Skin Tool - Album View

[berrywell]

I've been playing around recently with the bundled skin tool kit and now starting to understand how it all works.

The main problem I have at the moment is that when I use the Texture Viewer to select the Album background, this is placed in the main skin tool window background instead of the Album Page window. So when I select the Album View page the window bit opens but with a white background (not with the jpg background I want). This makes it almost impossible to match the album/artists tags to the background I'm trying to use.

When I select any other page, for example the decades page, then add a background via the 'texture viewer' it places that in the correct window.
I just can't see where I'm going wrong, I'm sure there is something simple to sort this but for the life of me I  just can't see what it is.

I am using the Skin Tool that's bundled with the latest v10 Beta 13 release.

I hope that someone can help me on this problem.

[Mark Norville]

I just booted up skin tool, you need to have an album view and then a null view. Usually the album view is the main screen that you work on, and when you click on main screen then often it is just a jumble. You do not skin the main view, you build it up around the album view.

So pretty much the album view is the main screen, this is where the navigation etc goes to.

Hopefully this answers your question if not then I can do a quick video since I have been sober for the past couple of hours lol

Regards

Mark

[berrywell]

Thank you for your reply Mark

That looks like what I may be doing wrong, not having a background in the Texture Viewers Null pain.

I'm currently at work but will try this tonight and see if I get any success & will report back.

Thank you

Regards

Tel.

[Mark Norville]

Hi Tel,

Yeah if you have no texture in the null box, then it will just be white. The main thing to do really is try and work in reverse around your fonts, so to give an example.

The fonts are black to start with, if you use a black texture, then you cannot see the fonts, so a pain in the arse. Use a white texture first, so you can see the font, and then change font colour accordingly but obviously if you want white fonts, then use say a red background, so you can see both black and white fonts straight away.

Another tip that I would give is try to design the pages using photoshop or gimp, it speeds up the process a lot faster than keep trying to get buttons at the exact spacing. You can spend hours trying to get them all 100% and it gets worse if you forget to save your work and have to start again.

It does take time and a lot of effort, but once you get the basics, it pretty much falls into place. However how far you want to go on skinning is an open book really, you cannot please all the time.

I for one do not like the volume controls, or the play back controls, but then some people may want to pause a track, however in a commercial environment you would not want this really. I am not a fan of the rating system, or last played, also for myself I am not a massive fan of creating a play list, but obviously some people like that.

Anyway shall finish here, as waffling on a bit.

Regards

Mark

[berrywell]

Hi Mark,

I've now had a chance to try this out and you are correct, I hadn't placed a graphic in the null view.

At the moment, I'm just playing with the Skin Tool software trying to work out what everything does. I've cheated a little by grabbing the graphics (not the ini files) from an old skin and then created a new skin and building up from there. It's been a nice learning curve so far. My next challenge is trying to get the menu to stay on screen all the time instead of being a pop up menu, hopefully I can work this one out.

Once I know how to do things properly I shall start designing my own skin. I don't have Photoshop or Gimp, I am using Paint Shop Pro which appears, at this early stage of design, to be providing what I need it to do, fingers crossed I won't have to purchase Photoshop etc.

Once again, thank you

[Mark Norville]

I think someone has had the options menu on screen all the time we had a debate about whether it can be done or not, but he managed it I think. I will try and find that skin now.

We did have this conversation regarding pop up menu showing all the time, http://www.freeboxjukebox.com/Forum/index.php?topic=4983.0 it is a long read about 10 pages long.

All what I have on my skin is a button called more options, and that loads the pop up menu on the left hand side where the other menu system was so that it looks fluid. If you want to do something like that it is easy enough, just resize the pop up menu and then place it where you want it to show up to.

However I am still not 100% how DaBaur actually got the pop up menu to show all the time, I think he messed around with the ini file.

Regards

Mark

[Barcrest]

The settings to keep the menu displayed are all set in the skintool.

Don't pay for photoshop, GIMP is free and will do more than you want for creating buttons and skins for E-Touch

[berrywell]

I'm still playing with the skin tool and gradually getting to grips with it.

The problem is, The cover files on the Album View are always invisible when I start to build a new skin, I can see the text bit saying Album and Artist but no cover, when I load it into the Jukebox software, the album covers are usually at random points over the screen. If I'm lucky I can find them with hovering the mouse over the correct part of the screen and it shows a pop up next to the mouse pointer 'cover 2' etc.

How do I make these visible, is there a graphic I need to put into the folder before even starting?

[Barcrest]

They should load the cover not found image and show that so you can line them up correctly.

[berrywell]

Thank you Barry.

I didn't realise that this image had to be specifically named.
I did look through the skin tool manual as to what is absolute and what isn't, this wasn't one of the mentioned graphics so thought I'd better ask here .

Anyway, I've now placed an jpg in the images folder named ImageNotFound.jpg & it's worked a treat. A silly mistake on my part which I really should have noticed.

Thanks again. 

[Barcrest]

Glad you got it sorted dude.

[berrywell]

Rather than start another thread (I'm getting conscious of how many I've started in this part of the forum) 

Anyway, I've noticed a couple more things in the skin tool.

The first one is on the Album View page...
There are two labels called "Label62" (when clicked on changes to "Released: 28") & "Label63" (when clicked on changes to "Genre: 28"). I've no idea what these do but no matter how much I move them about or move them completely off screen, I save the skin at this point, they then reappear in their original location (not the new saved location) when I next load the skin up.

The second one is on the Decades Page...
This is the page where it lists all the chart positions, there is a yellow box which I appear unable to move, I can't even find anything in any of the .ini files.
When I load the chart listing page in the main Jukebox app, this yellow dot shows the chart logo that's is located in the history folder. I know this can be moved as when I look at Coffee's skins, it's has been moved about but I can't seem to find how to do this. Also, when I click on it, nothing appears in the 'Individual Button Settings' it's almost like it's part of the background and not a movable object.

Regards

Tel.

[Mark Norville]

Firstly it is good to start new threads as then it might help others rather than being buried.

Secondly the first two labels you mention are on album view and do nothing but they are there for some reason, they don't show up.

Thirdly I will check later tonight or tomorrow when back on the computer again. I need to do that screen anyway.

Regards

Mark

[berrywell]

Thanks Mark,

I'll just ignore those labels on the Album View if they don't do anything, they just bugged me as they kept coming back to the same place every time.

In future I'll remember to start a new thread for any new questions/queries I have, I just didn't want to be seen as a prolific spammer.

Regards
Tel.

[Barcrest]

Those are there if you want the year released and genre shown for the album, they are click able to filter on that genre or year. It seems they are not all clearing as they should so it's a bug i will look at.