Suggestions

[Ted the Penguin]

so... in my looking into the community skin I found a couple things that I think could make it more versatile.

I think that the size of the package could be cut down, as well as increasing the number of choices for buttons, if we were able to provide a single image for the mask of the button (high/low lights) and then use another for the color. this would make it really easy for people to make their own button colors. we could use a staged directory structure, so a directory would contain the mask, then a subdirectory would contain colors, ensuring that colors are only used with their matching mask.

The same thing could be done with backgrounds, but it would be a bit trickier with the masks (man do I wish those only contained transparency information)

Also, it is kinda cumbersome to navigate through so many button choices only by pressing left and right, it would be nice if there were an easier way to do that.

Is there any way that we could add an overlay image to the icon view (I just want to make it look like sassari )

[McBainUK]

Also, it is kinda cumbersome to navigate through so many button choices only by pressing left and right, it would be nice if there were an easier way to do that.

FF/RW skips a few at a time.

[Fatman_do]

so... in my looking into the community skin I found a couple things that I think could make it more versatile.

I think that the size of the package could be cut down.

There is a large number of options due to including everything ever created, yes I know. Any suggestions on what to "cut" from the package? I have thought about doing this but I kept on thinking someone might like this or that.

...as well as increasing the number of choices for buttons, if we were able to provide a single image for the mask of the button (high/low lights) and then use another for the color. this would make it really easy for people to make their own button colors. we could use a staged directory structure, so a directory would contain the mask, then a subdirectory would contain colors, ensuring that colors are only used with their matching mask.

Not sure I understand the "staged directory" and a need to have the underlying colors tied only to a matching mask. Is this due to shape of button then more than anything else?

The same thing could be done with backgrounds, but it would be a bit trickier with the masks (man do I wish those only contained transparency information)

Is there any way that we could add an overlay image to the icon view (I just want to make it look like sassari )

You would have to work up some examples on the above so we can poke around with this. I don't have any problems with trying to do new things.

[Ted the Penguin]

There is a large number of options due to including everything ever created, yes I know. Any suggestions on what to "cut" from the package? I have thought about doing this but I kept on thinking someone might like this or that.

no suggestions on what to cut... I have the same reservations as you... but maybe we could get around that by having a "base" set, then another one including everything that has been cut...

Not sure I understand the "staged directory" and a need to have the underlying colors tied only to a matching mask. Is this due to shape of button then more than anything else?

yes, my suggestion to tie colors to the underlying mask is entirely based on the thought that no two buttons share the same exact shape. We could get around this by creating standards for creating the button masks, ensuring that they all have the same shape, and are thus interchangeable.

You would have to work up some examples on the above so we can poke around with this. I don't have any problems with trying to do new things.

sure... not quite sure how I would mock up changes to the skin plugin (for selecting the icon overlay), but I have done the rest of it, I can send you some examples, but most of this is done in the version of Sassari that I uploaded a while ago, I used a rectangle in the skin as the background, the rest I just put two images on top of each other.

let me know what you would like to see as examples and I will try to oblige.

[Hairy]

I think that the size of the package could be cut down

I've no idea how many people use the CS and the plugin separately, but perhaps a single installer which installs the CS and plugin and just the graphics used in the themes included, everything else could be added with a second "addon" installer with all the other graphics acquired over the years.(?)

if we were able to provide a single image for the mask of the button (high/low lights) and then use another for the color.

I'm not too sure about this one, but I would be willing to help out in creating a base set of graphics (RGB - Black and White) for most of the selectable elements. That way we could control the colour pallet and insure that different colours would work together.

we could use a staged directory structure

I would be cool if the skin plugin was able to navigate via sub folders i.e you could could navigate button sub folders rather than skipping through everything in the buttons directory.

[pz1]

no suggestions on what to cut... I have the same reservations as you... but maybe we could get around that by having a "base" set, then another one including everything that has been cut...

I would advise against this suggestion. This would mean keeping two versions in sync. That is deemed to fail some time...
Pieter

[Fatman_do]

I would advise against this suggestion. This would mean keeping two versions in sync. That is deemed to fail some time...
Pieter

I think he means sort of a bonus image pack that contains everything that isn't tied to predefined themes. There would be no reason to maintain that set after the breakout. Unless I am missing something, which is possible.

One possible benefit here is I could create an uninstaller for the bonus set. That way if one were to download that set and decided "this is crap", they could get rid of it easy enough.

[Fatman_do]

sure... not quite sure how I would mock up changes to the skin plugin (for selecting the icon overlay), but I have done the rest of it, I can send you some examples, but most of this is done in the version of Sassari that I uploaded a while ago, I used a rectangle in the skin as the background, the rest I just put two images on top of each other.

let me know what you would like to see as examples and I will try to oblige.

Basically, just attach here a skin for something like Music Library with all the elements defined as you suggest, and include the images. We don't need to simulate the skinplugin framework yet, just a proof of concept type of thing right now for the xml's and images. If you need to demonstrate a Main Menu, you can do that as well.

[Ted the Penguin]

sure, I can attach a skin with said changes, I will probably only need to include baseskin.xml with the images, I believe the rest will just work


also, is there a way we can use different images for lists that are part of a popup (weather plugin, tvguide pupups, etc.)

[Ted the Penguin]

here is that example of the buttons, just baseskin and the necessary images.