Skin Tool - Feeling Totally Dumb

[wwwombat]

I've read the skin tool documentation (last updated March 2011 it appears) and I'm trying to modify the one skin that currently comes with latest ETouch beta and basically I'm feeling thick. Let's just say initially that I want to do 2 things - one that should be theoretically easy, and one that may not because it may require code changes.

#1... On the track listing screen I want to add the YEAR each song in the listing was released. i.e. basically my "albums" of an artist's songs are a greatest hits selection created by myself and I want to show the year each song was released - y'know somewhere in the bit under the song title display where the "times played" and "star rating" bits are played (or even replace one of them).

So, I'd fire up the WYSIWYG skin tool and, of the 5 windows presented, select the "Tools" one and then select "Track Listing Screen" from the "Edit Section" dropdown top-right of this. This makes it appear in the main window.

I now go to this and - through trial-and-error- found that I could click/grab and pull down the "Artist Bio" overlay so I could see the tracklisting screen beneath. Where each track line would be I can see "Label1", "Label60", 5-stars and "Label3". Not sure how you're supposed to know what's what but if I click on the first of each the text changes to "Track Listing 0", "Play Count: 0", 5-stars and "Track 0" respectively.

To the left of this screen are four "Label2"'s, only the bottom 2 of which change to something else (Genre & Released) when clicked on. In this case I think those values are just the contents of the genre and year fields of the FIRST song in the "album".

So, what I want is the year - pulled from the appropriate year tag of EACH track in the album - displayed probably somewhere to the left of the 5-star picture or even in place of it.

But I don't know how to do it. How do I insert a label there? What label should I be inserting anyway? Do I have to repeat that for each of the 9 track listings on this page? How do tracks 10 through n - if they exist - get handled?

Can I truly do everything from this tool? Or do I have to manually edit some of the ini files behind the scenes? What and wherefrom do I find out what labels I can and can't use?

If someone can explain that to me - in super, simple, stripped-down idiot-proof language then that would be appreciated (maybe even with images or a capture video posted up on youtube). I could then hopefully work out how to further change its font, size etc. just like any other already-present label on the screen. I'm sure I saw some other skin in the past that appeared to "intelligently" truncate either artist and songname (or possibly even dynamically further lessen its font size) if either side got too big for the display. Although it's relatively unlikely I could then theoretically do something similar for the genre of each particular track.

I know every programmer / designer hates the documentation part of creating a tool / app but I feel frustrated that I can't join in this party until someone either describes it or shows me how.

#2. Okay, let's say I now have a track's individual year now proudly displayed just under it on the track screen. Because of the way I construct my "albums" the "Released" field on this screen has always bothered me since it seems evident that that value is just pulled from the year tag of the mp3 that appears first in the album - something that's not true in my case - especially for those artists with a long life or compilation albums not based around current hits (i.e NOW That's What I Call Music).

Simple solution I guess is to just remove it. But I'm not sure how to do this... can't figure out how to delete it... or do I just drag it somehow/somewhere off the screen?

Ideally, and my preferred solution however, would be to replace this with something more meaningful but I assume wouldn't be possible without a change to ETouch itself. I guess I would want Etouch to scan all tracks in the album and create a minimum and a maximum value for each track in the album (ignoring any where the year value hasn't been set just in case I haven't got around to it/verified it yet). Then, if minimum year = maximum year (or for any albums with only one track - I'm looking at you, you one-hit wonder!), this label would just display that one year. Or assuming both are different, then it'd be nice to display minimum year "-" maximum year in this area.

Thus, when displaying the track listing for the album, not matter how it is that I got there but particularly when coming in from a year clickable filter field, I could see that the band were "active" during the period minimum year-maximum year and individually all tracks would display their own year of release. So The Rolling Stones "album" would display 1964-2012 where a "Label2" was in my case for the 59 tracks I have in this "Album" which each track showing its own year next to itself in the track listing section.

It could also it being useful to see the genre displayed next to each track also being handy when Etouch jumps to that album from a genre screen. Yes, is it true that usually an artist's genre should always been the same for each track in an album, but U2 won a grammy for "Best Alternative" one year although I just regard them as "Rock"... And some of their songs could stray a bit into the "Electronic" sphere or even "Classical" when they team up with Pavarotti... And which band somewhere in their career hasn't cashed in somewhere by releasing a song better off dumped into the "Christmas" genre that no-one wants playing any other time than December (and even then maybe not.)

So, I'd love to have a hack at modifying and perhaps even eventually creating a skin of my own (my graphical and creative skills can be reasonable at times especially if I can start off someone else's base) but I 'd be lost if I cannot even figure out how to do the first of these two desires listed here let alone the second one.

Someone please show me the way!!!

[Risim]

  :otoo much ....my head hurts  

[Mark Norville]

I will admit that you are feeling totally dumb, as really this should be in the skin tool section, rather than general

I do agree with Risim though that the post is far too long for anyone to want to read it in full, we do have lifes.

I will give you the best advice I can give you and that forget about the skin tool manual read it digest it, and then forget everything that it said. Make sure you have the latest skin tool version and have a look at what skins you can, load them into the skin tool, see what they do etc etc.

If you can build skins, then it will slowly come to you. Once you get the basics it really is very easy, unless there is a bug.

Hope that this sort of helps.

Regards

Mark

[Barcrest]

1/ Requires code changes to add an additional label, I will not be doing that as I don't see any benefit of having a year by each track on an already crowded screen.

2/ You just drag the label off screen if you do not wish to see it. Adding the code to work out the minimum and maximum would slow down displaying the track listing. I think the case is in *MOST* albums all tracks will have the correct released year. This is also the year used for filtering.