Making skins

[Tulex]

I've been playing, getting changes to work in existing skins. Is there a list of what commands/descriptions are available? I mean, you can have White as a color. Can I have BrightPink? Yes, I know I can try it, and no I don't really want BrightPink, but you can only make one change at a time, or you don't know where you entered a bad descriptor (a word?). Clock is another. Is there only one type of clock? What if I don't want the date? These are just examples. I'm wondering what kind of skin I could make if I knew all the stuff.

[reboot]

You can change anything. Colour, font, size.
If in doubt, change to a strange colour, such as Purple, which will show up nicely on the Blue skin. If it's the effect you want, you can then make it what you need.
I use colourmapping (if that's the word) by opening PaintShop Pro. In the colour selection box, you can find/make any colour you want, and PSP will give you the hex value for it. Just use that value in the skin.
If you want to change the clock, look in the "Panels" subfolder, and edit clock.xml
You can change it's colour, size, and font easily.
Remember that if you DO change it's size or font, you will probably also have to edit the skin.xml in the Main Menu subfolder, down the bottom, show clock, so the size fits right.
The clock is displayed on two lines (by default), one is the date, the other the time.
You can disable/enable each one separately, or put them both on one line.
You can do the same with the "Next Recording" panel.

[Tulex]

Ok, that helps, but how do you guys even know that there is a clock callout available? I only know about it because I saw it in a skin. What others are available that noome is using yet? Is this dependent on having a knowledge of programming, and if so, where do I start? I only want to mess with skins now, not plugins, or do skins come from the same place?

[HenkH]

A complete list of defined (named) colors can be found at the Microsoft MSDN site.

See www.colordic.org on how some of these colors actually look like.

[sub]

You can also use hex colours, e.g. #2244FF

[Tulex]

Thanks guys

[reboot]

One of the other common panels used, is the "Next Recording" one. I use it and the clock in almost all my skins.

[Tulex]

Are these panels that Sub provides in the core, or are these from the programming language?

[sub]

The recording and time panels are part of core.