New skin for CRT's (1 Viewer)

[Verbal]

New high visiblity skin for NTSC CRT televisions:

This sample screen would replace this one:

Please tell me what you think.

My motivation was to make a skin that is very visible, low noise, high contrast, and very easy to use for people new to the MP concept. It hopefully also presents the information in an obvious way.

I realize that people in another thread have been complaining about the lack of follow-through from skin designers. Well, I've already started this skin, and am nearly finished it, however, I have a problem that the senior skin designers should be able to help with.

The normal thumbnail view in mp is 3x3, with the album cover buried in grey background. I can't seem to find a setting in the xml files that allows me to control the grid layout to make this 5x2.

It would be nice to do this. First, while it's only one more thumbnnail than the current skins, it brings the total per screen to ten, which is easier for your brain to chunk than 9 or 16 per screen.

Furthermore, you'll also notice that I dropped the song titles from under the album covers. This isn't any less confusing than the current way, because there isn't enough room to put any more than just the beginning of the mp3 filename, which in most cases is the artist or album anyway.

So anyone have a guide to manipulating the thumbnail panel control?

 

[Boilermaker]

In references.xml there is a control called "default thumbnail panel" look for these lines of code within the conrtol:

To change the position height and width of the area used for the thubnails:
<posX>260</posX>
<posY>97</posY>
<width>460</width>
<height>471</height>


<itemWidth>108</itemWidth> (the larger the number the more horizontal space between small thumbs)
<itemHeight>108</itemHeight> (the larger the number the more vertical space between small thumbs)
<textureWidth>80</textureWidth> (outline frame width small)
<textureHeight>80</textureHeight> (outline frame height, small)
<thumbWidth>62</thumbWidth> (actual thumb width)
<thumbHeight>62</thumbHeight> (actual thumb height)
<thumbPosX>9</thumbPosX> (horizontal offset of the thumb from top left of frame)
<thumbPosY>9</thumbPosY> (vertical offset of the thumb from top left of frame)

<textureWidthBig>108</textureWidthBig> (outline frame width large)
<textureHeightBig>108</textureHeightBig> outline frame height, large)
<itemWidthBig>136</itemWidthBig> (the larger the number the more horizontal space between large thumbs)
<itemHeightBig>134</itemHeightBig> (the larger the number the more vertical space between small thumbs)
<thumbWidthBig>84</thumbWidthBig> (broken?)
<thumbHeightBig>84</thumbHeightBig> (broken?)
<thumbPosXBig>12</thumbPosXBig> (horizontal offset of big thumb)
<thumbPosYBig>12</thumbPosYBig> (vertical offset of big thumb)

I used trial and error to come up with sizes i more or less liked....a couple of warnings with thumbnails...take these with a grain of salt since i haven't changed this part of the code in a while. MP seemed to like the same number of rows and columns of thumbnails...for a 1280x720 skin i wanted more columns than rows, but the extra columns wouldnt display. Also some of the thumb sizes wouldnt change for me even tho i changed the above code. Again, its been a while, so i dont remember which parts or if they've fixed it over the past few months.

hope this helps a little..

EDITED to correct some mistakes

 

[theboxhead]

Rockin' cool idea. Love it !
Cause most all of the skins for mp including my own hexagon
is hard on the eyes on my CRT screen.

Hmmm this does inspire me to take hexagon into another mod.
Hmmm... if i get the time

 

[CHli]

I love it... Go on !

 

[dman_lfc]

Looks nice indeed

DMAN

 

[TheVideoViking]

It looks nice, but I wonder if it will be easy to use. The buttons with playlist etc, play cd etc. I wondering if you can use them naturally next to each other. I once tried to make a skin with buttons in vertically instead of horisontally (the exit button etc in the home screen) and to navigate over them you still have to use the buttons to go left and right. If this is also the case with the music menu it could all get quit confising.

 

[Chimen]

Looks great!
Please complete it!

 

[Mr.Mitchell]

Very nice skin, maybe have the fade in the background go to really dark red instead of black, but I really like the layout. I am looking forward to use it.

By adjusting the width and height of the control you should get more or less thumbs. If this does not work you might have found a bug.

Also you might run into this bug http://nolanparty.com/mediaportal.sourceforge.net/mantis/view.php?id=526
I don't know if it is still actual since it was already submitted some time ago, but it is still open in Mantis.

 

[liberteus]

Good job

I use MP on a widescreen TV (PAL), and I really need that kind of skin, that would be really great. And anyway I like changing theme every day or so...

Thx for the work you put in!

 

[Zyphrax]

Looks very good! Nice work!
If it's possible can you eventually release it in multiple colors (green, blue, red)?

Very nice skin, maybe have the fade in the background go to really dark red instead of black, but I really like the layout.

I agree, I think it would look better with a bit more subtile gradient. For example from color #970101 to #4a0002. And I'd make the selection box a bit smaller (to 3 or 4 pixels). But that's my taste

What's the main menu going to look like?