More intuitive SkinTool?

[surf]

I'm extremely confused with the skintool... 

Will we ever see a version where we can resize boxes by dragging? 

How are a few people having animated gifs?

Arrrrrgh!  Are there ANY helpful instructions?

I had a hell of a time just trying to change the colors, and I still haven't figured out how to change the font size/colors of the album artists/titles on the album screen...

I don't even want to get started on the "buttons"!!!

Can you start with a blank skin?

I love this program, I bought it,  but there is not much skin support and I just want to make one!

Looking for HELP!!!

Thanks, Surf

[kizer]

Have no fear. I think the best way to help you would be to simply post your questions. I'm rather confused too with the skin tool, but keep in mind I'm not a graphic person so I don't have the drive that some of the skinners do to make those skins as cool as they do.

As well for the skin tool. Barcrest spends so much time on the main app that I'm sure he doesn't have a fraction of the time he'd like to have to build the skin tool up.

[jacktucky]

Yeah, I didn't know enough shit to work the skintool.  I found a skin that I liked, and started modifying.  I posted questions and they were answered pretty quickly.

=J

[Woody]

Surf,

     Sorry you are having trouble understanding the skin tool, there are no written docs only us poor idiots trying to help each other. Thats what this forum is for, but we can't start out by giving step by step instructions from the begining to everyone that posts such genral questions. Please try the editor on some of the skins that came with the program and get an idea of what is going on in relation to what the program is doing. I had the same problems at first and found the best way was to spend some time with it, after you have done the same please feel free to visit the forum again and ask specific questions about a particular problem you might be having. I don't mean to sound condescending or errogant I just feel that you have to make a real effort to try the skintool for some time understand what it is doing.

   The animated gifs are not made with the skintool thay have to be made by some other editor, any gif file can be made to display by opening the skintool and then the texture viewer, right click on the thumb marked "logo image" and navigate to the gif file you would like to insert in the skin, this file should be in the "skin"\image directory. To get the now playing gif working rename the gif file to now_playing.gif and place it in the "skin"\image directory, when you open the skintool and then the now playing screen you will see the placeholder for the gif and will probably have to resize it to the propper size by using the size settings in the tools window.

Give it a try,

Woody       

[Barcrest]

I am working on some improvements to the skintool. I am also going to make a basic usage manual, hopefully i can make a release of this next week.

[squirrellydw]

I am working on some improvements to the skintool. I am also going to make a basic usage manual, hopefully i can make a release of this next week.

Any news on the manual?  I would like to know how to make a new skin?  I wish it was drag and drop.
Also any chance of supporting other image formats like .png, no biggie?  IF I can't figure this out I may have to give up on my skin or have one of the experts here help me out.  I like the trublueskin but would like to see some changes to it.   I just don't understand how it works, grrr

[mfacer]

Has anyone got a manual for editing a skin? I'm trying to modify the black_and_blue_v4 skin, but cant even change the images for buttons!! It's not the easiest thing to use!! 

[Barcrest]

No manual unfortunatly. We had one on the old forum but that got nuked. That was written by MR C and was quite a good guide. What with coding i just don't have time to write a manual right now.

[squirrellydw]

mfacer,
the best thing to do is start a new thread and ask questions.  I made the graphics for the BnB skin and eist put the whole thing together in the skin tool.  I don't know anything about the skin tool but with his help we made a pretty kickass skin I think.  if you know how to make graphics you can see if someone that knows how to use the skin tool wants to help you, or if it isn't all that involved I can make the graphics for you.

[eist1]

mfacer,

If you have any questions post them and I'll do my best to answer them for you. As for the images, just make sure the images are in the skin images folder, and open the skin tool and goto the page you want to update. After you get to the page just right click on the image you want to change abd then choost the new image. There are other things needed though, like putting a 1x1 color pixel (different color than button) in the top left corner of the image. There is a little more to it, but as youi are working with it you can figure it out.