General Themeing/Skinning Discussion

[hippo]

hi, im a proud h320 owner and graphic design and web development professional who is very interested in creating a skin or theme. i dont really know what is involved but i know its possible, so i was thinking that since i have no doubt that the iriver theming and skinning will explode... we might as well start it here at mistic river. perhaps i will find the funds to create a full site for it, if the demand warrants it.

so i ask that the mistic river gods bestow upon us a new sub forum -- h3xx skining & theming (skins themes how-to's h320 h340) -- with a few stickied threads, to break ground on this movement. here are my ideas for some stickied (and also locked?) threads...

• TOOLS -- the title of the tool, what is it? what does it do? where can i download it? etc... for instance, i believe that lord julius has an excellent program called h3 mod, and perhaps he can keep his thread on that post updated as he needs. maybe his mod deserves its own stickied thread? im not sure what the logistics of this would be, since i have no knowledge of how many programs are out there.
• DEFAULT THEME -- again, im not sure of the logistics of exactly how h3xx skinning... but i assume theres a default theme, or a default set of images that one can download and overhaul to create their own theme for the player. i think it would be helpful to have this thread so that people can just download the PSD or BMP or whatever and get to work on it.
• HOW TO (advanced) -- a very brief how-to for advanced users of photoshop or editing that simply outlines the process and stepes necessary to completing or compiling a skin. quick reference without hand holding.
• HOW TO (novice) -- a more in depth how-to for novices that explains the process in greater detail for people unfamiliar with photoshop or editing tools etc. explanations and possibly screenshots for editing, creating, and saving files etc... im sure you get the idea.
• COMPLETE THEMES -- complete theme overhauls ONLY please. no disrespect to less experienced themeres, but i (and probably many) are only interested in complete well done and designed themes. in an open source skinning community, crappy themes can pile up quick (see winamp). often, skinners will just change an icon here, or a boot screen there and call it a skin. im sorry, but those arent skins, they are just mods and personalizations. if someone where to spend many hard hours making a cohesive skin down to every last detail... great job!! i want to see it (and so will many) without having to sift through a bunch of junky mods. for this thread, i envision a few representative screenshots + the download link. this way people can see what they are getting before they start flashing their bioses every 5 minutes.
• BITS AND PIECES -- this is where themers can post some icons they created, or some fonts they converted. perhaps some boot screens, and backgrounds too. this way, users can download the bits and pieces they like and use a program like h3mod to customize their player. this also helps keep the bits from the really high quality full themes.
• FAQ -- not sure if this is necessary, but im sure people will have common questions at some point, right?
• ?????? -- im sure i may have forgotten something else especially because i am total novice to h3xx skinning at the moment. perhaps someone else has an idea?

so thats what i think i would like to see. i think it would be enormously helpful to seperate this topic into its own sub-forum because i really feel it will take off (you can even see it in the main forum). the stickied and locked threads will be nice so that there isnt alot of critique posts under a skin or "wow nice skin" comments to sift through. just theme after theme after theme. tool after tool after tool. etc... really invaluable resources.

obviously those would just be the stickied threads. the rest of the forum can obviously flourish with critiques, ideas, tricks, whatever.

perhaps the h1xx series players are deserving of a similar sub forum?



question for some people who have already created skins...
Q: how do you think it would be best to provide your skins for downloading? correct me if i am wrong, but there seems to be two options...

1. compile your skin into a bios and provide the hex for simple installation and flashing.
2. provide a zip with the individual images, and have users change each bit themselves in a program like h3mod
3. other?

#1 is convenient, but may become outdated when iriver releases firmware updates in different regions, no?
#2 is less convenient... but helps keep the theme universal to any region or firmware, right?

is there a happy medium? which way do you feel would be best?

[hippo]

oh yea... please weigh in on this topic it could be really exciting.

[Carman]

Sounds good...

And yeah, maybe its own sub-forum will keep things tidier ?

Although I'm not sure if its popular enough yet to warrant its own sub board

Maybe a board called "Custom Development", covering things like themes, skins, custom firmware ?

