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[Lele]

Hello.
my english is not very well
I need a skin for xmplay  of "Mac"  or "itunes"
Thank you

[Keltic Danor]

Something like this do?



Its not finished yet, but it would'nt be too hard I guess.

[Alexsource]

Eeeerm... wasn't already a topic about this?
Woah! much kudos to you keltic! that looks very nice! 

[raina]

Eeeerm... wasn't already a topic about this?

There's this one which started with discussion about visualizations. i-Candy looks pretty nice although I'm more into minimalism in the lines of Tsorovan and Sir Dan.

[lele]

Thank you Keltic
Is very nice. I wait wich you finish it.
Espero que lo termines pronto, para poder usarlo. Es fabuloso.
Thank you

[Y@nek®]

Something like this do?



Its not finished yet, but it would'nt be too hard I guess.

Yes. More good skins is what I need This is looking very good. When will be ready?
Plastic is my favorites - very user friendly interface.

[Brian]

KD - the Deviant colour theme of the iCandy skin is rather good, if you happen to have the time and the inclination. Many thanks.

[Rah'Dick]

I guess it's time to let the cat out of the bag:
This skin is called "iXMPlay" and uses some of the fresh features already:
- a queue button to display the queue seperately
- vertically aligned volume display
- a button to show the library
- custom icons on the playlist
- tiled background on the extended playlist

This skin is finished. Just waiting for XMPlay 3.3 to come out.

[Bistzack]

This skin is finished. Just waiting for XMPlay 3.3 to come out.

I can hardly wait! It looks really nice!

[Dotpitch]

it's looks really... apple-ish it looks really cool .

when will 3.3 come out then? you already spoiled the surprise by telling some of the new features (i'd really like to see my queue ), so i presume it's not going to be very long? just want to see this skin working .

[raina]

Personally, I don't get this iThis and iThat trend. I'm not saying you guys didn't do a great job with skins, which you did, but why are people so obsessed with getting their apps and the Windows OS to look like Apple's? The elements in the skins and the skins in general are a tad too large for my liking and there's also a lot of empty space in them. The Quicktime/iTunes grey look, whether it's trying to appear like metallic or like stone, succeeds in creating an illusion of something very heavy, which I don't want the apps I run to be like at all. The Mac scrollbar is pretty awful too. Despite the mouse wheel, I often want to grab the scrollbar and drag it and Mac's blue blob makes me think maybe "good" looks weigh more than usability at Apple..

Well, just my tired thoughts..

[Tsorovan]

Looks like you've spent a great deal of effort on this skin, but I must ask: where's the stop button?

[Rah'Dick]

There is none. Honestly, do you actually need a stop button?
How often do you use it?

Btw, there's none at the real iTunes, either.

@raina: Well, it's all a matter of preference, I guess. I didn't make this skin because I think that Macs are oh so great but because I didn't make any new skin recently. And since I started the "OS" genre with "Windows Classic" and "SilverXP", I thought I could continue the trend with this skin.

By the way, I think Mac OS X is a neat operating system but the real reason why I don't have a Mac is simply that there is not enough Software for it. The argument that they're too expensive isn't really an argument when you look at the maintenance cost for both PC and Mac - you'll have less severe (!) problems with a Mac than with a PC, mostly because Apple gives you support and warranty for your Mac, which you don't get at this degree when building a custom PC.

I'm using both WinXP and OS X at work, so I have aquired quite a bit of expert knowledge about Macs, so spare me the everlasting discussion of "Mac vs. PC" - it's a no-go.

"Mac vs. PC" compares to "Hiphop vs. Techno". Both suits different needs.

[raina]

Omigosh, it's an unstoppable hellmachine!

[Rah'Dick]

Omigosh, it's an unstoppable hellmachine!

*laughs* Well, you can stop the music by pressing pause, therefore it serves the same primary purpose as the stop button. However, resetting the playback and/or unloading the file is a matter of the stop button - but you could assign this to a hotkey as well.

[Tsorovan]

Well, personally, I don't really need one, no. There are a lot of things in this skin I don't need. It's not aimed at me, of course, and that's not what I'm talking about, no. Being able to unload files is important, however. Since this skin is definitely aimed at casual users, I think they might get really annoyed when they're have to bind a hotkey to be able to delete a file they've been listening to. But hey...

This is sort of the same thing that happened with Miniskin and the minimize button. Everyone clamoured for one. Just playing devil's advocate here. Remember: your argument (which I've also used in the past) can be applied to many functions of a player. It SHOULD be used more often, or at least consistently.

"How often do you use it?" Actually, I use my stop global hotkey more often than I use prev/next track (since you have to press it twice to unload tracks).

