Support and General Use > Theming and Appearance Customization
RBx - New theme in progress
[Saint]:
Personally, I think the main menu looks dwarfed by the rest of the theme.
Probably due to the presence of the large "Rockbox" logo you have there.
You have rather a lot of 'screen real-estate' to play with, why not increase the font size?
And (personally) I think the inbuilt scrollbar is hideous...I always turn it off myself, but I'm unsure whether or not turning it on/off is an accepted config item for a theme anymore (or if it ever was...)
Also, I notice in your iconset that the "Rockbox" (the topmost) icon seems to have been eaten away by something? Perhaps an overlapping viewport? Oversight?
Who knows...you do probably ;)
I also think that the text in your "status bar" down the bottom could do with a little more definition...light grey on green is (for me) not the best colour combination where definition is required.
Again, increasing font sizes in a few areas could help, but the colour is something that I would change personally.
On the topic of fonts, using multifont and the title-bar tags is a good combo I think...something I do in my themes a fair bit.
Sorry if it seems like I'm ripping your theme to pieces, it's all just personal opinion...and can be taken, or left, as desired ;)
[St.]
aim:
--- Quote from: [St.] on April 18, 2010, 01:17:18 AM ---Sorry if it seems like I'm ripping your theme to pieces, it's all just personal opinion...and can be taken, or left, as desired
[St.]
--- End quote ---
No, no, all (constructive) criticism is welcome! :)
I quite like the 'empty space' between the useful functions. Makes things look 'tidier', I also like smaller fonts over larger ones, as it helps with scrolling through larger libraries that come with HDD DAPs. I like the scroll bar as it tells me where I am in the library. Although I must admit, it's pretty ugly.
The top most icon has been eaten away by something, I'm very confused by that. I have no idea what's doing it :( It also happens when not in the WPS to the 'next' in the next song information at the top. I agree with the light-grey on green isn't the best combination, but I'm going for a green/black theme here and white text seems to work the best. I could make the glow less pronounced, more transparent.
If you look closely I need to make a new volume icon, it's not quite right.
EDIT: Woo 7 downloads :D
[Saint]:
aim,
I'm having some fun beating one of my own themes into shape at the present point in time, but if your icon problem persists I'll (check with you first and) download the theme myself and have a look.
Unless it's one of those things you'd rather figure out yourself...
At a guess, I'd say that there is a viewport overlapping it in some place.
Without seeing the code first, that seems to be the most likely explanation.
The fact that it wipes out only 1/3 or so of the icon is actually a good thing believe it or not, as it can help in tracking down the x & y coordinates of the offending item.
I'll check back here some point in the next 24 hours or so and see if you've figured it out, and if not, I'll have a look.
[St.]
karashata:
I assume you're referring to the theme site when you say "the wiki", but the theme site isn't part of the wiki anymore... The old galleries were but that was because the current theme site didn't exist yet.
In any case, though I don't own a Gigabeat, I do have a few small things to point out that might make your theme a little bit better...
First, as [St.] has already pointed out, the color of the text on your bottom status bar area does really need to be changed to something either lighter (like full white) or darker so it stands out more. I'm having a bit of a hard time seeing it on my screen just from the screenshots, so I could only imagine any potential issues reading it on the actual DAP...
Secondly, and this is my own opinion, I think it would look a little better if you lined the top of the info viewport on the base skin up with the top of the album art in the WPS, I think it would look a little smoother if they were lined up...
Third, (I'm not sure how much of an issue this might be on the actual DAP, but,) why such small fonts and images..? I've heard a lot of people complain before about how such tiny fonts can be almost impossible to read on the higher-res DAPs like the Gigabeat and the 320x240 iPods (I'm speaking here more about the font used in your status bar and along the top than the font used for the menu and the song info, though that font may be a bit small for the screen of the Gigabeat...) Smaller fonts are generally more accepted on the lower resolution DAPs like the Sansa c200 and the iriver H10 since they're still quite easy to read, but on high-res DAPs it's generally a better idea to use larger fonts so information can still be read at any respectable distance. I would probably try to limit myself to 12-pixel fonts as the smallest in the case of the higher-res DAPs if I were to make themes for them, because anything smaller than that tends to be more difficult to read, especially at any distance. Of course, images would have to be scaled accordingly as well, since tiny images are just as bad as tiny fonts...
