Rockbox Technical Forums

Support and General Use => Theming and Appearance Customization => Topic started by: Arwym on May 26, 2008, 02:35:51 AM

Title: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: Arwym on May 26, 2008, 02:35:51 AM
I am trying to gather some information for my future custom-WPS-making experience, so I'd really like to know what each of you prefer (at a personal level) to see in your while-playing screen.  I know that most themes are designed after the author's personal preferences, but if I were to guide myself by what I like or not, I wouldn't add album art support at this time, because I don't really care about those.

So, yeah...  What do you like to see in your WPS?  :)
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: Job Van Dam on May 26, 2008, 12:53:58 PM
The no album art feature piqued my interest. Everyone abuses that feature.

1) no Next Song info. I wanna be surprised.
2) Style over substance. Devote 60% of your time to making it look good, 40% to the info. If it doesn't look good I don't care.

If I think of anything else I'll let you know.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: Llorean on May 26, 2008, 01:44:06 PM
See, personally, I bought an MP3 player to listen to, not to look at. If I look at the screen, it's for information. I prefer my WPS as clean as possible. I'd like it to look nice, but I consider "nice" as "presents the information about the currently playing song, and the current position within it, as clearly as possible, with a minimum of visual distraction." Volume should be easy to spot, and numerical. Playlist position is also important. And next track info is okay, as long as it's in a position on the screen that it's clearly not related to the current track info.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: Arwym on May 26, 2008, 03:40:35 PM
Same goes for me.  I don't add any images or videos to my player.  I DO love custom themes, of course.  That is one of the most attractive aspects of Rockbox, in my opinion.  I also admit I enjoy playing games in it.  ;)  But most of the time, what I do is listen to my music.

I never pay much attention to details such as Next Song, but I don't mind it as long as it doesn't take much space in the screen or interfere with the current song's information.  And I don't see the point in adding information such as bitrate and codec to the WPS.  If I want more details about the file I am playing, there is a way to access that information without having it in the WPS all the time. 

So my priorities would be, I think: song artist, album and title; playback mode, repeat mode, crossfade, track progress (including progress bar, song length, song current time, remaining time, etc.); battery and real-time clock (for simple reasons); and that's all.

I would be using simple icons, but if there's a way to alternate the viewing of battery and volume information between graphical and numerical every few seconds, I will try that.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: wintermute23 on May 27, 2008, 08:51:29 AM
Personally, I like to have as much information as can be possibly fit on the screen. Obviously, title, album and artist need to be the most obvious, but I think that album art is a good way of making the album (and probably artist) immediately available. Genre and year are almost as essential, and codec and bitrate are nice, as it lets me know if there's a reason why this particular track doesn't sound so good. I'm currently using a theme I built myself (http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=16698.0), so that gives you an idea what sort of thing I like to see.

OK, file size is completely unnecessary, but I had a bit of room to fill up, so I figured it wouldn't hurt.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: Yotto on May 28, 2008, 11:40:11 AM
I want anything that can be shown to be shown. Bitrate, codec, and file size too. I've looked at all those things when using my personal WPS, so would never not use them.

But, a practical thing that I've never seen anybody else say (because, for all I know, I'm the only one who ever needed it) is that the time must be in the lower right hand corner of the player. I don't want it in the middle somewhere, and that corner is the only one I can see easily when wearing my armband.  Yes, I use my mp3 player as a wristwatch. Or at least an armwatch. :)
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: eevan on May 29, 2008, 05:13:36 AM
I want anything that can be shown to be shown. Bitrate, codec, and file size too.
Me too, but I have c250 with a quite small screen, so I've stuffed it with as much info as I could ;)
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: blackthunder on May 29, 2008, 10:11:08 PM
I *need* to see:
numeric volume
battery(numbers or graphics)
artist/title/album
repeat mode
shuffle mode
current(or remaining) track time
total track time(dislike cabbie for not having this)
playlist position/total

I would not use a theme without these. I also would probably not use a them w/o album art at this point either.

I like having the year, next track, time, codec info, and disk access light, anything else doesn't matter
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: shoe on June 11, 2008, 01:24:20 PM
if there's a way to alternate the viewing of battery and volume information between graphical and numerical every few seconds, I will try that.
Does anyone know how to do this?  I would like to incorporate this into my WPS, but I can't think of a way.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: PaulJam on June 11, 2008, 01:53:05 PM
if there's a way to alternate the viewing of battery and volume information between graphical and numerical every few seconds, I will try that.
Does anyone know how to do this?  I would like to incorporate this into my WPS, but I can't think of a way.
This should be possible using alternating sublines:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CustomWPS#Alternating_Sublines
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: Sam66 on June 11, 2008, 02:34:01 PM
I prefer a basic approach essentials about the battery, the song that is playing, its total time, a power meter so I know it trying to make music, whats next in the song list and finally the progress bar (which is placed on the same line as the song length)
Here is the code for the WPS I use on my Ipod Mini
Code: [Select]
%we
%al%bl%% %ac%bvv %ar%bt
%ac%s%?ia<%ia|Artist Unknown>
%ac%s%?it<%it|Title Unknown>
%ar%pt
%pm
%s%acNext:
%ac%s%?Ia<%Ia|Artist Unknown>
%ac%s%?It<%It|Title Unknown>
%pb|8|0|110|46|
 
