New skin help

[coffee]

Hi Guys

I would like to make a few new skins for E-Touch. Here are some buttons I'm busy with ( please give me some input on what you like ):





The thing is I would like to clean up the main menu or album view by moving the menu buttons to a separate window called "Menu". I need some help or advice on how to achieve this.
By doing this one will have more space for bigger covers or more covers or even future add-ons.

This is what I have in mind (more or less and only a quick sample):




I would also like to include the "request track" button in the menu window but I can't seem to move it, not even to the normal menu. I feel this button should be in the menu because it will be an important feature for a commercial operator.
Can anybody help me with this?

Thanks
Coffee

[jukejohn]

hope you get the help you need that looks nice and clean

[Barcrest]

You can do what you want with that menu button right now. You need to hide the main menu buttons and enable the pop up menu button. That will give the skin the look you want. As for your button images I quite like the second one, a set like that would be pretty cool. If you want a different looking skin to BnB you are free to base something on the V5 skin i was working on. Without being able to do the button images I have sort of given up on it.

I am going to see how easy it would be to add the request track button to the menu for you as well however that does involve a skin change albiet minor and another button on/off setting in the ini file.

[coffee]

Hi Barry

I have 5 sets of buttons finished in blue, red, orange, yellow and green. I'm just busy finishing the backgrounds. I'll try and post some updates tonight or tomorrow.
I did find the popup menu function but I am not able to skin it and the "album_frame_x" crushes freebox when I try to load an image for it in the skintool.

Coffee

[Barcrest]

album_frame_x will only accept GIF files.

[coffee]

Thanks, I'll try that.

[coffee]

Hi

As promised, here are a taster of what I'm busy with.



It will be high quality skins avialable in 5 colours (blue, red, orange, yellow and green) featuring brushed stainless, neon, glass buttons, some 3D, shadowing and reflections. I am finished with all the buttons in all 5 colours but I have to finish the backgrounds and that may still take a while.

Coffee

[Sparky23]

Nice work so far!   

[coffee]

album_frame_x will only accept GIF files.

Hi Barry

I still get " Run-time error '0' " when I try to load a GIF image for "album_frame_x" in the skintool. I even tried changing the image size.

Coffee

[Barcrest]

I will take a look at that error when i get home.

[eist1]

Coffee,

Great job on the new graphics!! The only think that might look a little better is not having E-Touch on every button, takes away from the look, but great job. Can you look into possibly doing some graphical buttons like "Hot Hit" with fire, and some other graphical buttons. I think that would give a skin a cool look. Barry, how hard would it be to allow animated .gif images for button. A Hot Hits button with animated fire would look pretty cool.

Here is the link to the Black and Blue Popup skin I did awhile back

Black and Blue Menu Pop-Up

1024x768
http://www.iamkizer.net/freeboxjukebox/files/skins/V4skins/Updated Skins/Black_and_Blue_PopUp_V5_2 (1024x768).zip

I'm not sure if it will work 100% with the current version, but too much hasn't changed. It may give you an idea of what needs to be updated.

[bzpilot]

I would also like to include the "request track" button in the menu window but I can't seem to move it, not even to the normal menu. I feel this button should be in the menu because it will be an important feature for a commercial operator.
Can anybody help me with this?

Thanks
Coffee

This is  just my opinion but if i was a commercial operator I wouldn't want the "request track" to be accessible until after you have already searched for what your looking for.  Which is currently the way E-Touch is setup.  Nothing like going through a bunch of requests for tracks that already exist on the jukebox.

[coffee]

Hi

The only think that might look a little better is not having E-Touch on every button, takes away from the look

This skin was made for Barry and freebox/e-touch users in general and it will probably be the last skin I did featuring so many E-Touch logos. My idea at the end of the day is to have different sets of buttons and backgrounds available so you can really customize the jukebox. You should be able to use a set of buttons with a different set of background.
This is only my first attempt at making a skin for freebox users and I still have a lot to learn. Some may not like this tipe skin because it may be to bright, but I'll get a better idea from feedback in time.

This is  just my opinion but if i was a commercial operator I wouldn't want the "request track" to be accessible until after you have already searched for what your looking for.  Which is currently the way E-Touch is setup.  Nothing like going through a bunch of requests for tracks that already exist on the jukebox.

I see your point but being an operator myself, I see a lot of customers playing with features instead of throwing money into the juke and playing music and this actions keep the next customer from playing his song. Here, the law limits us to 5000 songs on a juke so the search function is not neccesery because it is fairly easy to find what you are looking for. Because of this 5000 song limit it is very important to have the most requested music on the juke. Most of the time I tend to switch off the search function and some others if I see that it is causing problems at a site. Asking for a track or album is work to some customers so this will only be used if it is really a request and this info are also very valuable to me as an operator.

Coffee

[coffee]

Hi Barry

I started testing my skins but I made a error and it means that I need to redo all the buttons. I guess this is a lesson to me to test stuff in advance.
The problem is that I have a black background and black text on my buttons and now the text is all fuzzy and doesn't look very well. I need to change the top left pixel to a different colour to correct this issue.
This means I have to redo all the buttons.
My question is, do you know of a program that will batch edit all the buttons to change only a single pixel?

Coffee

[Barcrest]

Rather than changing the top left pixe i suggest putting at least a 1 pixel border around the button using a colour not used on the button. This gives a better look than just doing the top corner and also allows for non square buttons. Really you want the whole button background removed, these buttons will then look better (I.E. not have a black background) on the screens where fan art is used.

I don't know how to do it with a batch file though i'm afraid.