switch position player controls through skinning?

[jistme]

Using MusicBee for a couple of months now, I still often expect myself finding the players control on the right bottom (while they are of course on the left bottom)

Is this something I might accomplish myself if I learn to do 'skinning'?

[Rotem K.]

I think bitmap based skinning can help you with that.
Check it at: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=3834.0

[jistme]

Thnx Rotem K.
I'm afraid this will exceed what I am capable of, but maybe I'll give it a shot anyway sometimes.

[lnminente]

It worths it, trust me.

Start resizing the width of the player until you realise what is docked to the left, and what is docked to the right.
Open skin.xml in your favourite editor
Take a paper, write the elements docked to the left, with the pixels of separation, etc
Do the same for the right side.

Now switch the elements respecting the original separations as you like.
To avoid fails, better do it step by step.
Do one change, save the xml. With the skincreator.exe opened click reload
If it doesn't fails, go to the next change.

Happy modding

[jistme]

Thnx Inminente, I am certainly gonna try this this weekend.

Cheers!

[jistme]

Hi Inminente, I need some help.

Originally wanting to use SteelAndBee as a start, but not being able to acquire the sourcefiles for that one, I now want to try starting from the default MusicBee skin.
Steven gave a link for the xml file for that, but when I load it in SkinCreator, (and rename it to skin.xml) it says 'unable to load images'.
Is there a way to solve this?

[lnminente]

There are two kind of skins:
-xml: Uncompiled, only have colour codes and some images in base64 format at the end of the file. Is editable with any text editor
-xmlc: Is a compiled skin, so it isn't directly editable. Contains png images, and two xml editable files inside it. Is created with the SkinCreator. With this you can change the player control buttons and their position. So those images are needed to compile it

Steven sent the xml without images, so we can only change mostly the colours.
If you want only to reorder the buttons the source images are needed too.
SkinCreator includes some images but they are from older versions.

[jistme]

Thnx, that's clearing it up a little for me.
I'll request Steven for the imagefiles then too.

What is the difference/purpose of the two xml files inside the xmlc?

[lnminente]

The one you have is the one which the defines the colours. Usually is named as the base inside the sources.
The other xml defines which png image, where and when to draw it. This is the one to edit for changing the position of player control buttons.

[jistme]

thnx again.

[lnminente]

You're welcome

[cartman005]

This is a pretty simple change to make if you have the source of the skin that you want to base it on and want to switch the position of the controls and nothing else. You would simply need to change the alignment of the elements to the right of the panel instead of the left.

[jistme]

Yep, I learned that. The only problem is that the sourcefiles and images from both the default skin, and the SteelAndBee skin which I would prefer to use as a basis are currently not available...