Paperwork (WIP)

[Berstarke]

I suppose this is the right place to talk about it. If not, them sorry.

I am working on a skin for the latest CAD beta (which I plan to convert to CAD 2 later), and am seeking for some input on some areas. This is my first attempt at skinning. Second, if you count the time I tweaked a lot of someone's skin.

First, here's a preview:

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/dd449/hallsofthepatron/Preview.png

I don't know if it's noticeable, but the case also grants the cover a wrinkled texture. The elements in red are not yet implemented (and are going to use different graphics, of course). The elements The circle surrounding the time is going to be a progress bar. And that's where I want to start.

I looked around, read the tutorials and such, and nobody could help me. I know it's possible to skin the elapsed time, but is it possible to make it a circle? My plan is to make it look like the circle is being drawn as the song goes on, or something like that in a more practical way.

I am also looking for opinion over other elements in the skin, so please be welcome to criticize on anything relevant.

[OtisBee]

cool.. this looks very promising already. i'm excited to see how the final skin will "feel" like.

as for the circle shaped progressbar..
..it is possible.

what you'll need is a sequence of still images, where each image marks a step of the progressbar moving "forward".

please note, that in order to let the user utilize the progressbar with his mouse/pointer, the images need to be either less wide than high or less high than wide. in other words, it won't work if your progressbar images have equal height and width (square dimension).

if you like, you can check out my Stikma (http://otisbee.deviantart.com/art/Stikma-167744411) skin, in which i also used a circle shaped progress- and volume-bar.

in my skin i made the bars 1px higher than they are wide, so that you can skip forward in a song by click/holding the left mouse button and then sliding up- or downwards.

if you want it to respond to left/right slide directions, then you'll need to make your progressbar images at least 1px wider than they're high.

and to give you an example of a not working progressbar (due to same height same width images), then you can take a look at this skin (http://aquatemple.deviantart.com/art/Neon-for-CD-Art-Display-176617388).

i hope that makes sense and was helpful. ;)

[Berstarke]

Nice skin. I'll shamelessly plagia... "be inspired by" it. So, I have to create 100 different pictures. Shouldn't difficult with PS transition stuff.

[OtisBee]

thanks :)

well, it should work just as fine if you'd just create an amount of 50 images (maybe even less).

i did a hundred of them because i thought this would create a "smoother" progress display (one image for each percentage step), but i then realized that it all depends on the length of a track/song. or in other words, 100 images/100% is displaying differently for a song that'd last for about 3min23seconds than it would for a song of say 1min50secs.

so, in resume i guess that having only 50 images for a progressbar shouldn't make a real difference then.