spinner buttons. I think that is a friendlier touchscreen interface.
A user really shouldn't be draging anything with their finger tips. I know the hardware is capable, but you wouldn't want to have to use a scroll bar while driving your car for example(coincidentaly my application ).

Originally Posted by knubile

but you wouldn't want to have to use a scroll bar while driving your car for example(coincidentaly my application ).

I hope that you never use MP while driving... sounds a bit dangerous

select a playlist here and there.. just for music and a GPS system. even less complicated than a normal car stereo.
Road trips with friends. it'll be so handy. Think i'll be turning off the video plugin though. I've heard stories of people getting arrested. Don't want any confusion .

Another suggestion:

I'd like to have a always visible/reachable menu from which i can access all functions which are normally available by keyboard shortcuts.

One simple example:
When browsing my music files i'd like to 'select' a folder or file and then 'add it to playlist'

Any ideas for skinning ?

Chris

[MrMario64]

make a button "add" and let it execute the action for the button Y.

Look @ the way crystal uses these actions.
These action numbers used r the same numbers as in the keymap.xml
<action>12</action> refers to action 12 in the keymap.xml

so now you need to navigate to the folder you want, press the add button you make and you r done.
Skinning is very flexible in this.
YOu just don't know how to do it yet

btw
YOu can make the sliders wider
change the setting:
<height>20</height>
for horizontal
and
<width>20</width>
for vertical

Then you make it wider / higher.
No source needs to be changed for this.