prefs panel buttons help

[IndigoFairyX]

I've been trying fine tune the colors on my fav theme moonshine.xml
I'm a amatur\noob, all in in all most of it has been smooth and looking good.

one thing I'm stuck on, I've changed dozens of elements trying to figure out what effecting the color of the buttons on the main preferences panel.
see pic
https://i.imgur.com/sdUhWEZ.png


the left set of buttons is from the arrange panels box, the right side is the main preferences panel
its adopting a default dark ground color and black text.

the preferences  panel is the only one doing this. buttons on all over panels are readable

any ideas on what i missed? or do i need to add a line somewhere?

thanks
xavier

[Mayibongwe]

Hi xavier, welcome to the forum.

Have you had a look at the Sample Skin to see what elements those buttons map to?
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=22300.0

[IndigoFairyX]

i have. and i still can't figure it out. can't find what controlling the colors of those buttons. that skin I'm tweaking is also older than what's listed in the sample skin and chameleon skins

[IndigoFairyX]

this is my first time trying to edit .xml  [I've done some html many many moons ago]

i tried copying\pasting & editing elements out of the sample skin into the one I'm working on and it had no effect all.

[IndigoFairyX]

i used the sample skin gain to confirm which button I'm looking for, found and still i can't seem to change it. furthermore the color labels in the code is not showing on the UI\skin for either line.

Code

\\ --- PREFERENCES
<!--124-->  <element id="Controls.RadioButton.Default" bg="240,240,240" />
<!--125-->  <element id="Controls.RadioButton.Disabled" bg="90,90,90"  />
<!--126-->  <element id="Controls.Button.Default" bg="90,90,90" fg="255,255,255" bdr="200,200,200" /> Default Input Buttons on Edit>Preferences Pop Up

<element id="Controls.Button.Default" bg="235,228,185" bg2="235,228,185" fg="21,102,7" fg2="30,160,80" bdr="158,74,109" /> \\buttons in pref panel?? <--Copied from sample skin

<!--127-->  <element id="Controls.Button.Disabled" bg="60,60,60" fg="120,120,120" /> Disabled Input Buttons on Edit>Preferences Pop Up
<!--128-->  <element id="Controls.Button.Highlight" bg="87,63,0" fg="255,184,77" bdr="255,184,77" /> bg colors the highlight shading in player buttons on the Mini-Player, Highlight Input buttons on Edit>Preference Pop Up

I'm completely stumped.

[Mayibongwe]

I'm completely stumped.

I see the moonshine skin was released and last updated back in 2013.
Over the years, they've been more skin elements added to The Bee and some of those have strong dependencies with other elements.
My guess is that your .xml is missing quite a bit of these new elements needed to get those buttons behaving well.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to take a closer look until the weekend. So this will have to wait until then, unless someone can jump in during the week.

[IndigoFairyX]

I see the moonshine skin was released and last updated back in 2013.
Over the years, they've been more skin elements added to The Bee and some of those have strong dependencies with other elements.
My guess is that your .xml is missing quite a bit of these new elements needed to get those buttons behaving well.

i agree. ive loved the moonshine skin because of it shading and textures. these now age single layer\no button definitions are just flat, lazy, boring and, worst of all, hard for the eyes to find elements because the whole window looks the... same. haha. anyway... like was saying

 i agree, ive been using this skin for many many years, there are more and new elements in the sample skin, ive tried copying new elements over and ti cause musicbee to crash until i removed the skin out of the folder and started over. lol

90% of the color changes i made look great. [it had blue\cold accents, i made the organe\green and warm]
its the buttons [some note all] and random text that are even showing up with colors that i cant even find in the xml so i have no idea fix it.

overall its usable, just hard to read the buttons on some boxes.

thanks for looking if you get the chance. should i send or post the full xml here?

[Mayibongwe]

should i send or post the full xml here?

Rather upload it on some file hosting site, and post the link here.

[hiccup]

I've been trying fine tune the colors on my fav theme moonshine.xml

I think there are a few issues with modifying such an old skin.

To name a couple:
You could add missing elements, but sometimes such elements depend on the existence of other elements.
And that is not documented anywhere.
The order of elements can play a role. Some will not work depending if they come before or after another element.
And that is not documented anywhere.