As a side note, have you noticed this increasing trend in the portable MP3 player market of losing the stop button btw? In this case it's exceptionally retarded not having one (yes, Creative, I'm talking to you). iTunes (which isn't aimed at so-called power users) doesn't have one either? Now why doesn't that surprise me...

[Bistzack]

There is none.

I knew it! It's too beautiful to be real...

Honestly, do you actually need a stop button? How often do you use it?

Often enough to be implemented. On the other hand there is always a shortcut.

[Rah'Dick]

I've been using the skin for the past month now and didn't really miss the stop button. It works, really!

[Torkell]

As a side note, have you noticed this increasing trend in the portable MP3 player market of losing the stop button btw? In this case it's exceptionally retarded not having one (yes, Creative, I'm talking to you). iTunes (which isn't aimed at so-called power users) doesn't have one either? Now why doesn't that surprise me...

Now that you mention it, my Creative MuVo TX doesn't have a stop button. Then again, it's not something I've missed. As a rule I'll either want to pause the music for a few minutes (e.g. paying for something at a shop), or a few hours/days, at which point I'll just power it off (functionally equivalent to right-clicking the X in XMPlay, in that it saves the current location).

Oh, and there is actually a way to stop (not pause) tracks, at least on the MuVo TX series. Pause the track, then use the jog thingy to go back to the start of the track. This appears to stop and semi-unload the track. The playback symbol changes to a stop square, and the title is replaced with the filename. Comes in handy for those rare times when I want to see something that's in the filename but not the title tag. I don't think it fully unloads the file, but that's not an issue as it's never running in media player mode when it's plugged into a computer, and so there's no chance of data corruption that way.

[Tsorovan]

Yeah, I know. Far from elegant though. I actually miss the stop button, and I often find myself wanting to use it.

[Brian]

Question for Rah'Dick, please - will you be putting the iXMPlay source up on the support site? Many thanks.

[Torkell]

Yeah, I know. Far from elegant though. I actually miss the stop button, and I often find myself wanting to use it.

Ok, now I'm curious as to what you want to use the stop button for. The only time I've wanted to use something like that is when using the mp3 player to provide tracks for a panto I was involved with, and there were other complications involved (like stopping at the end of the track). So in the end I played the tracks off the laptop (had a handful of mplayer2 windows, one per file, and triggered the tracks from them).

[Tsorovan]

Well, for one, because if you want to skip ahead several tracks whilst playing another track, it's extremely annoyingly slow to load (and in some cases start playing) every single one of the tracks I'm skipping, and it's such a waste of battery power.

Some large enough players with a browse function don't behave like this, but the vast majority of players do, including several prominent HDD-based ones.

This is quite annoying on my (admittedly crappy) flash-based player.

I have also a strong aversion to powering on/off players by holding down the Play button for 3-5 seconds, which seems to be quite popular. I prefer a separate power button.

[sequestrum]

I have a Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra player and I miss the stop button almost every time I use it. Let's take yesterday as an example. I was in the middle of a song and had just gotten home. I then wanted to stop the song and listen to it from the beginning the next time I'll use the player. I'm not too fond of listening to a song, pausing it and then continue listening to it the next day. If I were to listen to the song I would play it again, from the beginning. To shut down the player, firing it up the next day and pressing the "previous track" button isn't what I would want to do. I want, out of pure habit I guess, to press the stop button, shut down the player, turn on the player the next day and press play. That's what I'm used to and always do when I have a stop button at my disposal. Sure, there are some ways around it, some are even quicker, but habit is a pretty powerful thing.

I've had this mp3 player for almost two years now and I still miss the stop button. I'm so used to having a stop button the past years for everything (and I still have reason to use the stop button in XMPlay and other kinds of media players on a regular basis) that I can't get used to not having one.

Just because there are several ways of achieving something doesn't mean that one of the ways is useless and redundant.

And besides, the player takes much longer to shut down when playing something (or having a track paused) compared to when the player is stopped, which gives me further reason to miss a stop button.

[Brian]

You guys are swamping my question to Rah'Dick with your 50-page treatises on the stop button.

[Ian @ un4seen]

The iXMPlay source files are included in the skinning kit.

[Brian]

The iXMPlay source files are included in the skinning kit.

Ian - for some reason I was unable to locate the skinning kit before posting my query, but I've done so now, thanks.

[Rah'Dick]

Sorry for reacting so slowly, but I see your question has been answered meanwhile. Thanks, Ian!

[lele]

 
thank you , finally is skin itunes  for xmplay = iXmplay, gracias
yo pedi este skin y agradezco al autor. muchos thank you
lele