Horizon

[gnomacor]

In this round of Modifying A Theme I Like, I decided to go with AdwaitaPod. I didn't necessarily want to improve it, rather I wanted to use it as a base for my own theme, having the bases of many special features that I haven't begun to deal with. I always wanted to get a circular theme on Rockbox, and seeing it is possible to "cover" the album art with images I bit the bullet. At first I thought of making all the bars circular as well, but aside from it requiring me to create a truckload of bitmaps for each of them, there would be less place to put texts (text behaves badly when it's overlapping an image), so I shelved that idea for now.

Still I am honestly surprised how well this functions and how this hasn't been tried yet (at least those uploaded on the theme list). It offers a unique look based on a neutral theme of AdwaitaPod. The interesting thing here is that the cover art is slightly out of frame, which is somehow possible. This allows me to have more empty space as well as making it visually interesting.

So far I've only tackled the WPS screen to get the design concept right, but I do want to make it a full theme eventually. I'm uploading it to get feedbacks first. Please enjoy!

Note: If you're not using it with AdwaitaPod, make sure to use a light theme with pure white background, otherwise the background/text won't look correct.

[Dook]

This is a masterful modification of adwaitapod! Visually this is a really unique theme, great to see you took advantage of the album art setup to have anti-aliasing on the circle (I think it really adds to the high-quality feeling of the theme.) It would be cool to have the progress bar circle the album art but that might be a bit hard to achieve given the scale. But all in all excited to see where this leads! If you used the skinned lists feature, you could probably achieve a circular menu of sorts (if you want any tips/pointers let me know)

[gnomacor]

Thanks Dook, always appreciate your kind words.

I did consider a circular progress bar initially, but thought it would make the theme too big. Now that I got around to doing it, I managed to do it quite space-efficiently, but I'm kind of split on the design. Not as pretty as I hoped it would be, and too coarse for what it is. Gotta experiment more.

Meanwhile this version is out on the theme list so you can try it out and give your own opinions.

[gnomacor]

Just an update: the scrollbar on the SBS screen has taken shape! (Click on the image to play GIF animation)

It took me quite a while just to come up with a concept that works within the restriction of the theme engine. I tried multiple times to reach for a non-existent scroll-location-as-percent tag, or even a total-list-size tag, which could have allowed me to implement much more elegant ideas. Still, I didn't want to see a bar tag that slices the bow vertically, I wanted something better looking. And even with the restrictions that I can't know where in the list I am, I think I've managed to come up with a usable and unique design.

Note that everything except the scrollbar is a placeholder. The scrollbar itself might change shape as well, but the general idea should be the same (I can't think of a better one yet).
The astute among you may realise what I've done here, but I'll explain what's happening when I get to release this version.

[Dook]

Just an update: the scrollbar on the SBS screen has taken shape! (Click on the image to play GIF animation)

It took me quite a while just to come up with a concept that works within the restriction of the theme engine. I tried multiple times to reach for a non-existent scroll-location-as-percent tag, or even a total-list-size tag, which could have allowed me to implement much more elegant ideas. Still, I didn't want to see a bar tag that slices the bow vertically, I wanted something better looking. And even with the restrictions that I can't know where in the list I am, I think I've managed to come up with a usable and unique design.

Note that everything except the scrollbar is a placeholder. The scrollbar itself might change shape as well, but the general idea should be the same (I can't think of a better one yet).
The astute among you may realise what I've done here, but I'll explain what's happening when I get to release this version.

Great to see more themes start to use this feature! Hit me up if you need any tips or information, I've been working on a standard method for making lists using that feature for about a year now. If you are copying Wavy's implementation, there is a far easier method that might make your life easier.

[gnomacor]

I manage to hammer out a functional version, which is now up! It was a tedious few days, but I think the results were worth it.
The SBS section is actually mostly adapted from my previous theme, Die Bahn. Namely the centered list and the list end detection.

The scrollbar, when not displaying end of list, is split up to 5 variants that continuously scroll. Instead of providing an absolute position via custom scrollbar (not feasible AFAIK outside of bar tag which I didn't want), it switches between the 5 variants (5 since it's a big enough number that doesn't require math, also impossible in theme) to give you a scrolling feedback. It works, and I can't quite capture it into a picture or GIF; you'll have to install the theme and try it out yourself. The scrolling direction is also synchronised with the physical scroll wheel of my Surfans F20 at least.

I hope this theme inspires you to adopt custom listing and scrollbar, and perhaps the themeing engine can be improved to offer better tags for this purpose. Meanwhile, please enjoy!

Edit: As of v1.2 the title bar is now separate, and now fills in the empty space above the list. The screenshots are updated.

[gnomacor]

So I just realised that the scrolling direction of the wheel and the list is backwards, which coupled with the physical scroll wheel made the visual counterintuitive. What I have here is a natural scrolling version, that reverses the direction of list from the typical Rockbox. Rename the file & replace the Horizon.sbs file with it and you're good to go.

lmk how it compares to the original version, especially from players without a scroll wheel.

EDIT: no, it doesn't work. the muscle memory and the fact that the list is now displayed upside down makes it confusing. Also the scrollbar scrolling direction is now reversed to follow the list instead. That way at least it's consistent.

[Frankenpod]

Great looking theme.

Very nice to see something new being achieved with the theme engine!

Not sure if the idea is to download the alternative sbs linked in this thread or not?  The version from the theme site is perfectly usable as it is, I find.

Would it be possible to have the volume bar done in the same circular way as the progress bar? (i.e. as concentric circles - or the common thing of the volume arc temporarily overlaying the progress one when the volume is changed)?

The only other possible change that occurs to me is whether there could be something to indicate the maximum extent of the progress 'circle', so it's visible at a glance what proportion of the track has elapsed (without having to look at the numerals)?  Either a faint ghost of the complete progress line, or a subtle end point marker?

[gnomacor]

Hi Frankenpod, thanks for writing!

• re: Horizon-natural.sbs: The natural scrolling version was experimental. Outside of that it's the same thing, you don't need to install it. I don't think it's worth it especially now that the scrolling direction matches the movement of the list, but you could try it out if you're curious.
• re. circular volume: Concentric rings would be hard since it would have to be a separate image file, and I can't overlap them even if it's transparent. I'm thinking of utilizing more of the perimiter and put the progress bar on top and volume at the bottom. I'll see how that goes.
• re. progressbar boundary: I was working on it but it didn't make the cut in time for the release. Perhaps I got too carried away making the scrollbar work. There should be an upgrade addressing this Soon^TM.

Edit: the updated version is now up, with background added to the playback progress. See below for screenshots.