[Toshiya]

We have a whole forum for this at bitriver... you may want to check it out. (although searching on here will find you everything you asked for)

[hippo]

http://www.qshosting.com/tracker/for...p?showforum=18
this bitriver?

no disrespect, but with 0 threads, 0 posts, and only 32 forum mebers total(vs misticriver's 6,200+)... bitriver seems hardly the appropriate place to get a movement like this started. i couldnt even find bitriver on google... i had to search this forum, and only turned up 2 other instances of the word.

the thing with searching is that you get a ton of crap. sifting through crap isnt fun. out of the approximately 10 page skins thread, theres maybe 2 decent skins. i feel that creating a place where the information is centralized, straightforward, and robust is much more effective than saying "search." why have an entire FAQ or video encoding section then? why make any subdivisions or distinctions at all for that matter? make it easy for the user... information architecture 101. thats why im asking the mistic river people to create a locality for people to get a wealth of information they may not have even thought to search about!

i feel that iriver skinning is something that could really just explode given the proper foundation. this is the place break ground it due to its sheer traffic and established community.


as far as calling it "custom development" i dunno. i suppose thats fine, but i dont know what other custom development there is? perhaps theres a huge chunk im missing.

[endoscient]

I totally agree with the first post! It would be a real nice thing to ahve and make it a lot less confusing for newcomers and easier for everyone.

[junkimchi]

1. get h3mod
2. get a firmware
3. edit images and replace

there we go... ha

H3mod is very easy to use and I learned how to use it within 5 minutes of downloading it

[hippo]

allright well, i guess that covers the advanced how to.

at the very least i think there should be a thread somewhere with high quality total conversions. i still really believe the skin thing could take off.

[Carman]

Jeff's done it :

http://www.misticriver.net/boards/fo...play.php?f=120

[jeff]

General Discussion concerning Themeing/Skinning.

[wok]

Howdy all!!!!

I'm not really to sure on how to create skins, but i'm pretty keen at having a go! I've seached in various areas of the forum and i would like to know if your warranty is no longer valid when you begin playing around with these kinds of mods??? I'm sure i'll have a go anyways!

I have been using various 3D software for years. So I guess if anyone has any ideas for icons, i'm sure i could help out. Here is an image i just created.



Thanks for your help.

[Sango]

Originally Posted by hippo

compile your skin into a bios and provide the hex for simple installation and flashing.

1. provide a zip with the individual images, and have users change each bit themselves in a program like h3mod
2. other?

#1 is convenient, but may become outdated when iriver releases firmware updates in different regions, no?
#2 is less convenient... but helps keep the theme universal to any region or firmware, right?

is there a happy medium? which way do you feel would be best?

H3Mod 1.2 has a load skin mode which automatcally takes all the image files in the prespective directory and compiles them into the firmware, whcich is by far the safes route. A corrupted hex could brick someones player and they would play the blame game but the latter method put the blame on the unfourtunate user.

[tjr2mental]

Yea, I just finished getting the newest H3mod and had my new theme on my H320 in less then 5 minutes. This is by far the best site and group of people ever!

[wok]

here's another icon i justed finished.



Hopefully i'll manage to complete all the main images within the next few days.

[alienshards]

Shouldn't the H3mod 1.2 thread be here, and stickied?

[damagician]

Just had to say that as a totaly talentless artist I'm all for using any of the skins that I can find on these formus. I just checked the completed skins and they are brilliant. I'm gonna flash this afternoon.

Thanks to all you talented people who are able to make these skins.

[kagelump]

i edited one of the skins, but for some reason, two of the bitmaps are messed up
does anyone know why?
the skin:
http://home.comcast.net/~kagelump/newskin.zip

[Lord Julius]

It would help if you said which images
The very latest build of H3Mod fixed issues with 5 of the bookmarks,
build 1824, just uploaded. Maybe that does it already?

[kagelump]

hm.. the new version doesn't seem to fix it at all
sry, the three (i just remembered one more) bitmaps that didn't work were
settings -> Scroll Handle Vertical
settings -> Scroll Bar Vertical
browse -> Navigation (i changed it so that its blank, but if i put anything else, it would look horribly messed up)

[LuNaR-KaoTiK]

I have robot's red aqua theme, and i was wondering if there is anyways to fix the usem equalizer? Its color is that of the original iriver skin, ive tried looking up to see if there was any issues like that with that skin or any others and was unsucceful? Any one know to fix it?

[Lord Julius]

It may be a bitmap I haven't found yet. But since it needs to be dynamically created,
it may also be done by the software, and in that case it can't be changed. I don't
know when I'll have time to search for images again, you can try your luck in the
meantime

[mixin]

kagelump > If you haven't fixed it yet, try it in the latest 1.3 version of h3mod. You should then get a pop-up when you load the skin telling you if there's palette conflicts, which it probably is

LuNaR-KaoTiK > The yellow and blue bits of the user EQ haven't been found yet, so can't be changed, and will have to be the standard yellow and blue. Only option is to use a different EQ setting if the dodgy graphic colour annoys you at all

[edit] beaten! grrr