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Crystal Theme Request - Monochrome Skin


RBeam6

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First off just want to say how impressed I am with the work that's been done with MB3. Won't bore by going into great detail but switched to JRiver about 2 years ago because it was getting to be too much of a pain to hack anything else to allow bit perfect audio and use of the video playback options I wanted but, since then, have been periodically checking the other solutions hoping that one of them that better 'embraced' the eye-candy would pick up some of the other options I wanted. Finally had some free time in the last couple of weeks to fool around with the MB3 server/client and I'm officially back. IMHO you guys have already positioned yourselves as the product-to-beat even with the bits and pieces that are still in the works.

 

Anyhoo .... love the Crystal them and see you've approved a request for a dark skin but will it be anything like the couple of examples I've attached? My personal preference is to minimize the colors in the actual theme so I just made a copy of 'neon' and did some quick hacks to the color values but it's a bit of a hassle making the changes then having to relaunch mb3 to see them (maybe there's a better way?) and figure you could do something better. I don't do much design work anymore so my skills in that dept aren't so hot these days.

 

I have a couple of other requests that would probably be better put into their own topic but just noticed when I loaded up the new Breeze theme this morning that there's an option for adjusting background opacity. Would it be possible to add that to Crystal?

 

Thanks!

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leedavies

First off just want to say how impressed I am with the work that's been done with MB3. Won't bore by going into great detail but switched to JRiver about 2 years ago because it was getting to be too much of a pain to hack anything else to allow bit perfect audio and use of the video playback options I wanted but, since then, have been periodically checking the other solutions hoping that one of them that better 'embraced' the eye-candy would pick up some of the other options I wanted. Finally had some free time in the last couple of weeks to fool around with the MB3 server/client and I'm officially back. IMHO you guys have already positioned yourselves as the product-to-beat even with the bits and pieces that are still in the works.

 

Anyhoo .... love the Crystal them and see you've approved a request for a dark skin but will it be anything like the couple of examples I've attached? My personal preference is to minimize the colors in the actual theme so I just made a copy of 'neon' and did some quick hacks to the color values but it's a bit of a hassle making the changes then having to relaunch mb3 to see them (maybe there's a better way?) and figure you could do something better. I don't do much design work anymore so my skills in that dept aren't so hot these days.

 

I have a couple of other requests that would probably be better put into their own topic but just noticed when I loaded up the new Breeze theme this morning that there's an option for adjusting background opacity. Would it be possible to add that to Crystal?

 

Thanks!

 

Fantastic idea.  If you could send me a link to your monchrome skin file you've created (which looks awesome by the way - nice work), I can make any tweaks needed and pop it in as a standard option, along with the dark skin.

 

And yes, I'll also put in backdrop opacity control at the same time.

 

Thanks for the fantastic feedback!

Edited by leedavies
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leedavies

Re your other suggestions, please do post them - I read everything posted and if something's possible, it will be done.

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Re your other suggestions, please do post them - I read everything posted and if something's possible, it will be done.

 

That, my friend, is impressive response time. You had it flagged for 'approved' before I even had the chance to reload the page!

 

So you just want me to attach the modded mcml file I made? Be warned I may have fudged up some settings in it while I was blundering through trying to find the ones I wanted.

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Here's the tweaked file. 

I didn't dig far enough into it to make any (productive) changes to the image resources it uses. Think I just nuked a couple of things until I got the black background I wanted.

 

Had to change the ext to .txt because it wouldn't let me attach as an mcml.

Neon2.txt

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leedavies

Here's the tweaked file. 

I didn't dig far enough into it to make any (productive) changes to the image resources it uses. Think I just nuked a couple of things until I got the black background I wanted.

 

Had to change the ext to .txt because it wouldn't let me attach as an mcml.

 

Perfect, thanks.  Leave it with me and a Crystal update will appear soon with 2 new skins....  What name would you like for your skin?

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leedavies

That, my friend, is impressive response time. You had it flagged for 'approved' before I even had the chance to reload the page!

 

So you just want me to attach the modded mcml file I made? Be warned I may have fudged up some settings in it while I was blundering through trying to find the ones I wanted.

 

Looks perfect.  Thank you.

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Perfect, thanks.  Leave it with me and a Crystal update will appear soon with 2 new skins....  What name would you like for your skin?

 

Awesome!

Monochrome would be fine since it's pretty descriptive but feel free to use something different if you like. 

 

See you just posted that promo for buy breeze/get another free. I'll go ahead and do that now.

