Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[lucky]

Hi Ralph,

I started to learn the new cool JS2 skin structure and possibilities. The attached image is just a way of understanding these, nothing more for the moment.

I noticed a few things:

* I can't change the size and position of the song sheet and bar window. A pity, but I guess this will probably take a lot of effort to support this.

* You can change the size of the brain window, cool!! I really like this, especially for live jamming it is very handy to see most of the sliders immediately. See screen shot.

* You cannot change the position of the icons that belong to the bar window. That is a bit of a pity. Could at least the repositioning of the loop button be supported? O, and changing the button itself! In the current state it rather limits the posibilities, see screen shot.

UPDATE: My mistake, I can change the loop icon! I could just copy it from the default skin in the higher dir to the skin dir, and then change it. What about repositioning it?

* It looks like the style and drummer text is centered and fixed size. Could setting size and left or right alignment be supported?

UPDATE: My mistake, again... You can change font size! But alignment?

* I can't seem to set the font color for the various brain elements, see screen shot. Is this possible?

* I cannot seem to change the various brain sliders, but I can change the overall song sliders, see screen shot. Could this also be supported?

UPDATE: My mistake! I could just copy them from the default skin in the higher dir to the skin dir, and then change it.

* Would it be possible to change the yellow bar icons? I saw that you can change the red one.

UPDATE: Gosh, my mistake again! I could just copy them from the default skin in the higher dir to the skin dir, and then change it. Aaaahhhh..

I will continue to see what is possible and post in here. Thanks again for this great program. Regards,

Lucky

[lucky]

SOLVED: IF I add OpacityFloor=255 then the color is correct! It seems like there is some hardcoded OpacityFloor value.
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When trying to see what can be done with the scrollbars, I stumbled on this phenomenon, the same bar in 2 different colors. The one on the popup window has the intended test color; the one on the main interface is too dull, likewise with the cursor of the two scrollbar.

I also included a comparison between the 2 originals, and it looks as if there is a very subtle difference between the two. Or should I clean my screen again

Any ideas what would be causing this?

originals

Test design

[lucky]

Hi Ralph,

After a lot of trial and error, I am getting quite a good feel of how the JS2 skinning works. I have a few questions from the test design I made, see below:

0. What does SubHostColor do? What does UseBrainShapeBitmaps=1 mean?

1. Would it be possible to specify alignment of the Style & Drummer header? (e.g. left or right, it is now centered if I am not mistaken)

2. Are there some color issues with the BrainPanel settings? I can't seem to set the font color of the brain labels. Furthermore, do the labels ShapeColor & PenColor do actually anything (if you don't use the 4 panel images)? The top orange comes from the Color label, is this correct?

[BrainPanel]
Color=$2296e7
ShapeColor=$1F2F3F
PenColor=$6e777f

3. I would like to be able to increase the [BrainPanel] area to the same width as [sbBrain], but I can't get rid of the gab between the [sbBrain] area and the [BrainPanel] area. I tried with all kinds of possibilities, but is seems to be stuck at a default value.

4. SOLVED - There is some odd color with the vertical brain slider, see my previous post about this. Asif it is treated like some of the buttons that fade in and out. Any ideas?
When I add OpacityFloor=255 then the color is correct! It seems like there is some hardcoded OpacityFloor value.

5. Could we be able to specify location, color and size of the 'Core Bar' message?

6. Major request for repositioning of the bar loop icon!

7. Could we be able to specify the color of the limb labels?

8. Can you change the top and bottom arrows next to the JAM mode, without affecting the top and bottom ones of the vertical brain slider? Maybe change the whole thing to how this is done with the brain function buttons. Actually, can we reposition also the labels? I see we can reposition the jack.

9. Could it be that for some bitmaps the transparancy color is hardcoded to #c1cab1? E.g. for the Jack, or the Jam Modes, Song Sliders. But for others it can be specified in the cfg. I just noticed that I can't set the transparancy for the 3 songsliders, whatever trick I try.

10. What does the Color value do in [dcBars]? It seems to wash out the colors of the bars. The best value to use it seems is some middle grey. I would rather have that the colors are not changed afterwards.

1001. Repositioning and/or resizing of Song & Bar window would be cool.

Thanks in advance,

Lucky

[lucky]

When you don't use the 4 brain panel images, there is a difference in height between the divider lines for Groove & Accent versus Fills, see the orange lines in the screen shot.

The fill divider line height plus white space is much nicer. Could this be set for the other two panels also?

[lucky]

A bit more on the [dcbar] and the Color value, see nr 1 on screen shot of my test design in which I increased the width on purpose to see what would happen.

Is this Color value necessesary or could it also be transparant, leaving room for a gradient background? In nr 2 I tricked this a bit by giving the [dcbar] color the same value as the complete background. Now the bar icons become a bit more visually appealing for this scenario I believe. If only they weren't so washed out.

Enough for today, time to jam!
PS: The screen shot gives also an indication about how the design could look if you could resize the Song panel.

[lucky]

Some more things on skinning possibilities, see test design below:

1. You can reposition the Shuffle label & slider, but I can't seem to find the repositioning of the shuffle buttons below.

2. Can you reposition the power knob?

3. There seems to be no transparancy setting with the song slider, or is it fixed in some way. In this case I gave it the same color as the background, but with a grandient background this can be tricky.

4. It seems not possible to change aspects of the bar status text.

5. (Not marked) It would be nice if one could change the white rectangular song-bar locator; either by changing it into another image, or by hidding it completely.

In general it would be great if you could reposition every component, plus add transparancy for every component.

[charly1310]

Nice work lucky. Keep it going!

Do you know if there's a way to replace some of the icons itself ? Apart from the (standard) color scheme I'm most bothered by those icons and buttons of the original skin. They look sooo outdated. If those could be replaced with something else JS2 could be turned into some really nice looking app. I think the current images have just too many details (lines & shadows all over) for it's size and also don't follow a certain (graphic) style.

Cheers,
charly1310

[lucky]

Most of the icons can be replaced I believe, see the attached screen shot with the enormously well designed icons . All the orange is live, e.g. icons that I changed; see K for kick symbol, or Fill for Fill button, slider indicators, etc.

Currently I am just investigating what can be done, and what the issues are, nothing more, just some testing, before I really start to design something from scratch. Otherwise I might end up designing something that can't be implemented.

There are still some issues with this as you can see from the above posts. Furthermore, you will not be able to complete change the look as two things limit the design:
* you are limited to the size of the total window
* the size and position of the SONG panel and of the BAR panel is fixed for now. And especially these 2 are a bit of a problem to really change the look.

This means that you can't reposition everything freely, or make serious changes to the design. But this might change in the future.

Personally I rather have Ralph spent his time solving the current issues, e.g. live loops, drummer reductions, etc, than introduce new ones

[Ralph [RZ]]

I'll be happy to assist with skinning issues once the current 2.0.19 issues are solved.
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com