[Keifer]

Hey all, This question goes out mainly to people who have made themes for applications that aren't confined to set widget places and such...

How much of your themes have to have elements hardcoded into it? I assume some of it is, but how much? I'm still looking at making a skinable frontend for iTunes, that is as skinable as audion.

Anyways, if any of you guys have suggestions for what all I need to leave up to the theme makers to code, and what I need to go ahead and code into the actual application, it would be very, well, helpful.


[or, if you have any other random suggestions, this is as good a place as any...]

[OwlBoy]

hmm, things I can think of off the top of my head.

Alpha Masks, non-rectangular click regions, Animation support, Custom font abilities of some sort or another. (Weather it is just font support, or being able to use an image with the font in it and then cutting that up for the type.)

Hmm, I dunno if all that is "Duh" but I can't really think of anything else... oh, package support.

Put "themes" or "skins" in the Application support folder.

hmmm.

ok, enough rambling...

-Owl

[Keifer]

For animation support, would there be any interest for .mng files? Or is there another way that animation is convayed? I've always just stuck to non-moving images for all my junk, so I don't know. What all would you guys like to have supported? (bear in mind, the more features, the more questons the guys in the programing part of the fourm will have to deal with. )

[justinp]

Animate via a .png with all the frames inline supporting user defined frame dimensions.

[Mac Guru]

.mng IS .png, it's just the animation enabled version of it... thing GIF with 32-bit Alpha blending.

Too bad Photoshop and ImageReady don't support them.

Mac Guru

[justinp]

I know mng is an animated png. But it will be a lot easier for people to create a png than an mng since almost nothing will export an mng (I think The Gimp does).

[Dave-o�]

I have to agree with justinp on this one. Most themers have Photoshop or the likes of. So you might as well support the preferred tools of the themers, that is if you would like high quality themes for your application.

Keifer, is this application just in the brainstorming state? or do you have some code put in place? Also, would you mind posting a link to the programming thread for this app as well?

Great idea!! and thanks for sharing it with us here....

[Keifer]

It's somehwhere between brainstorming and coding. I've figured out some of it, like how to emplement the 'play' features and such, I'm still trying to figure out the GUI emlements and such.


The most recent of the programing threads (I've had alot of questoins. ) is : http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=210077

[Keifer]

I've figured out a way to get the themes to work, sort of...

My work around is to have the application's themes run off of javascript, because it is fairly easy to learn, and because , let's face it, I'm too lazy to figure out how to make objective-C work.

You can realy do some really neat effects with javascript. Do you think theme developers would be willing to learn javascript?

[bbxstudio]

If themers had to learn XML, there would be hardly any themes... what makes theming possible for most is the availability of ThemePark. What would be best for your app (if you want more themes to take advantage of it) would be to create an app that presents the resources and settings to the themer in an easy-to-use manner. Alternatively, you could create a decent resource template that we could use with resourcer (this is what Audion does). Animation support would be amazing - even better if anything and everything could be animated. Stay away from embedded sequence formats like mng or gif - support png throughout and let the designer specify how many frames each sequence has and what resources to use for that sequence (much like Audion does). To make it more powerful, let the designer specify whether a still image or sequence (repeat n-times or loop) is used for any given control in each state (for instance, play uses a 12-frame loop for rollover and a 6-frame sequence once pressed)... also have the player use triggered events - for instance, now-playing, now-paused, idle, app-is-in-background, app-is-in-foreground, using stream, using file on disc, etc). Absolutely cool would be a startup sequence... no control functions or anything, but a sequence of pngs that animate in place on the desktop once through - the onus being on the designer to ensure that the last frame of the startup sequence synched up with the idle state appearance of the player. With WMP skins, I'm able to design in 'iris functions', which allow the user to clap shut panels, drawers and plates during runtime, making the player seem like a real-world interactive device - I'm guessing the coder achieves this by specifying the following in sequence � iris button interaction (determine 'in/open' or 'out/closed' state - was the iris enabled or disengaged at the time of interaction), � display relevant image sequence (topmost layer), use embedded sound effect if applicable, � disable interaction and animated display for the following controls (these would be those control or display elements obscured by the graphics overlayed by the enabled iris function)...

my 20�

[Keifer]

that's more like a dollar.

If themers had to learn XML, there would be hardly any themes...

Ah, buggers, that means I have to trash all my work and start over. Sounds like I'm going to need some help on this one...

I'll see what I can do, I'm sick today, so I have lots of time to think. :|


[edit] or , is what your saying, is that I could still go the javascript route if I make a decent application like themepark? [/edit]