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RBeam6,

 

Your Monochrome skin looks amazing, cant wait for it to be implemented. Great request!!

 

Thanks for the feedback. Luckily my first stab at it (just going through and replacing the color values with similar shades of grayscale) worked without much fuss. Crystal is such a great looking theme on a big screen .... nice to have some options to play with!

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leedavies

Right then.... this is what the new monochrome skin looks like in the latest Crystal dev build....

 

I love it!!!  Thanks for the suggestion, and for providing a darned good custom skin as a starting point.  I've created some custom backdrop images which seem to work nicely and give some cool dark reflection effects.

 

There's also something else new in this screenshot - a solution to the problem of whether clicking/pressing a tile should take you straight to the item showing on the tile at the point you clicked/pressed, or whether you should instead be taken to a list of all the items that tile has currently been showing you, one at a time.  Using different buttons for each action doesn't work great for a remote control or games console, so the idea of having a configurable option seemed good, but several folks said they would probably like to switch between the 2 ways of tile clicking working, depending on their mood or what collection they were viewing etc.

 

So... the EHS now has 2 buttons underneath the bottom left corner.   These switch between a tile working in "item mode" (how things have always worked in Crystal - going straight to the item on the tile) or "list mode", working like ROC has always done, so you get to see a scrollable, sortable, tweakable list of all the items the tile has been showing you.

 

Your choice of how the EHS should work is saved and remembered next time you start up Crystal.  This is currently a system-wide setting so all collections on the EHS will work the same way - if it needs to be something you can set for each collection individually, we can look at doing that later.  For now, I think it's a nice simple solution to the problem.

 

Any thoughts...?

 

 

52a18560321f0_DarkSkin.png

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The EHS switch is great! I think it's an elegant solution and glad it wasn't too big a pain in the butt for you to implement. Can't wait to load 'er up.

 

So did you get a chance to try out the monochrome/grayscale on a big screen? I'm really loving the way things look on mine. I've had various (overall) themes for wmc but right now have all of my rigs using the  old Astrotoy7 hack and liking the effect of the blacked out wmc transitioning into crystal.

 

Don't want to jump the rails too much here but does anyone have a feel for how many MB3 users have part (or any) of their media collections as full BD folder rips? My only real frustration right now is the fairly ugly hacks I'm having to use to have JRiver as my external player (only thing I can find that supports easy selection of bd mpls, sound and subtitle options via remote). I have some questions/suggestions I was going to post but it's obvious the developers are already working the butts off and don't want to add to the noise if I'm in the extreme minority (I have a lot of full folder rips).

 

Anyway ... thanks again Lee. Very impressed with the work you've done on all of your themes.

Rob

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Nick's MCE

Lee

Seems like Rob really knows his stuff, nice to have him in the community, I noticed in his screen shots he was using the disc in front option, made me feel good.

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Nick's MCE

Rob

Nice work on the monochrome, you will notice that Lee is a slick as his themes when it comes to support and response.

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leedavies

Rob

Nice work on the monochrome, you will notice that Lee is a slick as his themes when it comes to support and response.

 

Lovely feedback from you both, Thank you.  Equally, if you ever think something is rubbish, I'm sure you guys will let me know too.  And if I ever start coming back with rubbish like "oh that's by design", slap me!  lol

 

Part of my mind thinks I should buy a purple pimp hat with a feather now.  I think that's the wrong kind of slick though...  lol

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Xzener

The EHS switch is great! I think it's an elegant solution and glad it wasn't too big a pain in the butt for you to implement. Can't wait to load 'er up.

 

So did you get a chance to try out the monochrome/grayscale on a big screen? I'm really loving the way things look on mine. I've had various (overall) themes for wmc but right now have all of my rigs using the  old Astrotoy7 hack and liking the effect of the blacked out wmc transitioning into crystal.

 

Don't want to jump the rails too much here but does anyone have a feel for how many MB3 users have part (or any) of their media collections as full BD folder rips? My only real frustration right now is the fairly ugly hacks I'm having to use to have JRiver as my external player (only thing I can find that supports easy selection of bd mpls, sound and subtitle options via remote). I have some questions/suggestions I was going to post but it's obvious the developers are already working the butts off and don't want to add to the noise if I'm in the extreme minority (I have a lot of full folder rips).

 

Anyway ... thanks again Lee. Very impressed with the work you've done on all of your themes.

Rob

 

Rob,

 

I also have a large collection of folder rips, Bluray and DVD, as well as ISOs. Please PM me with your questions or concerns, that way we don't hijack Lee's thread.

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