Dummy skin or how to change the colour of an element

[lnminente]

EDIT 20120903:
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?d4913061vd4w3va
Most up to date version (collaborative): http://piratepad.net/U1JHY5UGcZ

================================


This is a skin where a i have collected all the elements i have found and gave them an unique different colour.

How to use it:
You have a skin where you would like to change the colour of an element
You change MB to use the dummy skin, and pick the RGB value of that element
Search in the dummy xml file for that value and you will find the name of that element.
Edit that element in your usual skin and select it in MB

To make it easier i removed all the gradients (bg2) and some other elements. If you don't find the color of a letter is because of cleartype, so select better the background or disable cleartype for a moment.

Its based in Midnight 1.16 and the thread new elements. It could be uglier, trust me


Some software to pick the colours:
HTML Color picker http://www.allgraphicstools.com/free.htm
YS Instant Color Picker: http://youngsmarts.com/index.htm

This script i wrote can be helpful: RGBHelper

[Steven]

Its based in Midnight 1.16 and the thread new elements. It could be uglier, trust me

i wouldnt be too sure about that - check out Sarge's WTF skin!

[lnminente]

WOW! Such a curious and funny skin! hahaha 

  " If I were still alive...I'd use this skin"         ....... by Pablo Picasso [/b]

[beehive]

Just came across this and very thankful. Trying to learn how to skin.

[mikebo]

Steven do you keep an up-to-date master skin that has all the possible attributes (BG, FG etc.)? I based my skin on on of RotemK's skins and it had a lot of colors that didn't show up anywhere. I don't know if they were deprecated or i'm yet to encounter pink dialog boxes

Btw Great idea with the dummy skin Inminente

[lnminente]

Thanks Mikebo, glad you like it! I PM Steven some time ago asking for the same and he sent me this link: http://musicbee.niblseed.com/Patches/MusicBee%20Default.xml
But there isn't a master skin with all the elements :/

By the way i have found a trick for picking directly picking the color of the text, is consist in searching for an horizontal line (E,T,F,H,Z, etc) and picking the value of a pixel in its center

And in case you missed it and i think you will like it, Steven added the ability of using variables, which makes all the skinning work easier to fine tuning: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=6203.0

[cartman005]

mikebo, I had the same issue when I was creating my skin. Some of the elements that you aren't seeing only show up in skinned/unskinned windows borders. Some are only in the Preferences menu, etc. If you can't find them, post some of the names here and I can try to help.

[silasje1]

mikebo, I had the same issue when I was creating my skin. Some of the elements that you aren't seeing only show up in skinned/unskinned windows borders. Some are only in the Preferences menu, etc. If you can't find them, post some of the names here and I can try to help.

I will post my WMP 12 skin source too. I think everyone should upload their source too keep a healthy skin community.

Source:
http://www.mediafire.com/?m2e2eqzahtxi1j9

based on Dusk and Dawn with some other new skin options too!

[mikebo]

Source for my skins https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w8hddqqez7tsao9/SmiCf9W9p4/source.zip
The xml is based on one of RotemK's skins. For every color setting that I couldn't find in the actual interface I've set some bright color and also put a comment.

[lnminente]

A advanced trick for doing this faster is capturing the screen with MB having the Dummy skin, then store that image in an uncompressed format like BMP. If we pick the colors from that image instead of from Music Bee we will can skip some steps not having to change the skin in MB, just restarting it.

[jistme]

It's not yet going as well as I hoped...

I would like to change the color of the bar containing the player controls in player sidebar.



Dummyskin gives:
id="PlayerSidebar.Control.Default" bg="27,30,27" fg="143,148,149"
But when I change the color values, nothing seems to happen and the color of that bar remains the same.
What am I doing wrong?

[jistme]

Or I should learn to read; "PlayerSidebar.Background" seems to do the trick.
That specific bar has probably some other behaviour concerning color?

[lnminente]

For testing purposes i have put it in red, and the element you picked got a darker red than the background.
So yep, it seems like a casualty and that colour is really calculated from the background color.

If any transparency is involved there colorpicking will not be of much help

[jistme]

And another one :-)  :

Your dummy file has an element like: <element id="Player.SpectrumMedium" bg="107,119,143" />
In the most recent MusicBee default xml skin I got, that element is not present.
I can copy yours into it, and then it works.

What would be the best and easiest way to get all available elements in my xml?

[lnminente]

Having a master skin...

But there isn't a master skin with all the elements :/

That's something i really would have liked to own. There isn't a master skin and was a hard work collecting all the elements i could and then giving them a different colour.

BTW, feel free to post any update you think should be done to the dummy skin here. In future updates maybe the colour code of 27,30,27 should be changed to another unique one.