Your personal WPS preferences

[Arwym]

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? 

[Job Van Dam]

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.

[Llorean]

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.

[Arwym]

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.

[wintermute23]

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, 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.

[Yotto]

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.

[eevan]

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

[blackthunder]

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

[shoe]

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.

[PaulJam]

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

[Sam66]

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| 

[BdN3504]

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 theme, just copy the code...

[shoe]

Great, thanks. I didn't realize alternating sublines was not just for text.

[tdtooke]

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.

[DeanMurray]

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.