Also, I notice that that 'moonshine' skin is not properly following xml formatting rules:
To escape comments, it is often using two backslashes.
That is wrong, comments should be in the <!-- comment --> format.

And there are even many comments in it that are not 'escaped' at all.

So, I think you are in for a world of hurt when trying to adjust that skin xml to your liking.

In my opinion the best way to go is to start with either the Chameleon DNA or the Cheetah DNA skin.
It shouldn't take much time to setup the elements that are in the first section <variables> so that the general look and feel resembles 'Moonshine'.

Next, you can edit the elements that are under <colours> to finetune things.

I am convinced that this way of doing it will save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run.

[Mayibongwe]

I am convinced that this way of doing it will save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run.

I should be grateful as well that you came along before I could dig into it.
I thought it would be an easy pick out like this one. But with all the oddities about this skin that you mentioned,
it certainly won't be an easy task getting down to the bottom of the main issue.

[IndigoFairyX]

here the new dark moonshine ive been tweaking. and the layout if that helpful.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/o3raaxesjolble6fknelq/h?rlkey=76irp2h2ls16nh1mwg4j2hmt9&dl=0


ive been playing the Chameleon Dark & Kryptonite Dark themes as well. they definitely have newer elements that moonshine doesnt.

i guess im old school. the reason i love the moonshine skin so much is it still has shading & texture. [im new to xml so if i can ad those to newer skins i havent figured out how yet]. in past few years GUI elements have gone flat. no more buttons or contours or definitions for the eyes to find.

i kinda like the Kryptonite Dark. that was my inspiration to tweak the colors in Moonshine

[IndigoFairyX]

Also, I notice that that 'moonshine' skin is not properly following xml formatting rules:
To escape comments, it is often using two backslashes.
That is wrong, comments should be in the <!-- comment --> format.

even thou this is the first xml ive tried to tweak i noticed that that as well. soo yeah ::shurg::

[IndigoFairyX]

haha. for shits and giggle i commented out all the lines starting with "" \\ ""

it made the skin go from dark, textured and colored to light and flat


update/ nix that, it broke the skin and went to the default MusicBee3 theme.

[IndigoFairyX]

OH MY GAAWWWDD!!!

after spending a week or so tinkering with xml on a few skins i was feeling comfortable enough to go on a junky style non-stop 16+ hour coding\skinning bender this weekend. with BEAUTIFUL !!!! RESULTS !!!!.

using old school notepad++   [[what's yalls fav code editor ?? i only know of np++ and vs code, which is over my head]]

i managed to find and fix this off the wall button issue! not only fix them but to style them with shading and outline and hover effects!!! alas i didnt get a screen shot of that.

i was so in love, impressed and please i was even going to share the skin... then... i decide it was time to, ya know, function out side of computer code land. rebooted, made some food, came back an hour later and.... the buttons are broken again, plus now the input panels in prefs are unreadable. ... wtf... hahahahahaha iii,, ummm idk...

i cant find find where the code went wrong... ive got in the habit of duplicating the file and im going along, not to mention the 75 auto back up copies that notepad++ has it in back up database folder. ive tried using both np++ and winmerge to find and move the elements lines again but that night mare in it own. not to mention i cant even find the edits i made to buttons that were working for a couple hours.

its an epic pain in the ass that the xml must be in the program folder to view the changes, to work on the xml when its the programs files area the editor has to be running as admin or the save wont change anything... i think that what happened after rebooting.

and a question... it seems the prefs panel and meta data as it appears in the main panel are linked in function even thou they have their own elements?

anyway... heres some previews of the mess i made. the top is my fav if i can find how to fix the buttons and highlighted elements in prefs to be readable. the bottom image is the original Kryptonite Dark skin i started with.

cheers
xavier

[IndigoFairyX]

YEAH!!

okay, after a couple\few weeks of driving myself crazy with this botton thing i found the line of code that was causing the issue..

Code

<element id="UseNativeButtonTheme">FALSE</element>

is that line says TRUE graphical effects in the xml will now apply and all the buttons go random seed the pic below