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: BdN3504 on June 11, 2008, 03:01:48 PM
if there's a way to alternate the viewing of battery and volume information between graphical and numerical every few seconds, I will try that.
Does anyone know how to do this?  I would like to incorporate this into my WPS, but I can't think of a way.
I did that in this (http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=17121.0) theme, just copy the code...
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: shoe on June 11, 2008, 04:07:14 PM
Great, thanks. I didn't realize alternating sublines was not just for text.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: tdtooke on June 12, 2008, 02:22:43 AM
Me personally I like my eye candy.  It's the main reason I'm here.  Ogg playback and extra apps brought me to iPod Linux, a better looking ui and more customization of appearance things brought me here.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: DeanMurray on June 12, 2008, 05:56:54 PM
I like to have the standard track information already mentioned. I also like the button lock icon.

Just something with a simple layout that is easy to read.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: peter122 on June 13, 2008, 08:24:43 AM
The no album art feature piqued my interest. Everyone abuses that feature.

1) no Next Song info. I wanna be surprised.
2) Style over substance. Devote 60% of your time to making it look good, 40% to the info. If it doesn't look good I don't care.

If I think of anything else I'll let you know.

My preference would be function over style.  My current theme is Car v1.  BIG easy to read letters and all essential info is there.  Not very pretty but boy, is it functional!  This could be a function of my age (67) but I have trouble reading the small letters on most themes and until I learned to change themes I almost gave up on Rockbox due to the small font size of the default theme.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: ThaCrip on June 15, 2008, 02:55:46 AM
See, personally, I bought an MP3 player to listen to, not to look at. If I look at the screen, it's for information. I prefer my WPS as clean as possible. I'd like it to look nice, but I consider "nice" as "presents the information about the currently playing song, and the current position within it, as clearly as possible, with a minimum of visual distraction." Volume should be easy to spot, and numerical. Playlist position is also important. And next track info is okay, as long as it's in a position on the screen that it's clearly not related to the current track info.

what he said is the way i look at stuff to when it comes to rockbox! ;)

cause even though im sure there's fancy looking stuff out there i already think the default skin (the one with black and yellow) is already quite good and at the most it might get a minor tweak here and there, but the core function of that skin is already pretty good and professional looking and the text is easy to see and you can fit alot of it on screen.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: crumbut on June 15, 2008, 09:51:48 PM
Maybe I'm just getting old or something but enough with the little teensey weensey fonts. I think many of the themes would look so much better with readable text.

I like a clean simple yet informative gui.
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: Zardoz on June 19, 2008, 07:47:51 PM
I now have ( :() a black ipod video and i think my favourite theme is Cabbie v.3. It's clean and simple and classy i figure. I'm down with Llorean on this generally - i bought my player to play music on and listen to, not to ogle at or play games on. Although i like its prettiness. A simple and discreet volume display is good enough for me - again i can hear volume and don't really need to see it (but i guess it might be useful for establishing baseline and estimating 'gain across recordings and whatnot.) I might change 'artist' font to a slightly bolder, more bulbous one although same-ish and i might reduce the 'next' font size vis-à-vis the 'now-playing' and maybe add the artist in this one too (smaller, same, bulbous). Otherwise this is perfect for my needs!! (actually one thing i would love is a keypad shortcut on the WPS to display the time in big ole numbers)
Title: Re: Your personal WPS preferences
Post by: Serenity on June 22, 2008, 12:02:36 PM
I like a nice large font.  'Car' is a bit of overkill, and kind of ugly, so I guess I like a clean, somewhat pretty WPS.

Large, clear font.
Clock & battery displayed somewhere.
Song/Artist/Album displayed in that order.
Countdown & Total track length are nice
Next track is also nice when I'm in the car with my fiancee...she doesn't like all my music so it's nice to know when I'll have to skip a track.
Play/pause icons (no forward/reverse icons...obviously I know if I'm speeding through something).
Play mode indicators (random/repeat/shuffle).
Dark colors.

Right now I'm using a tweaked version of Cabbie 3 with a larger font size, and I like it quite a bit.  I've also enjoyed Ultima and Clean Dark.