One thing to keep in mind is that (more often than not) the DPI of the target DAP is likely to be higher than that of your monitor, so things will end up looking smaller on the actual DAP than they do on the monitor using the simulator. It might be a good idea to test themes on the DAP as well at first to get a feel for how things look (especially when using smaller fonts and images, so you can see just how readable or not they actually end up being), and to test it in a more everyday-use scenario. Once you've developed a good sense of what works well in actual use and what doesn't, then you could probably skip testing on the actual target.
Everything I've said is, of course, my own opinion, and you're welcome to take it however you will. It is your theme, after all.
aim:
--- Quote from: [St.] on April 18, 2010, 02:29:50 AM ---
**snip**
I'll check back here some point in the next 24 hours or so and see if you've figured it out, and if not, I'll have a look.
[St.]
--- End quote ---
Go for gold, I haven't really had much time as of late, if you figure it out, that's great :)
--- Quote from: karashata on April 18, 2010, 05:02:55 PM ---I assume you're referring to the theme site when you say "the wiki", but the theme site isn't part of the wiki anymore... The old galleries were but that was because the current theme site didn't exist yet.
In any case, though I don't own a Gigabeat, I do have a few small things to point out that might make your theme a little bit better...
First, as [St.] has already pointed out, the color of the text on your bottom status bar area does really need to be changed to something either lighter (like full white) or darker so it stands out more. I'm having a bit of a hard time seeing it on my screen just from the screenshots, so I could only imagine any potential issues reading it on the actual DAP...
Secondly, and this is my own opinion, I think it would look a little better if you lined the top of the info viewport on the base skin up with the top of the album art in the WPS, I think it would look a little smoother if they were lined up...
Third, (I'm not sure how much of an issue this might be on the actual DAP, but,) why such small fonts and images..? I've heard a lot of people complain before about how such tiny fonts can be almost impossible to read on the higher-res DAPs like the Gigabeat and the 320x240 iPods (I'm speaking here more about the font used in your status bar and along the top than the font used for the menu and the song info, though that font may be a bit small for the screen of the Gigabeat...) Smaller fonts are generally more accepted on the lower resolution DAPs like the Sansa c200 and the iriver H10 since they're still quite easy to read, but on high-res DAPs it's generally a better idea to use larger fonts so information can still be read at any respectable distance. I would probably try to limit myself to 12-pixel fonts as the smallest in the case of the higher-res DAPs if I were to make themes for them, because anything smaller than that tends to be more difficult to read, especially at any distance. Of course, images would have to be scaled accordingly as well, since tiny images are just as bad as tiny fonts...
One thing to keep in mind is that (more often than not) the DPI of the target DAP is likely to be higher than that of your monitor, so things will end up looking smaller on the actual DAP than they do on the monitor using the simulator. It might be a good idea to test themes on the DAP as well at first to get a feel for how things look (especially when using smaller fonts and images, so you can see just how readable or not they actually end up being), and to test it in a more everyday-use scenario. Once you've developed a good sense of what works well in actual use and what doesn't, then you could probably skip testing on the actual target.
Everything I've said is, of course, my own opinion, and you're welcome to take it however you will. It is your theme, after all.
--- End quote ---
Hey there, thanks for the advice, I'd like to defend some of the choices I've made :) My Gigabeat has quite a colour rich screen, it's very impressive, actually. I'd say it's actually easier to read on the DAP than on my laptop. I've been using the theme pretty much since its conception.
As for the smaller fonts, I like the small fonts, for my (youngish?) eyes it's quite clear and it makes it easier to navigate my large library. The font in use is 15-Adobe-Hevetica. There is enough room for 16- fonts to be used. Anything larger and clipping begins to occur in the mainmenu with the 'now playing' text. Fonts are pretty easy thing to change :)
As for the text-on-green I totally agree, the shuffle icon currently is hard to see and the text doesn't stand out very much, I'm working on changing this in the next revision.
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