Xion Community

Soooo, I know this one has been a long time coming, but I've finally had a chance to do some coding for it:



This is a work in progress teaser screenshot. I've got resizeable skinned windows working, with tiling and colours. Its all done with a PSD file still, just a few new layer names.

Hope you all enjoy this update in the future!

Cliff

I know the screenshot is wip
a couple of questions, is it going to support dta, transparency to the desktop? I noticed the magic pink in the corners which say to me it wont hence the question
also will we have custom scroll bars too?

SLoB Wrote:I know the screenshot is wip
a couple of questions, is it going to support dta, transparency to the desktop? I noticed the magic pink in the corners which say to me it wont hence the question
also will we have custom scroll bars too?

dta? It will support transparency, but not per pixel alpha like the current interface does. Its impossible to render windows controls onto a window that supports per pixel alpha. After much research I found out this is why so many other players, such as winamp, don't allow per pixel alpha on windows that contain actual windows controls such as a list view.

The purple is just showing the colour that I use internally to represent the transparency. You won't have to use this colour at all in your skins as Xion will just read the transparency from the skin. It will however mean that you can't have proper soft edges. The only way to overcome this is to implement each windows control as a custom control that I myself draw, etc.

I decided against this for now as its very time consuming and not worth it right now.

Yes, I do hope to get the scrollbars custom as well.

Cliff

What about 'fudging' it kind of in the manner than the winamp playlist dta hack works. You can have the data (playlist) in a self contained rectangle, and have the 8 parts (top left, top mid, top right, left mid, right mid, left low, mid low, and right low) surrounding and following the playlist rectangle like a frame. Is that feasible Cliff?

WinstonGFX Wrote:What about 'fudging' it kind of in the manner than the winamp playlist dta hack works. You can have the data (playlist) in a self contained rectangle, and have the 8 parts (top left, top mid, top right, left mid, right mid, left low, mid low, and right low) surrounding and following the playlist rectangle like a frame. Is that feasible Cliff?

? I'm not sure what dta is? Desktop Alpha? I'm not sure what you're referring to. If you're talking about the general translucency of the window, then yes this is possible but its an overall effect, not a per pixel effect. As far as I'm aware, Winamp can't do any per pixel alpha on its playlist/library, etc windows, only on its main window.

As for the 8 parts, yes that's what I already do.

Cliff

checkout music show, ebonite, skyce skins Cliff, they support dropped shadows/transparency to the desktop
the main container is synced to the playlist dimensions/co-ords

its a bit of a hack but does work fairly well and shud be lot more stable 5.54 and onwards

I can see why you might not be keen to add it, here's another idea that could possibly be part of a custom playlist

add the play list into the actual skin window, although this would not separate the windows it would give skinners control of being able to embed a playlist into a skin that does have the dta etc...

SLoB Wrote:add the play list into the actual skin window, although this would not separate the windows it would give skinners control of being able to embed a playlist into a skin that does have the dta etc...

No, this doesn't appear to work. As soon as you use the UpdateLayeredWindow API call and use Per Pixel Alpha, you no longer get the windows controls drawing. All drawing is disabled and you are expected to do it yourself.

So you can either:

a) Draw everything yourself and handle input, etc and have full per pixel Alpha. (General entire window opacity still works)
b) Have Windows draw the controls and you draw some controls, but not have full per pixel Alpha. (General entire window opacity still works)

I'll investigate the other media player alpha windows again and see what else I can do.

From what I can tell embedding the playlist in the main window will mean that the playlist will no longer draw. The playlist window is now exactly the same as the normal main window. To make the playlist work, I'd have to make my own playlist control, handle the input, rendering, etc. Maybe in the future, but for now I'd prefer to just get the skinnable playlist working. Its the difference of having a skinnable playlist in a couple of weeks, or a year or two. (remember I do this in my spare time as it doesn't bring an income).

Cliff

yep I can appreciate the time issue Cliff
You know it is going to be the next question people ask once they can start to skin their own playlists heheh

for years we have had the same restriction with wa so I don't think its too much of an issue and more of a nice to have, the main thing is getting it skinned and giving more columns/functionality to it rather than giving it more eye candy.

I take it by that same example that glass overlays with passthrough wont work on top of the playlist either?
will pictures be able to be used on the background of the playlist? so the playlist can be transparent?

sorry for the questions but you know people will ask about them

SLoB Wrote:I take it by that same example that glass overlays with passthrough wont work on top of the playlist either?

Yup that's correct, you won't be able to do that. Can you even do that with Winamp?

SLoB Wrote:will pictures be able to be used on the background of the playlist? so the playlist can be transparent?

For now its just a colour. As far as I know, that's exactly the same as Winamp.

SLoB Wrote:sorry for the questions but you know people will ask about them

Hah, well I KNOW you'll ask them. Most people would be happy and just use it

Cliff

heheh

erm backgrounds are possible with plugins
glass that would be a NO
and aye I'm not most people lol

Cliff Cawley Wrote:So you can either:

a) Draw everything yourself and handle input, etc and have full per pixel Alpha. (General entire window opacity still works)
b) Have Windows draw the controls and you draw some controls, but not have full per pixel Alpha. (General entire window opacity still works)

I personally would prefer version a) but I can understand that it is A LOT of more work to realize that. The main advantage was to be able to make a compact design in one window. To realize that also with version b) some feature would be nice that allows to stick (snap) the playlist window somehow on top of the main window to a certain position. If the skinner has the ability to skin (or leave out) most elements of windows itself (e.g. close buttons) it would be a good workaround to fake a playlist "within" the main window. (missing per pixel alpha blending also wouldn´t be such a problem then, at least for playlist window borders).

Really looking forward to this.

I have a question. I understand that you can't have overlays etc, but would you be able to insert the playlist block on to a sliding drawer for example? Would be cool if you could create a layer and draw a rectangle of the playlist area, and just name it accordingly. Would that be possible? Would be so sweet to have an animated drawer to display it, as an alternative to a seperate window.

Peace, Lance

Lance Wrote:Really looking forward to this.

I have a question. I understand that you can't have overlays etc, but would you be able to insert the playlist block on to a sliding drawer for example? Would be cool if you could create a layer and draw a rectangle of the playlist area, and just name it accordingly. Would that be possible? Would be so sweet to have an animated drawer to display it, as an alternative to a seperate window.

Peace, Lance

You won't be able to have the playlist initially embedded within the normal interface, however the playlist will support almost all of the layers that the main player does. They're just separate plugins still.

That may change in the future, but first release that's how it will work.

Cliff

Oh cool that's not too bad then Thanks for that dude.

Peace, Lance